Keep Going My Own Way.

One Way? No, I Go My Own Way.

Hello, people!

It’s has been a while since my last blog post.

Spring 2016 has already started and a half of the semester is over. I am on my spring break now and just came back from my road trip to Portland, Oregon a few days ago. It was a very beautiful experience to visit Portland; this road trip definitely made me realize that there are bigger and more exciting places other than the cities and towns I know where I could possibly have more interesting opportunities.

Unlike other huge cities, Portland is, in my opinion, very neatly designed and developed in terms of the coherence of the city’s appearance, its accessibility of the nearby towns, and its cleanness. Although it looked that car is still the most commonly used transportation there, Portland seemed to put some emphases on its city train and bicycles as other usable transportations inside the city.

One of the most striking things that I have experienced in the city was the cafes there; they are different from the regular cafes that people would usually imagine. They are categorized as so-called ,”the third-wave coffee,” which is a movement to produce high-quality coffee, and consider coffee as an artisanal foodstuff, like wine, rather than a commodity (from wikipedia). I thought that Starbucks is selling a pretty expensive, high-quality-looking coffee already and fancy, but those coffee shops are self-owned and have different styles that they strive to show. My friends with whom I went to Portland were pretty nerdy about coffee and really really impressed by the quality of the coffee they tried in Portland. Thanks to them, I think I started getting the different tastes of various coffee like I did with beers.

 

As I began this blogpost, it has been about three months since the last post. I have been simply just so busy doing my school stuff this semester. Well, I think I had few chances to make some updates on my blog so that I could have told my recent stories.Nonetheless, it’s been really busy for me.

The reasons why are as described below.

One of the reasons is that I started a graphic design internship at the CMT Design studio on campus this semester. This is a very exciting experience because I get to design most of official posters and other kinds of print-based media on campus, and the internship gives me a great hands-on experience that will help me improve myself as a graphic designer. I did not expect that working and communicating in English with my coworkers and clients, which is not my first language, is such a hard and fun thing to me. I believe that though this internship, my ability to clearly convey my thoughts in English as well as my graphic design skills have gotten better. Currently, I am working for 12 hours a week, but I am going to work for 20 hours next semester, which will definitely keep me busy until I graduate from Chico State. However, by the time of my graduation, I am assuming that this internship will give me a fairly good understanding of how graphic design industry works in a real life and a strength in print production.

The other reasons is of course, five of my classes, and all of them are upper-division courses. As getting closer to graduation, classes I have to take are getting slightly more difficult and time-comsuing. Right now, I have 4 major-related courses and 1 upper-division general education class. 3 of them are really a project-based classes which I am enjoying taking because they are my major classes and the projects my professors assigned us to do are just simply fun to work on.

The rest of 2 classes are the one that I have some problems with.

One is called Communication Criticism, in which I have to make an argument against any sort of media work on the basis of media analytic methods explained in the class. Analyzing a medium of any kind is a very fascinating subject; looking at different components of the medium and trying to understanding its deeper meaning allow me to recognize the complicated patterns of the media that people consume on their daily bases. However, the thing is that my professor is just too specific on what she wants us to write on our papers and her explanation to clarify what she wants is not clear enough…, which makes it harder for us to understand her point.

The other one is called Philosophy of Science. This class is, as you can imagine already from the title of the class, complicated. The major problem I have with this class is not the ideas that each philosophers who had examined science from their philosophical views present, but rather their choices of words in their writings. Yes, philosophers. They are the kind of human beings who really want to show off the fanciest terms and words that they know in order to explain what they had in their minds, which most of the time creates some sort of bullshits and could have been described  in much simpler ways that everyone else can easily understand. Looking up some of the words that I found insanely difficult to understand takes me lot of unnecessary time.

Ironically, I started liking some of those philosophers’ ways of writing because as you can see, they look fancy and sophisticated in a way. Haha.

Anyway, there is one thing that I would like to point out here in this post.

There is only one year left until I leave the world of academia and begin working. Most of my friends in Japan and some in other countries have started looking for jobs. Looking them and hearing some stories from them, I realized myself being a slightly scared of not doing the same thing that they do. I guess there is a certain feeling of conformity that I have developed without knowing it. I am pretty sure there are several people who are feeling the exact same way I am.

I am just focusing on what I want to do right now, and this concentration has significantly changed my view of life: there is no one way to reach my goal. 

I think that I just got to the point where I started grasping the concrete and solid objective that I would like to accomplish in my life. My goal is still pretty vague, but I know which way I am going for.

Everything I can have from my experience including this time’s road trip, my classes, my internship, and many others is meaningful. Each of them allows me to expand my world and see other possibilities.

The point is that you do not have to stick with one sole plan that most of people would take; you can decide how you approach to your goals.

What Is Learning?

Look through

Hello! Another three weeks have passed, and only 4 weeks left until the end of the semester! I am so happy that Fall 2015 semester is about to end.

Looking back the last few weeks, I have a couple things to mention.

First of all, I passed the Graphic Design portfolio review, and officially I am in the Graphic design undergraduate program at Chico State! Also, I am most likely to be able to finish my degree in Spring 2017, which is about 1 and half years from now.

