It's FINALLY OVER... my Japanese language evaluation test, that is.
It's been about 4 months since I started taking up Japanese lessons and it's a known fact that as we approach the end of the course, there will be an evaluation of our primary understanding (or the lack thereof...) of the language. Being the busy procrastinator (cheem... I think I just created a new term) that I am, I naturally dragged my feet at keeping up with my revisions. I have also been a bit busy my work and other activities and they all kinda add up towards the lack of study time. But God, being the Faithful Father that He always is, extended grace to me whereby He actually made it possible for me to at least spend some time in doing my revision in two ways. First and foremost, our Sensei decided to announce a study week for us ie. she gave us an extra week to study for the test... Praise God, He bought me time! Secondly, we were then told that since it is just a simple evaluation, it would be an open book test, meaning, we can refer to our text books for reference if we need to... DOUBLE YAY! If only all exams were like this... ;)
So anyways, 10 days, at least, before the evaluation, I practically had my head buried into my Japanese text book every day.. what to do, I am kiasu... I didn't want to do badly even if it is just an evaluation. And worse of all is that I had to say no to my social activities and dinners because of this... I was suppose to have steamboat dinner with some friends!!! Haih... Anyways, when the evaluation day came, I felt God's peace and rest in my heart and in many ways, on that day, I kinda got tired of cramming information into my brain and I just really wanted to get it over and done with so that I can move on with my life. Praise the Lord, the paper was actually quite straight forward. In the first part, I tried to work on the paper without referring to my book because I wanted to see how much I really understand the subject. It was up to a certain point that I gave up and referred to my book because I couldn't understand what some words meant. Confusion had began to set in but thank God, I managed to figure most things out. I got my results the week after the test. By His grace, I got near perfect score. ;)
Honestly, if I were to make a list of things that irk me, examinations will definitely make it to the list without much issue. I hate exams. I hate the fact that I spend WEEKS and MONTHS attending classes and studying to understand the stuff and they make me write out whatever I think I know within a 2 to 3-hour time frame to prove that I know my stuff. I know exams are to evaluate our understanding of the subject but I can't tell you how much I abhor the process of churning out the information onto paper within a certain time frame. And worse of all, we get so caught up in the "How-Many-A's-Did-You-Score" rat race, we forget that the ability to memorize facts does not equate to the ability to apply the knowledge into pratical use. Basically, although I may understand Japanese on paper, I still cannot speak the language decently. Sigh... but I am looking at the positive side. At least, I have my social life back now... ;) Steamboat anyone?
