Integrative Narrative
When I was a child, I had had a great interest in Japan and its history. I am a third generation Japanese American, but my grandmother stopped speaking Japanese during world war II which is understandable. It all started when I was in sixth grade and we got to do a book report on a country of our choosing. Naturally I chose Japan and decided to write about Samurai and Feudal Japan However, I never really had a desire to learn the language until after I had come to university. The opportunity never really presented itself until then. Once my teenage years hit, it was all about music, and I gradually lost touch with Japanese. When I had originally come to CSUMB, I declared as a music major, because I wanted to be some big shot recording engineer. Mainly because I didn’t want to take Spanish, I enrolled in Japanese 101 in my first semester of college. During the first two years of university, my Japanese classes were the most enjoyable out of the others. It was then that I chose to double major in both music and japanese.
I had continued balancing the two for another year when I had slowly started to lose steam. It was immature, but the main reason was because the classes started becoming challenging. I had put Japanese on the back burner, which was probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life, to focus on Music. In my fourth year, I got burnt out with school. I was depressed, I didn’t have any drive to continue trying, something was missing. It all changed when I went to go talk to Saito and Sekine sensei about switching to a Japanese minor. It had happened to coincide with the study abroad interviews for the coming year. They had convinced me that even if I had a minor that I should go to Japan. As it would turn out, this was the change that I desperately needed. I had set all my attention on getting into the study abroad program. A couple months before I had left for Japan, I had found out that the music professor that had redesigned the entire music major, was going to leave. This was the last thing that I needed to know that I was destined to be a Japanese major. My time there filled that space that had something missing. I got to see where my grandparents came from, and got to live in another culture. Upon my return, I dropped the music major and became a Japanese major full time.
My initial goal in Japanese was to just fulfill the language requirements for CSUMB. This changed when I was encouraged to take other classes and eventually and the major. I have learned so much from this major. Even though my major is in Language and Culture, I have also learned how to do research, come up with meaningful research questions and be able to analyze data that I receive from my research. I’ve learned how to teach a class, be socially responsible in those teaching situations and facilitate learning in a fun and effective way.
The thing that I am most proud of in this major is reconnecting with my heritage that I didn’t learn or experience when I was a child. I’m proud of myself that I decided to take the plunge and move to a completely different country to do it. I’m proud of the fact that I’ve made so many Japanese friends and friends from all over the rest of the world. But most importantly I’m glad that I passed Capstone alive (joke).
The area that I want to develop the most is my speaking ability. I have pretty bad anxiety when it comes to it and I’d like to overcome it. I don’t want to lose touch with any of the people that I’ve met and I want to return to Japan as much as I possibly can. Eventually I would like to work in Japan in some way. Upon graduation, I plan to keep studying Japanese and eventually take the Japanese Language Placement Test to affirm in myself all the progress that I made.