These are my works for the portfolio

Although I was very happy and satisfied that I passed this review as I had planned, I have to say that there was something that my works lacked, but other students’ works had. As a graphic designer, I often go and look at other people’s design pieces online in order to get some inspiration for my own works. As I find more and more interesting and very creative pieces of works on the Internet, I realized one thing: each designer has his or her own taste of design that other people cannot easily imitate. 

I think those uniqueness of different designers are born from their diverse experience in the real working environment as a graphic designer.

I saw the same kind of pattern at the portfolio review. About half of the students there had most of their design pieces from the classes that they took here at Chico State like me. However, another half of them had their own design pieces that came from various different working experiences, and  I clearly saw them in their works. It was very obvious that they spent a lot of their times improving and policing their design skills and creating great works for their clients. The time they worked as designers can be 10 times than the time I did. Tiny details of their works told their stories. It was so fascinating to me even though they are also students who try to develop their skills.

Unlike fine arts, the purpose of graphic design is to clearly communicate and convey a message through text and visual elements on 2 dimensional surface. Therefore, if  you look at one graphic design piece more closely, you will notice how logically each element is placed and organized on a sheet of paper. In addition, I believe that the beauty of its visually designed logic can be as beautiful as that of fine arts.

I think that this is where I want to reach as a graphic designer. I want to tell a story through my works, which I haven’t really achieved yet. I am not worried that I couldn’t get  that point, but the portfolio review made me realize that I will have to work even harder than before.

Second thing is about the Halloween!

Last weekend I had an awesome Halloween party in Chico! When I was in Japan, Halloween was nothing but a just regular day to me. However, here in Chico, it is a pretty big deal. People dressed up! Well, people dressed up. That’s pretty much it. Looking at some people’s creative costume was quire interesting.

Since it is way easier for me to talk about Halloween with pictures, I am just gonna post some of the photos of my Halloween experiences(btw, I was a sugar skull this year)

So yeah, it was fun!

Okay let’s talk about today’s main topic.
Today I would like to talk about learning.

We are Homo sapiens. We, as one of primates, have the ability to learn, which is a great advantage in terms of survival. This is one of the main reasons that human species have been developed so much on this plant despite all the destructive natural disasters we have to go through.

So what I try to claim here is that learning is a basic function as a human; we all know hot to learn basically. It just all depends on how effective the way of your learning is. I think that learning accounts for a decent amount of our life because every day we learn something and will use some tips that we have learned from that experience.

One of my professors at my former college suggested me to watch a YouTube Video, called “Myth#1: College is where you learn how to learn.”

In this video, the YouTuber divides learning into several steps.

1. Basic instruction
2. Practice
3. Perform or create
4. Feedback
5. External reward
6. Go back to step 1

Looks pretty straight forward right? All we need to learn something is conduct each step and try it again.

Among those steps, I think the idea of getting External Reward was quite interesting because as this YouTuber mentioned in this video, a lot of people would reward themselves after they finished some works. It can work to some degree, but the power of getting external reward is way stronger than self-rewarding. He defined external reward as something that you don’t have a control over. Because you don’t have any control over it, you wouldn’t be able to get any rewards unless your work is appreciated by other people – so called social approval. This idea is totally applicable for both graphic design and this blog.

As I mentioned earlier, it is simply not enough for me to just learn from the classes I am taking right now. Hands-on experiences as a graphic designer will be definitely necessary for me.

Speaking of learning, there is one great quote I always think of from one modern Japanese philosopher, Yukichi Fukuzawa. He is the guy who is on the ¥10,000 bill.

In his book, An Encouragement of Learning, 

They say, “Heaven did not create a man above or below another man.” It means that Heaven created all human beings equal and there was no difference among people. As the lords of creation, they could use all things in the world by exercising their own body and brain for their clothing, food and housing. Freely, unless they bother others, they could live comfortably. That’s what Heaven created.

But now, observing human societies, there are the wise and the foolish, the poor and the rich, the noble and the plebeian. What does make these differences?

It’s obvious. The book named Jitsugo-kyou says, “A man cannot have wisdom without learning. A man without wisdom is foolish.” In other words, the difference between the wise and the foolish depends on how they learned. And there are difficult work and easy work. People consider a person who does difficult work as the upper class and a person who does easy work as the lower class. The work using brain is difficult and the work using body is easy. So you can say that doctors, scholars, governmental officers, merchants who do big business and farmers who hire many peasants are the upper class.

If you are the upper class, you can be rich spontaneously. And from the lower class people’s view, you seem far beyond their reach. But there is nothing but learned wisdom in the difference between your and their ability. Heaven did not set up the difference. As a proverb says, “Heaven does not give fortune to a man, but to a man’s workings.” And as I have already said, there is no natural difference among people. A person who learned well and has wisdom can be the upper class and rich, and a person who did not learn and has no wisdom become the lower class and poor.

(English translation is from http://mage8.com/magetan/susume01.html)

I am not sure if he was a Christian or not (because he used a word, “heaven,”), but this idea is very appealing to me because basically his argument is that the harder you work and learn, the better your life is going to be. The difference between a wise man and a foolish man is the learned knowledge.

