Study Hall

Summer is ticking along. After a few days of watching TV shows online at work, I burned out. Also ran out of episodes of Dexter (season three starts up this fall). So on a front of momentum from studying Japanese yesterday, I today announce a New Month's Resolution: Spend most of my down time at work studying Japanese.

This winter, I plan to take Level 3 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. I am not ready for this test. I hardly know any kanji, the Chinese characters that make studying Japanese extra difficult. And my vocabulary has some major gaps (for example, I don't know how to say major gap in Japanese). Meanwhile, there are some grammatical areas where I'm sure I'm not up to speed as well.

So yesterday, today and for the rest of summer, I plan to hit the books. So far I've got a couple of books of practice tests. I can go through the booklet, check my answers, and attempt to discover where I went wrong on all the questions which result in failure.

I don't have to ace this test to pass. In fact, just a 60 percent is enough to get the certification. But I still need to polish up before December. So no more Seinfeld at work. Much less random Internet time-kill-surfing. It's time to try to get serious about studying, perhaps, for the first time in my life.

That's not going to be easy. Will all of this fluff be forgotten in a few weeks?

Maybe.

But the only way to reach that level of failure is to get started.

Man ... I should write a self-help book.