I’m a college sophomore and I’m currently taking Japanese 2. I’ve been struggling and fell behind because of personal stress and circumstances. I feel like if I stay in the class I’ll likely fail, or it will lower my GPA to some extent, so I was thinking I could withdraw and take it again next year with a different Japanese professor (I’ve heard she’s better). This way I can try and get Japanese tutoring or study on my own during the summer break and be more prepared next year to retake Japanese 2.
But, I feel guilty. I feel like I’m giving up on it right now, and I know the biggest reason I’m doing badly is because of myself. When I originally planned on taking Japanese I thought I’d be able to get up to Japanese 4 before I leave to study abroad in Japan my senior year, but I realized that the way schools teach language (or at least Japanese) isn’t helpful for me. I wanted to be at least conversationally fluent by the time I studied abroad (I don’t have to, but I really want to). Is that realistic (if I’m relying on self-study/getting tutored during school breaks or summers)?
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Fall 2021 was the first college semester i have ever passed and this is my 4th attempt at college since 2013. My last GPA (2016) was 0.42 because I kept Withdrawing from classes or Failing instead of waiting until I was in a better place before trying again
Last semester, I took 10 credits and got a 3.7
Knowing your limits is important. There is a time and a place to “push through” things, and you know yourself best to know when that is. Not taking a formal class doesn’t lessen your passion and waiting until you have the mental bandwidth can prevent you from burning out
I don’t think your giving up at all! Your growing and learning about yourself and adapting to your needs. I was failing JPNS101 because I wasn’t going to class. After dropping, I took some time to reflect and adjust the way I approached school, then retook the class and aced it. It’s okay to take longer than others to figure out how to best helpful yourself and reach your goals. There shouldn’t be any shame in needing to have another go at something!
It’s always a good time to take care of your health. Focus on yourself. The Japanese language won’t cease to exist and you can always learn it later, even without the need for taking exams and such. You could e.g. keep your studies at home and study when you feel like, which is what I am doing. Learning becomes extremely more fun w/o exams and all the stress load with the *modus operandi* of today’s (and actually last two centuries’) failed educational system.
At the end of the day, if you need to prove that you speak Japanese, you’ll need to show a JPLT certificate, not a university course’s one.
Just take care of yourself.
EDIT: failed educational system.
A friend of mine back in college effectively flunked out of school because of Japanese. He was going through a tough time also but the difficulty of Japanese combined with his personal issues affecting how effectively he could study, caused him to fail the class. Since it was a large class credit hour-wise, it was even more impactful on his overall GPA causing him to lose his scholarship and be disenrolled.
If you need to step back for a bit, step back. Approach it again when you’re in a better position to set yourself up to succeed.
If you really want to learn the language, it’s better to do it when you can put in the time and effort instead of just trying to get through it and move on (like some people just trying to fulfill the language requirement to graduate). A better instructor always helps. All my worst grades were from a notoriously difficult sensei.
Wasn’t until my second time in college that I was able to focus on the language, get better grades and graduate with a degree in it. However, I have a lot of classmates who still probably aren’t as proficient as they wish they were.
I mean it sure sounds like you’re giving up and asking reddit for permission. You can always pick it up again, but you should remember that learning a language well is difficult- just because it’s hard now doesn’t mean trying it later will make it easier.
Sorry to give you some tough love, but I won’t blow smoke. Your GPA isn’t very important unless you’re trying to get into a big law school or medical school. If you want to get really good at Japanese, suck it up and stop blaming your teacher.
If you have a passion for the language it is best to self-study imho.
Why is it going to be easier if you’re not taking classes than if you are? Ultimately you need to do the same things, just with less frequent check-ins and guidance.
I’ve got the same issue. I had to drop my second semester of japanese for personal issues. I’m scared that I won’t be able to pick it back up because I’ve been gone so long. I hope you get everything figured out 🙂
You’re not giving up. You’re regrouping.
You aren’t giving up. You’ll get the most out of studying any language for the first time when you can devote the most time to it.
For now you could explore less demanding means of acquiring the language slowly, like DuoLingo. Learning a language is a journey, not a destination, so as long as you’re on the ride it will always feel like you’re progressing!
There’s nothing wrong with deciding to make the best strategic choice for your GPA.
It needn’t be considered “giving up.” It’s just strategy.
Besides, if you want to go back to studying it again some other time, that’s not giving up. And if later you decide you don’t want to study it anymore, that’s okay, too! There’s nothing wrong with either choice. 🙂
To me, it sounds like you believe that “giving up” in general is something to heavily frown upon, but sometimes it’s not a bad thing at all. Heck, some of us need to learn **to** give up sometimes, haha. It may be healthier to think of it as discontinuing something, whether temporarily or permanently, rather than “giving up.”
But anyways, no pressure, really. Make whatever strategic choice you’d like. Just know “I’ll just study it over the summer” is easy to say and hard to stick to.
Duolingo is a nice tool for studying a tiny bit at a time each day depending on how far into Japanese you already are if studying over the summer gets difficult to do as in-depth as you were hoping.