To be honest, where you were born could be an obstacle that makes you suffer somehow. However, as long as you work and learn very hard, there is always a way to achieve your goal. Learning is a key to success.

The premise of my blog is to share things that I learn from my life with other people.

I will keep doing this and learning more.

Thank you for reading:)

What Makes You Different?

Can you realize you difference?

Hello! It’s been two weeks! Always got surprised at the fact that time goes so fast.

Speaking of time, it’s been one and half year since I started studying in the United States. what has been changed in myself? Well, I think there are quite a lot. I have never gone outside California yet. I haven’t been to other countries besides the US and Japan for a travel. For the most of time, I am in Chico, concentrating on my studies. It’s very fun because I can feel that I am absorbing and accumulating so much information from my classes and found them useful for my future.

However, I think I need to see different cities and world more often. Right now, the only way to reach out the world is the Internet. I know that it’s not enough. To fully feel and perceive something new or unfamiliar to me, I must experience and see it with my eyes.

Of course, Chico is a beautiful and wonderful place, but it is not enough for me.

A beautiful sunset in Chico.

In my past blog posts, I discussed the reasons why I decided to study in the US (This post was written in only Japanese) and the gains from that decisions.

Now that I have talked about these two aspects, it is high time to talk about what could make myself different from other people. Here I compare myself to other Japanese international students at Chico State as well as those who go to study at different universities and colleges in the US and other nations.

It would be interesting to analyze the same thing, but with American students and international students from other countries. However, my next big obstacle in my life is to get a job in Japan. Thus, I would like to do this with only other Japanese students.

Let’s start this discussion with looking at a statistics about the number of Japanese students who have an experience of studying abroad from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT).

According to the date that is provided by the MEXT, there are over 60,000 Japanese students who study overseas in 2012. China is the most famous destination county among other countries with over 21,000 people. About 20,000 of them are in the US, and it marks the 2nd place, followed by the UK, Taiwan, Germany, and etc. This number includes all kinds of studying abroad programs.

This information is collected from the MEXT’s home page. Click the image for the full version of the PDF (It’s all Japanese).

With this graph above, what we can know is that there are lots of Japanese students who study abroad for less than one year. The white part is composed of those who have gone overseas for less than one month and accounts for the biggest portion of the each bar. The interesting part that I think I should point out is that the third section from the top of each bar, which has a gray color comprises the second biggest portion of those bars. 

What this suggests is that the number of Japanese students who use an exchange program for their studying abroad is increasing and accounts for a quite a bit portion of the overall studying abroad population. Since the Japanese government’s global education policy is to encourage more and more students to go overseas, this information suggests that the policy is working.

To be honest, that might  not be something that I am really excited about it because one year of study abroad experience is long enough for international and global Japanese companies who seek for new employees.  Unlike me, who is here in the US to acquire a degree and stay here for more then 1 year, those who use an exchange program go to their universities in Japan and know how the Japanese job hunting system works thanks to the plenty of information. For companies, if they could find those Japanese students at a career forum, it would be much better for them to hire them because they could possibly reduce the cost that they would have to spend to hire somebody like me (4-year studying abroad).  In addition, now those exchange Japanese students can participate in the global career forum in Boston or LA, which used to be open only for those who study in the US for s longer period of time. In my opinion, it seems that those exchange students tend to be from top ranked Japanese universities. I am not sure about this perspective, but as far as I know,  this tendency is true.

In short, as the number of Japanese exchange students go abroad to study increases,  the 4-year studying abroad program could possibly become less valuable.  This is how I feel like now.

I know this sounds like too pessimistic. Yeah it does because i am a pessimist, but a positive pessimist. So I would like to think about how to differentiate myself from them or rather how I can increase my value.

First of all, I am not a top-ranked US university student. If one said I am a student at UCLA, most of Japanese people would recognize its name. However, I am in Chico. Not many people are most likely to recognize Chico (It’s ok though. I am proud of myself being a Chico State wildcat!). Second, well I think there is no second here.

Anyway, the point is that the value of a top-ranked university itself is really really strong. Because it is a common sense that the better college you can get in, the better you life is going to be.

I think this is one of the most important notions that I need to think about. Obviously if I were a student at one of those top school, I would think what makes me different because going to those school will automatically make you different. Considering that the idea that a  better school equals a better life is a common sense, to great extent, it is likely to happen once students graduate from those universities.

However, it is still possible that students from a middle university can attain the same level of life.

According to an online article, “Does It Matter Where You Go to College?” by JORDAN WEISSMANN from the Atlantic, 

The big surprise: Selectivity didn’t matter. Academic siblings ended up making just about the same wages after college regardless of how choosy their school was. In fact, where the students applied, and their final class rank in school, were much better correlated with earnings than their school’s admissions standards. If you were smart enough to get into Yale, or even take a shot at it, you were probably smart enough to earn like a Yale grad.

The academic sibling here means students who marked the almost same academic level. Therefore, wherever you apply, it is still possible for you to earn the same amount of wage.

