Tomorrow, December 29th, I
have a speaking final at 8am. It is the first of my finals, with the
grand total being no more then 4. I know that sounds kinda strange,
as I should have an exact number, but at the moment I don't. This
semester I have been taking four classes, but one of the classes was
one I asked to take as a refresher course. It is the first level
character class. When the semester started and I was enrolled in the
classes, I asked if I would need to take all of the exams as I have
already been through this class and did pretty well. I was told that
since I was in the class, of course I had to take the exams and pass.
However, there was a day when I was asked to skip my class so I could
help with a visiting delegation. It wasn't until a couple weeks later
that I found out that while I was showing a group of people around
campus and giving a presentation on our study tour, the rest of my
class was taking the mid term. When the teacher and I talked about it
later she said she saw no reason for me to take a make up exam or
anything as she knew I had been through this all before since she was
my teacher the first time around! I did take one of the quizzes and
got a pretty good grade. So I may or may not have to take the
character exam. I have to talk to her about it. If I take it, I have
no idea how they will calculate a grade for me since I have no
midterm exam score!
Tuesday is the exam I dread the most.
Its my for my Listening class. This is my worst subject by a
landslide. I got a 52 {out of 100} on the midterm. Trust me, I say
that with no pride or false hopeful feelings. This class has me at a
loss. The strange thing is, I feel like when I am talking with
people, that my listening is my best skill! Meaning that I can
understand way more of what someone is saying then I could hope to
actually say. However, I think the reason for that is all context. I
can listen to someone and understand what they are saying, I can then
formulate a response in my head {Often I could tell you exactly what
I want to say back in English but it is still hard when it comes time
to put that into Chinese} and then often I can even make some sort of
a reply. The reason for this though is that I do not have to
understand every single word they spoke to understand the meaning and
continue the conversation. That does not help when the exam has me
identifying the similarities in three sentences being spoken. {“The
dog walked across the street to the boy.” “I live right across
the river from the big town.” “Though I had seen her many times
at school, I had never before come across the rest of her family.”
The similarity in these three, of course, being the word across. This
is the kind of thing I have to do, only in Chinese. The audio
recording of these three sentences would be played once and then I
have to write down the word or phrase that is the same in all three.
} Plus, in listening class, we have to listen sure, but we have to
write our answers! Though this class might be the one I bomb the most
at, character memorization and writing are my poorest to be sure. It
doesn't bother me to a great degree as most of the time that I will
have to write something I will have a computer, cell phone, or kindle
with me! I might know that I want to say “I really love chocolate.”
and I know how to say that in Chinese, but I might not be able to
write it. But, if I want to text it to a friend, all I have to do is
start to typing in 'wo hen xi huan qiao ke li” and it is going to
give me the right characters for it. And once I see them, most of the
time I will know they are right and choose the right ones. {What I
mean by this is that if I type the letters qiao into my cell phone I
am going to come up a bunch of characters such as 桥
乔 巧 壳 but I know enough to know that the word
chocolate has 巧
as the first character, so I will be fine to type it.}
Now, it is true that I can often now recognize a character, read it,
and have ABSOLUTELY no idea what I am saying! I did that earlier
today a few times while going over the work I have for my exam
tomorrow. I saw 社团
and 加入
and I read them both. I knew they said 'she tuan' and
'jia ru'....but do you think I could remember what either meant?
Nope! {I looked at them both, read them both right and then said to
myself 'There is no way that's what they say cause how could I know
how to read them but not know what they meant?' So I went to look
them up and found they were indeed what I thought they read as, and
was reminded of the meanings from the dictionary.}
Anyway. All of that to say, I am pretty
positive I am going to fail. And I should be freaking out about that
right? I mean, who wants to fail...not me! And I mean that. I don't
want to fail.....but I actually don't want to pass. I don't think I
should be put through to the next level and so as much as it is going
to be a hit to my ego and I will hate letting my teachers down, I
don't want to get a passing grade on my exams. The fact that I am OK
with not passing is kinda what bothers me though. It is freaking me
out that I am OK with failing, because I feel like this should bother
me and I should be working 10x harder at everything to make a passing
grade. I guess part of the reason I am writing this blog is to see
the words out in type in front of me so I can try to make sense of
things.
I have said it again and again, I am
not here for the grades. I am here to learn Chinese. So the grade
does not matter. But at the moment, I am not learning Chinese! :(
That is why my grades are not good. This time it is not just because
I do not test well. Without a doubt, I can say I do not know the
information I am suppose to know to pass these tests this week. And
for that reason, I want to do the classes over again to really be
able to grasp them. It bothers me because I had this idea that I was
going to come out of this year with an amazing grasp of the language,
be fluent {to some extent, I am not delusional, its going to take
years to sound like a real Chinese person when I speak} and be able
to act as a translator to other foreigners, especially for my own
family when my brother comes home. Thankfully, I don't feel like I
have taken any steps back, I just don't feel like I have taken that
big of leaps forward either.
