Yesterday I wanted to drop my grade 12 level Japanese course. I wasn't very good with words; I wrote four pages full of what I wanted to say to my Japanese Teacher. I asked her to photocopy a copy of it to let me keep for future references, cause' as I wrote this thing I realized it was one of the turning points of my life. I'm the type of person that likes to reflect on things a lot, introverted if you will, so I keep a diary on my Android. The following is word for word (except I did fix some grammatical errors and tweaked a few words for clarity):
In the past, I was one of those people who don't speak in a group because I was very self-conscious about myself; the cause of this is that moving to Canada from China made me lose my group of friends from my native country, and that really hurt my confidence in my oral skills. Having to adapt to a completely new language, environment, and most importantly new people, was one of the hardest thing I had to deal with in my life.
Most of the time when I do want to speak, it's because I talk just for the sake of talking; I would say things that were not relevant to the topics my friends were talking about at the time, like randomly uttering a "haha" when I had no idea what was going on. This made me a more self conscious person than I already was, at the time of moving to this Canada. I made myself an outcast because of this. I hadn't realized how introverted I was back then, so I foolishly signed up for [glossary=A grade 10 level course is referred to as Jap 10, grade 11 level is Jap 20, grade 12 level Jap 30.]Japanese 10[/glossary]. I didn't participate in class because of my self-consciousness around people in general, and that made my progress in Jap 10 harder tenfold.
I was also one of "those Asian kids that complains when a grade from a summative assignment is below 100%", in other words I took my grades very seriously because getting bad grades made me self-conscious. However, my parents have always influenced me to think optimistically. My years back in grade 4 (the year my family immigrated to Canada) were totalled up for an average of about 60%, and continued to improve over the years up to a peak of 89% in grade 9. Being the optimistic person I was because of my parent's influence and my improved grades, I thought I could take on Jap 10 as a way of challenging myself as well as forcing myself to be more comfortable with speaking to people. [glossary=A Sensei means "teacher" in Japanese, and the students in Japan calls their teacher's first name to be polite.]Mieko Sensei[/glossary], I know you are a very considerate and caring person, and I now know you could and can see right through my facade of pretending to understand what was going on in class due to the way my grades in your class steadily declined over the last two years. You tried to help me in grade 10 and 11 when I struggled; you tried to ask me about my problems, but I lied to you that I had [glossary=this is a preventable condition that makes the person feel weak or more tired than usual, as well as lacking the ability to concentrate and think]anemia[/glossary] to keep you from prying from why I constantly couldn't stay awake in class.
When I did bad in your class as well as a few of my other classes, I didn't talk to anyone about it because of my self-consciousness and pride; that led to me forcing myself to improve my grades alone. Metaphorically speaking, I was an elastic band that had been stretched too far; I snapped. I found that video games helped me ease my emotional struggles, and I kept falling into this hole of making my priority over school and even my friends.
When you tried to help me the way you had over the past 2 years, I thought to myself: "how could someone be so passionate about helping a damsel in distress like me?" Because of you, I vowed to improve my Japanese as well as my other subjects. I tried for a while to improve, but now when I reflect on it, I hadn't thought about it in a mature manner. All I did was started studying; I didn't try to give myself room to reflect on my progress, nor did I even have a dedicated schedule to follow; I even was naive enough to think that I could play video games for a set amount of time then study. But of course, a schedule as undisciplined as this would never work. I "snapped" again because I forced myself to do the impossible due to not being committed enough to improving. I fell back into the grasp of video games.
My dad is actually a Mandarin pastor for -Censored- Church, and I was a Christian all my life. I was actually what you'd call a "lukewarm" Christian; that means I believed that God exists and I felt close to him sometimes when I needed him, but tossed him aside when he was not needed. I would also say one thing then do other. Using myself as an example, I was very good at keeping secrets because of how self-conscious I could be; I would NEVER swear in front of my Christian friends or at church. But once I distanced myself from the eyes of the prying world (or at least when I thought no one would be listening), I would swear under my breath when something [glossary=An Elements related example would be like Divine Glory pulling out a couple of Explosions on the first few turns when my deck was Permanents reliant.]frustrating happens[/glossary]. I wouldn't even give it a second thought that it was wrong because the patterns of this world had influenced me so much. I also didn't read the Bible for a long period of time because God used to not feel tangible to me at all; I had no idea where to start reading and when I did, I felt very little or nothing from His Words because of all the guilt I felt from being a hypocrite and a "lukewarm" Christian.
You know how some siblings do not talk to each other about intimate things? They would just come home from school and maybe say things like, "hey how's school?" "Good." "Cool." And then they would drop off the conversation awkwardly, walk into their rooms without saying anything to each other. This is because when siblings were young and naive they shared a pure and innocent trust for each other, and when one side does something to wrong the other, no manner how minor it was, a bit of trust is lost. This loss of trust can build up quickly, resulting in those siblings moving away when they hit 18 and never keep in touch again. I was exactly like that with my sister. I reflected upon this during this summer, and I didn't want things to continue the way it was with my sister! One night in the middle of August my sister and I started talking like we usually do. We began a conversation with phrases like I had described above, but that night she asked me about how I was doing in school and my friends. I just suddenly felt the urge to open up to her about my situation! She responded with wisdom I never thought could be in a 15 years old girl! I won't go into details of what she said to respect her privacy, but her response inspired me so much! Also, the way I came forth with her about many things about my life resulted in a 5, yes, 5 hour conversation about sooo many things in life, Christian and non-Christian related things. That night really changed me and I did a lot of soul-searching over the last few weeks, which made me rethink a lot of my values and now I've come to many exciting discoveries!
I now feel that some of the walls I put up around strangers and acquaintances have lessened, and even less around my group of Christian friends (because we can talk about Christian related topics easier), and almost none around my sister!
The way I failed the [glossary=Hiragana and Katakana are the foundations of the Japanese language.]Katakana part of "Hiragana & Katakana" [/glossary]quiz made me realize a couple things (maybe you noticed how I totally drifted off into deep thought even though I wasn't tired at all today). I have lost too much ground over the past two years of Jap 10 and 20 to be able to continue in the current Jap 30 course. I don't want to force myself into that "elastic situation" ever again. Right now, I can honestly say that my video games addiction won't happen again because my sister and some of my closest Christian friends, and most importantly, God, will hold me up when I am able to fall back into my old patterns, because I can get intimate with them so easily! This goes the same for my other classes. You won't ever have to worry about me dropping any other course because (going to be a little blunt), Japanese has so many pre-requisites and the fact that I fell behind so much in the last two years, it is too hard to catch up now if I want to maintain my other grades and have a proper balance between my social life and school.
Thanks for reading and I hope the Christian parts of my story won't be too hard to understand for you. Thank you for being an inspiring teacher; you have influenced the way I nurtured my views and beliefs, Mieko Sensei!
[glossary=This goes the same for you guys!]P.S: You are free to share this with anyone you feel this situation applies to and needs help, using your own judgement. I don't care who you share this with 'cause I know you'll keep this anonymous and I sincerely hope this will allow you to help many more people whom my situation applies to an be an encouragement for them to make a turnaround to their lives![/glossary]