However, the study the author used pointed out that although the admission standard itself does not completely explain about how successful a student is going to be, he or she will not be able to make up for school’s resources that he or she could have acquired by attending one of those top universities. Because those top schools’ tuition fee tend to much more expensive than that of those middle rank schools. They have more various school resources, such as libraries, labs, computers, and of course, people.

These connections with other people are the biggest factor that makes everything different. 

It took me really really long to get this conclusion, but yes, this is it. This is why I wrote I wanna get out of Chico sometimes at the beginning of this post. No matter how hard I try to make myself more different and more valuable, there is a certain limitation. I am pretty sure that the more connections I make, the more experiences I will be getting.

Now I know what to do.

Get out my comfort zone!

So get out my comfort zone and let’s start connecting with more people!!

Thank you for reading.

What’s Your Story? #1

New Angle, New Challenge, New World

This is a new blog series that I am going to meet and interview a bunch of people and listen to their life stories (now only at Chico State though).Curiosity is one of the strongest traits that we, human beings, have. The more knowledge I absorb, the more I wanna know. Recently, I just cannot stop reading and watching new things from books and online. Everything is very interesting and amazing. And now I want to know more about other people’s life. Every single person has a fascinating story to tell. I can acquire and digest new knowledge based on my own perspective, but it is like always looking at stuff only from one side. Can you eat the exact same thing every day? Nope, I can’t. What other people are thinking and experiencing in their live is something that adds a great spice to my brain. It’s like that. So well, why don’t I start listing to them?

I am so excited to kick off this new series with an incredible person’s story!!

Photo credit: taken by Miri Lin and edited by Akira Motomura

• Name: Makie Sato.
• University: Dokkyo University, Senior Student
• Major: Communication (at Chico State) and Liberal studies (at Dokkyo University)

In this interview, my focus was mostly on asking about her studying abroad. Therefore, questions I asked during the interview were designed based on that purpose.

1. Why did you want to study abroad?

When I asked her this question, the answer she gave me was pretty simple, “Because I’ve wanted to do it since I was little.” She explained to me why and how she has become interested in foreign countries and English. Until 5^th grade, she said she was a typical elementary school kid who loved to play outside, sing songs, draw and create random things.

However, when she was in 5^th grade, she started going to an English conversation class where she learned the fundamental of English. The interesting thing about this English conversation for children was that she didn’t just play and sing songs in English: she actually learned the rule of English pronunciation, which most of Japanese people don’t really know about. Her teacher at that time was a young female English teacher who had been to the U.K. for studying abroad. According to her, she was her life changer.

Thanks to the unique curriculum, she came to be able to figure out how to pronounce an English word that was new to her. None of her friends then could do that. This experience changed her dramatically. She told me, “it was like a chain reaction that I suddenly loved studying because it was fun!” One time when she was at middle school, she decided to be in the first place on a big exam that almost all the middle school students in Japan was going to take, and she did it by scoring a full mark on the exam. Amazing!

It was her senior year of high school that studying abroad became one of her choices after her graduation because it’s been her dream. There were two options that she could choose from: studying abroad or staying in Japan to study for the entrance exam of Japanese universities.

However, it was 2011, the year when a huge earthquake happened around the northern east part region in Japan and a tremendously massive tsunami attacked and destroyed cities. Because of the natural disaster, she made a decision to stay with her family in Japan.

Next year, she got accepted from her current university, Dokkyo University and stared her college life there. Nonetheless, her passion towards studying abroad was still growing out of her mind. And finally, after she talked about it to her family, she decided to do it with her family’s strong support. She told me how thankful she is to her parents and siblings for giving her this great opportunity of studying in the U.S.

2. Why the United States?

There were several options of destination countries for her. However, she chose the U.S. as her destination country because she wasn’t really attracted by the British English accent. She felt life the American English was suited for her. In addition to that, she didn’t really wanna go to somewhere very cold. So, California was the best option for her. Well, nothing can beat this awesome weather of California lol

3.How has your experience of studying abroad changed yourself?

She told me that there are a couple things that have been significantly changed due to her studying abroad in Chico. The first thing is that she has more freedom. Before coming to the U.S., she belonged to a huge A cappella club, called OLFM, at Dokkyo University, in which she was one of the charges to lead the club. She said that she had so much pressure from her responsibilities as a charge because every single action she took would affect other members of the club. For example, if she hadn’t showed up at a meeting on time, the other members could have become less punctual and badly affected the operation of the club (She didn’t do any of this actually!! Good!). Always being right had been stressing her out and made her worried so much about how she was being seen by others. However, now she is free from any of these responsibilities, and it seems that she enjoys what she is doing without thinking how she is seen by others.

Another thing that she has changed though this studying abroad is that she began caring about and taking a look at herself. She used to try to fill up her weekly schedules with tons of activities and sleep about 4 hours a day when she was in Japan because that way, she didn’t have to think and worry about things that she truly want.

However, her life as an international student in the U.S. is not as easy as the one that she has in Japan because she has to figure out a way that works out for her. Unlike in Japan, everything is not laid out here, which allows students to have the flexibility and also requires them to have the responsibility.