Here is where it gets my head messed up
a little and where maybe I am typing this blog to convince myself its
alright to feel this way. When I use to get a grade that was really
bad in my opinion, I would tell myself that it not big deal because I
was doing so much other stuff. I was going to visit kids, I was
hanging out with my Chinese student friends, we were having
conversations {in both Chinese and English} that were very
meaningful, and I was working on other relationships and such with
other students etc. The problem with that this year is that I am not
doing any of that! I have seen a group of 'my' kids a whopping 1 time
since camp ended. My friends are either graduated and now working at
a job, or they are all too busy as am I and we never get together, so
I am not having conversations with hem in any language. I use to tell
myself it was fine if I was not doing well as a student because I was
that 'other' thing and it was more important,and it was also helping
me with my language. But then I read about people doing that other
thing....M....and I am not doing any of it! I am not going out to the
middle of nowhere to hold a hungry child and comfort them {I can not
tell you how often my little Josiah comes to mind! We visited his
home one year after camp. He was 9 years old, but could not even hold
his head up by himself. At the time I wasn't suppose to be lifting
anything, but I just had to hold the little bundle.} I'm not helping
build homes, or dig a well, or holding any sort of parties and
gatherings for anyone. My life is not hard. I am not saying that in
order to do anything for Father it has to be hard and a miserable
life, not at all. But that is the truth. My life is not hard, and I
am not sure if I am being challenged enough. And that makes me
wonder, am I not being challenged because that is not what is needed
at this moment, or am I Blake-ing out on this all and I am not ready
for the challenges? Am I falling short on things and that is why I am
not called right now to do anything other then fail at my classes and
work in the office? Have I been put on a shelf for a time?
When I came back here in June, I came
to do camp and then go to school and work. Most often now, I feel I
am working and doing school. Sounds like a small change, but its not,
let me tell you! I am so thankful for the learning experience I am
being given at the office! Really I am! I feel like I am growing in
areas I never expected and I am learning things I didn't know I
needed. While I can not say that every moment is the joy-est of joys,
or that I love every little detail about my work {Answering 60 emails
from a single student can get a bit old.} But I use English for it
all! I am the English assistant. I make the phone calls that require
English, write the English emails, help edit the English fliers, and
research papers, articles, and websites that are in English. It is
helping me learn a lot about how to work in a Chinese office, how to
communicate with people of all sorts of differing country
backgrounds, how to be pushy to get something done {Hey Mum, did you
ever thing I needed to learn how to be pushy? You have no idea!! Oh
Brodeur!!} It is not really helping my Chinese improve at all. And
while I am so thankful for not only the learning but also just the
opportunity to do something I never thought I would have the chance
to do, I wonder if it is a detriment to my studies at all.
I get discouraged at times. Not just
because I feel I am not learning the language like I am suppose to,
but because I feel like I am not doing much of anything that I came
here to do.
Man...the problem with writing this all
in a blog though is that as I write it out, all the right things to
say and the right answers pop into my head. Lol. That doesn't sound
like a bad thing I know, but it is just that I already know them, and
so I feel like I should add them in this when I am thinking of them,
but at the same time that doesn't mean that it makes me stop feeling
the way I am at the moment. Does that even make sense? I guess what I
mean is that I already know this stuff and yet I am not living it
because I allow myself to get caught up in the downfalls, but by
ending it all on a good note and saying “hey look, I know what I am
suppose to say and what you are going to tell me” it makes it look
like everything is fine now and I am back on track. When I might
still be just as confused as before and still working things out in
my head. You'd think I'd have more of this silly stuff figured out,
the whole being an adult thing, at 30, yeah? {Insight into why I am
still not yet married, perhaps?....that is an entirely different
blog...that may never be typed out!}
The right thing to say right now is the
same thing I have said for the last six years. I stink at planning my
life. Every time I try to do it, I fall flat on my face. Before this,
when I tried to plan things and have my bright-shiny day, it turned
to poo. I did not end up in China because it was my plan from the
beginning. This was never my goal! My first goal was not on this side
of the planet at all, and my second goal was in a country to the
south west of here. Never China. And once here, my goal was not to go
to school, nor was it to spend 9 months working at a candle shop in
the States, or to return to China and work in an office. But the
right thing to say is that I know it is all better then my plans. The
right thing to say right now is that it is all going to work out
well. The right answer is that I need to keep my eyes focused where
they should be and rest in the fact that as long as I am not the one
planning where things are going they will work out far better.
I know all of those right
answers....but I still don't know if I should feel bad that I am not
working harder to pass these exams this week. Because if I pass the
exams, I am going to be more lost then I was this semester.
Mostly what I am worried about is
letting everyone down. It might not bother me that I fail my classes
and repeat the semester starting in March. But what about the others
that helped me get here? What about all of those that are helping me
through this? What about when others find out that not only am I not
only am I not learning all the material I should be, but I am also
not going to visit kids, or doing any of the other stuff I did
before?
In conclusion I suppose I should take
some of my own advice. The other day, I was talking with a foreign
teacher. I was reminding her that she is not doing any of this alone,
as she prepares for some not so fun stuff during the break. She said
that it sometimes still feels like it, even though she knows she is
not suppose to be. I stood firm with her and told her to get her eyes
back where they belong and focus on that. Trust me when I say, this
is not me just saying the 'right thing to say' I know I am not alone.
I know that even when I feel as if I'm doing this solo, I know it is
all in my head. And it doesn't seem to last too long. He always has a
way of showing me that when I least expect it.....or sometimes after
I have asked for it! :)