Now she has some more time to consider what she really wants to do in her life and is able to try everything she wants to without any hesitation. This more free life that may be derived from the U.S.’s individualistic culture encouraged her to think about herself. I think that it is one of the most difficult things for us to face ourselves. We tend not to do it because it’s easier. I am happy that she realized the significance of facing herself through studying abroad.

4. What’s your life goal?

Finally, I asked her what she wants to do after she has completed her undergraduate program. She said she wasn’t sure because she hasn’t figured out her passion yet. However, she mentioned that she is looking forward to going to a school to teach students English and let them know how fun it is under the teaching program offered by her university. I am sure she will be able to do that!

After this first interview

Through this interview, I found that each person has each different and dramatic life no matter how they look very normal to me currently. Some of them might say to me that their life is not something special like people on TV, but I don’t think so. People have made different and important decisions at the different period of time, and all of them must be very significant to them. Those decisions are the ones that have shaped each person’s personality.

It is very important that you are yourself as a main character in your life.

I am still not sure why I decided to start this interview project, but with this experience, I think I will find something very meaningful to me.

I don’t know how much I could convey how impressed I was with her story though my words in this post, but I will continue to improve the quality of my writing in order to let readers have the same experience I have:)

How Do You See American Culture?

Hi, there people!

I just came back from Japan to the US few days ago. There was a long long line at the US Customs, taking about 1.5 hours to get out of the airport. It was so frustrating. Moreover, I was asked to go to the secondary check AGAIN!! Last time I came back from Japan, I went to the secondary check and investigated my legal status, visa, and I-20. The officer said to me that there was an error in the system and he made a correction so that I wouldn’t have to go to there again. Nonetheless, this happened again. Even though this time it took me only a few minutes to get out because the problem was the same thing. I think I really need to visit the international office at Chico State in order not to let this happen again in the future. If I have to go through every time I come back to the US from the vacation, it’s gonna be a disaster.

You know if this kind of stuff occurs to, even if I do nothing wrong, I feel really unsafe. ;(

Anyways I hope things are going to be well during this school year.

It’s been a one year since I started studying in the United States, and the second year is just about to start. The summer vacation in Japan was totally awesome, and I really enjoyed all the experiences. During the vacation, I tried to learn and feel Japanese Culture from its religious, historical, and traditional perspectives. After exposing myself into those stuff, I am having a weird feeling of being in the states. I kinda feel like I am new to here because of my experiences during this summer in Japan.

So I decided to write a post on how I feel American Culture with my photography work from the last semester. The following series of self-portrait photos were created as my final project in the digital photography class. Each of them are showing cultural differences that I have particularly noticed though my life at Chico State.

I am going to explaining one by one.

1 – The Opening 

This is the beginning shot of this series. A photo of me looking outside from the window in my room. This one is trying to describe how I felt when I first arrived in the US. I was a little nervous about starting my new life at Chico State as an international student. I had no friends at first. No one to talk to. I really didn’t know how to begin communicating and interacting with new people in English.

2 – Lunch Time 

This one is showing the scene that an American version of me eating a piece of pizza while   walking. On the other hand, a Japanese version of me sitting on the bench and start eating the pizza. I think in Japan, people always try to find a place to sit and eat lunch there, but in the states, people look like busier and don’t mind eating something, while they are walking.

3 – Hugging

There is a bunch of different ways to greet friends here in the US. Particularly, hugging is the most unconformable way of greeting to me simply because I didn’t get used to hugging people. I don’t even hug my best friends in Japan. It is not common in Japan. When you meet your old friends, how do you greet them? Probably, you would just say hi to your friends. So yeah, I think I might have made this “feeling awkward” face before, but right now I am got used to this:)

4 – Sticking the Gum under the Table after Finish Chewing it

I don’t know if people actually stick the gum like this after they eat it, but there are tons of gums under the tables in the library at Chico State. Not only in the library, but also are those gums stuck everywhere. Literally, EVERYWHERE. According to one of my friends, there is a sightseeing spot, called the “gum wall” in Seattle. I hope this is not the actual American Culture…. lol

5 – Bathroom Experience

Have you ever used a bathroom in other countries? Sure you have if you have gone outside of Japan. I think that bathroom is one of the most interesting cultural differences to find because it’s not always the same. Here in this photo, you can see me realizing that there is a relatively big open space between the door parts and looking at the other me in the room. I mean people don’t actually look inside of the room like this, but if you were inside of the room and saw people waling nearby, you would feel exact like this. In Japan, almost all of the public bathrooms are completely closed; there is no space between the door parts so it’s hardly possible that you would see people inside.

6 – Partying

Party is a big part of American Culture. You will often see people having a party in a movie. I think it is a very good way to meet new people and socialize yourself if you can use it in a good way. However, some parties are just as crazy as a huge storm. People just get drunk and become insane. In an extreme case, it would end up with a police investigation. My university has actually sent its students an e-mail to warn us those risks. You need to know the risk of participating in them.

7- Energy Drinks

What kind of energy drinks do you know? We have Red Bull and Monster in Japan. What else do we have in the US? There are tons of energy drinks that you can choose from. People drink them like water and coffee, and containers of those energy drinks are huge. It is so surprising that people in the US drink them on the daily basis. I usually use them when I have to keep awake in order to study for exams. I have had two cans of Rockstar (A famous energy drink brand) once before a final exam during this summer. It worked well, but my stomach didn’t feel well afterwards… Lol So be careful if you decide to drink one of them!

I have been mentioning some of the differences that I had noticed though my life in the US. It is very interesting to notice those stuff and tell people who have lived in this culture to see their reaction.

Btw, today is the first day of my second year at Chico State. I thought this semester is going to be less intense than the last semester, but it doesn’t seem so.

I hope I can make it and pass the portfolio review this semester.

See you soon.

In the Middle of the Fall Semester/ 秋学期真っ只中

project1

basic drawing class

principles of communication design

a big tree falling down and a broken bridge in the campus

What’s up guys?
Now 5 weeks and half have passed since the fall semester began.
I think I am doing good so far. I have done two quizzes, one group presentation, and one project for the basic drawing class. And compared to the beginning of the semester, I have gotten more stuffs to do each week. I am now crazy about deleting my homework on my schedule one by one when I have finished them. It kinda helps me to reduce stresses of those homework. Hahaha, I got you, homework. LOL

Homework that I have from each five class is often the most stressful, unenjoyable, and difficult thing in college life. I did not have it if I would choose to go to one of Japanese universities though. As I wrote how stressful homework is, I do not like to do homework because I feel like I was forced to do it, and if those assignments were boring or not compelling to me at all, I will probable lose all of my motivation to learn. But this is likely to happen in my college life.
So here is what I do to motivate myself to finish up them when I got a boring homework.

The first and big thing is that I would try to find any kind of relationship between an assignment and my interest. I think that the biggest obstacle that keeps students from doing homework is this: they could not find any relationship with homework and what they are interested in. This situation would be more likely to occur when they are taking a class that they do not want, but have to. For example, when I studied at Lakeland College Japan last year, I took a speech class that was a required course. At the beginning, I was really nervous and not motivated at all because speaking in front of people was the last thing that I would love to do. This was partly because I was not confident enough in my speaking in English. And I was overwhelmed because the topics of each six speech that I was gonna have thorough the semester seemed so difficult to me. However, I found that as long as I could speak about my favorite topics in speeches, it was possible for me to spend so much time on preparing the speeches. I actually used SMOSH, a duo of Youtube Comedians, for one of my speech and enjoyed presenting it. In addition to enjoying the assignments by finding interests, I noticed that Î could do them better and people listened to the speech enjoyed more, which made me self-confident.

I do practice this method for the basic drawing class projects. I like drawing, but you know, IT TAKES TIME. I am a busy undergraduate who has 4 more classes besides the drawing class, and I do want to have some free time that I can be immersed myself into my hobbies. I do not want homework to take those precious time away from me. So I always look for subjects that will meet the requirements of each project, and do it. If I did not know how to deal with stressful assignments like this, I would be dropped off the class already.

Let’s talk about recent stuffs.
Today, I have done my group presentation in an English class. Since this is an ESL class for internationals, it is very similar to EAP class that I took at NIC. So I am now reviewing the exact same things that I have already learned before here. But it will be counted as credits that I need for my graduation, I will be working hard anyway. Oh, I’m off the topic.
My group was made up from five male students, and we had some trouble when we were preparing it and while we were presenting it. First of all, we thought that there were only four people in our group. Thus, the four of us hanged our together and talked about the presentation. However, there was another person who belonged to our group, and we found the fact about 3 days before today. However, since it was a weekend, we were supposed to easily meet up again and prepare for it. Nonetheless, another problem happened to us. That is, two of our group member started not replying to our text and every time I text them, the only answer that I got from them was “we can hang out tomorrow.” And then, you know, the weekend was over. SO we could not get altogether. That was really stressful for me, because I was trying to make things work so hard, but it did not.

Anyway, we could somehow get prepared, and now it was about time to start the presentation. I think that the presentation itself wasn’t bad because everyone was successfully done each part that they were responsible. However, the trouble arose when we finally introduced an activity that is related to the topic of our presentation to the class. The power point of the activity suddenly disappeared. I was like what the hell is happening because I saw the power point was there in the morning. I assume that the two members might have accidentally deleted it because they were still working on creating power point of their parts in the morning. What lazy guys!!.

Since my laptop did not connect to the interment today, I have the actual power point on my mac. And fortunately I could show it to the professor, she might consider our grade on that part because I could prove her that we had prepared .

Anyway that’s all the troubles that involved the group presentation.
I am so grateful Alan and Zheming, who are the members who worked with me to do a good job on this presentation.

Thank you for visiting my blog. If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, please leave your comments below!:)

へーいー
みなさんお元気ですか？
いやーなんかいつのかには５週間とちょっと学期が始まってからたってて
ビビってますね。時は過ぎるがはやい。

最近色んな人がブログ始めててちょくちょくチェックするんだけど、
みんな日本語でかいてて、まあ自分も両方でやってるんだけど
他の人はほんとに文章のテンポがいいなって思います。

おもしろおかしく留学先のようすをつたえるのもまた一つの方法なのかなと
思います。

さて、まあアメリカの大学といえば！
めっちゃくちゃ出てくる宿題！

この一つにすぎるとおもう！　いや最近ほんとに宿題の量が増えてきて
まあもともと一つの宿題にかける時間は短縮できるようにレイクにいた間に成長したので
いいんですが。

とにかく量が多すぎて自分の自由時間が減って行く
という事態に陥っています。
まあ、学期が終盤に近づくにつれて一つの宿題のしめきりまでの日にちも減ってくるし
大変ですが今のところ履修しているクラスではまあまあよくやっている方だと思います。
最近の楽しみはiPodのスケジュール管理アプリに登録してあるその日の宿題リストを一つずつ宿題を片付けるごとに消していく。これが楽しみでありストレス解消の方法ですw

課題ってゆーのはやっぱなんか面白くなっかたり
やらされてる感があってほんとにバラ色の大学生活を灰色に変えてしまいます。
まあ元々２１歳に達してなくてバーでお酒を飲めない時点で結構灰色だけどw

そこで私がいつもやっていることは、
どんなに面白くない、興味がない、つまらない課題がでても
どうにかこうにかやって自分の興味・関心があるものとつなげてやる
ということをしています。
レイクランド大学にいたときに、スピーチのクラスをとってたんだけど
そのときはまだしゃべることに自身がなくて、本当に人前ではなすのがいやで、
シラバスに乗ってるスピーチのトピックがどう考えてもいまの自分には無理だろ
とうわーとなってました。。。

しかし！
あるとき別にスピーチの内容が課題の趣旨そのものにそってれば
なにやっても良いじゃんということに気付き
自分の好きな内容を積極的に使うことにしました。
例えば、SMOShってゆー有名で俺の大好きなコメディアンを使って
一つ話しました。
いや本当に内容は面白くて全然アカデミックじゃあないんだけど
意外に聞いてる人の反応もそのスピーチに対する成績もよかったので
お、これは行ける！と思い、今現在も絶賛使用中の方法です。

今は図画（drawing)のクラスをとっていて、楽しんだけど
ねえ。
時間か掛かりすぎるでしょってゆーことで
面白くないものを描いても面白くないので
自分の好きなものを積極的に採用してます。

で、今回の最後の話は、今日は英語のクラスでグループプレゼンテーションを
行いました。まあそれでいろいろなトラブルがあったんです。
まずプレゼンを準備する過程で一度も全員があつまらない！

なんて自分勝手なんだ！

週末に一度は集まるって話したのに
あげくの果てには連絡を返さない！
テキストだから既読機能はないけど
連絡かえさない！

もうあきれ果ててまじ疲れました。その二人はマジでゆるせませんね。笑
んでもう一つおおきなトラブルがあって
プレゼンの最後に全体にグループアクティビティをしてもらうんですが
そこのパートで準備していたはずのパワーポイントが消えた！

なぜ？？？

それはきっとおそらく
最後の最後まで既読無視をし、練習をさぼり
ちょくぜんに自分のパートのパワポをしあげた彼らが
いつの間にか知らないうちに消してしまっていたのでしょう。

まあ良いです。
たまたま俺のMACが朝からインターネットにつないでなくて
データが残ってたので先生に説明できたからまあ、なんとかなるでしょう。
もう知りません。
今回はなにも出来ることがなかったです。

積極的に参加してくれたあとの二人には感謝です！

まあそんな感じで最近は確実に英語を話すことにも慣れてきて
書くことにもさらになれてきて
そして読むことにもさらに慣れてきました。
友達も増えました。
ハロウィーンがやってきます。

楽しもう。

じゃあなんか質問、コメントあれば！

また次回ーーーーーーー＾＾

The Restart of My Academic Life/ 新学期スタート！

New student orientation at Chico State/新入生オリエンテーション

Chinese Restaurant at Sacramento/中華料理 at サクラメント

Night View of Chico State after class/ 夜の大学

Hello, my name is Akria.
I am the author of this blog and topics this blog would be covering are anything that I have experienced, enjoyed and had fun. So sometimes I may talk about my school life in the United States; some other times I will write about designing stuffs which I’m interested in or a travel website that I am now working on again with my friend in Japan.

Because the new semester has just begun here in us, I would like to introduce myself again to people who may visit this blog.

Ok, so far almost two weeks has passed this semester, I take five classes: Introduction to Philosophy, Statistics, Principles of Design, Basic Drawing, and English class for international students.
The very first thing that realized is that it is so difficult for me and maybe other internationals to make friends with American students because they always gather with domestic students and some of them seem to have no interest in global society or international education. It is sort of wired because the American students do not appear that they realize that the world is getting more and more globalized although more and more people from all over the world visit the United States to be those who learned and understand the global world.
Then, I found that only those who are interested in other culture are willing to contact us and I can keep in touch with them.
I know that eventually I have to get along with the Americans like that, but for now, it would be a better idea for me to try to talk to those who have interest in internationals and other international students.

These are textbooks and stuffs I need for those courses. (I have more materials for the basic drawing class actually.) They cost me about $700-800.

I think that this is the first time for me to take five courses in one semester because at Lakeland College Japan, I was allowed to take only 4 classes. (There are some exceptions to take more than 4, I guess, but I did not meet the requirement. So I could not do that there.)

Overall, it seems that I’ve enrolled good class so far because there appears to be no other Japanese in the three of them, which forces me to speak my opinion only in English and all the instructors of those classes are, I think, excellent. They do care about students and are eager to help them. Plus, the grading system is likely to be fair enough for every one.
To describe how those classes are organized or conducted in detail, I think it is necessary to take photos of them next time. So I’d like to put it off till next post.

So today’s post will be focusing on my statistics class.

My statistics class is in fact offered through online, which is another new experience for me. The course is actually divided into two parts: class discussion and online lecture.
I have to watch the online lesson a day before the physical discussion is held in a class room and attend the discussion class.
Some might claim that online components are not that helpful as physical lecture, but I would say it is useful for me. this is because I could replay the lecture offered through online and study the subject at my pace. As a second language speaker, terms and concepts used in lecture sometimes require me to look them up in the English dictionary. It is difficult for me to do it during the physical lecture time because I would be so busy taking notes. However, in online lecture, this problem is easily solved by stopping a video. Therefore, I think taking an online class is good in this way.

In addition, there is a physical class that I have to attend to pass this statistics course. I assume that the combination between online and physical class makes the effectiveness of the class doubled. Thanks to this system, I can follow the lecture completely and ask questions that I could not understand through the online class in the physical one.

Anyway, that’s all for today.
I hope my motives for study will increase as the semester goes since now I am studying what I want to and at where I wanted to be:)

P.S. Again, Thanks, Mikhail, for you comment on the last post.
I will contact you at some time during this semester to talk about my travel website. I think Im going to complete creating it with Weebly because I want to make the contents richer first, and them, move it WordPress or other site.

こんにちは。今回からは、日本語でもブログやっていこうと思います。
まずは、自己紹介として。
僕の名前は本村章です。アメリカで大学生をやっています！
このブログでは基本的に、僕の好きなことや経験したことを書いたり、自分がいま進めているサイトの進行状況について報告したり、留学に興味がある人に向けてアメリカの大学生活がどんな感じなのかを更新しています。ほかの内容もたまにやります。

とりあえず今回は新学期も始まり心機一転と言うことで！
自己紹介から入り、今んとこの様子を書いていきたいと思います！

えっとまず今学期とっている授業は、統計学、英語(ESL)、絵画基礎、哲学？倫理？、そしてデザイン概論的な授業をとっています。

まずはじめに留学生ビザとして要求されていることがあり、
留学生は一学期間の間にかならず１２単位以上取得しなければなりません。
これが満たせないと強制送還の対象になるので！

で今のところ僕は今学期１５単位の授業を進行中です。
日本の大学で授業を受けたことがないので分かりませんが、
だいたいおんなじ授業が週に２回ずつあってそれを
１５ー１６週間で履修します。

今２週間終えてみての感想は
「なかなかいいクラスにあったったな（やっほい）。」
って感じです。先生は生徒のことをよく気にかけ、まさに俺たちの仕事は
生徒を助ける為にあるんだ！ってゆー感じの先生ばかりにあたりました。
これは僕がこの学校を選んだ理由のひとつだったので
選択としては正解だったなと思います！

理由としては、まず僕の通っている大学が少し内陸にあって留学生の割合が少ないこともありますが、とりあえず授業ではアメリカ人学生しかいない！
いやまあアメリカだし当り前なんだけど、とりあえず他の留学生にすら会わないなんてこともよくあります笑

まあなので英語しか使えない環境が容易にできるのは間違いないです。
しかしながら、このアメリカ人学生たちはまるでグローバル化の流れを知らないかの
ような雰囲気を感じます。
みんないつも固まってるし、入っていこうににも話も続かなければ、あんまし興味も持ってくれないときもあります笑

海外に興味がある人探して友達になるというステップが最初は
必要な気がしました。

で、まあ今回のブログのメインの話は、英語の方でも書いてるんですが、
統計学の授業内容についてです。
今僕が履修している統計学はオンラインと通常授業パートの二つに
別れています。基本的にはオンラインで扱った内容を、通常授業で理解・復習をしていくっていうような感じです。
最初は不安でしたが、案外楽しいし、身に付く！

自分はネイティブではないので、授業中に分からない単語に多々遭遇することがあります。そういうときに使うのが電子辞書ですが、実際の授業中はノートをとるので忙しくてそんなことやってる時間はありません。
かといって授業後にノートを見返しすとか、授業中に録音しとくとか、基本的に面倒くさがりの固まりの人間なのでしたくありません。

でもこのオンライン授業はそれらの悩みを解決してくれました！笑
そして８０％以上理解した上で通常授業に望めるので
一石二鳥な感じです。

まあまだ最初の方なので結論的なことは何も言えませんが、
とりあえず楽しんでは行けています。

他のクラスに関しては、おいおい写真を撮りつつ
学校の様子やイベントなどもやる気があれば参加して
紹介していきます笑

何か質問あればコメントにどうぞ！