Wow! What a semester. Nick writing, and I wanted to share my thoughts about all of the classes I took this semester. Every one of my teachers was incredible. Their teaching was engaging and concise, they had clear and professional expectations, and they seemed to actually care about us learning. The facilities were great too, and the staff at the Center for International Education. I took five classes, history, art, culinary tourism, Kanji, and Japanese. My favorite class was probably Japanese, and that was also the most difficult class. Finals were hard, especially the Culinary tourism paper.
My Kanji class was the easiest by far. I was worried at first. When I showed up day one, my professor started speaking rapid-fire Japanese. She said "you'll get used to it," which I doubted. Turns out she was right, I got used to it because I had to, and everything worked out. We had sixteen new kanji every week, and on Tuesday we would learn them and on Thursday we would practice reading them. I spent about 10 minutes a day writing out each new kanji and word, and got them all memorized. Sometimes we would have fun games (like the one pictured above) to help understand radicals and different elements of the kanji. We had two reading exams, and four written exams, all of which were pretty easy to study for because I had spent time every day learning the kanji. Great class.
My favorite class was Japanese. My professor spoke so articulately and clearly, and the whole class was super engaged and fun to talk with. At first we had a mixture of group activities and lecture, but as the class progressed we started doing more and more group activities. The tests were really challenging, especially the listening portions. It was my favorite class, but it was also the hardest. I had to give a presentation in Japanese about a place that I liked. I chose Roan Mountain. I attached a draft of my speech above.
I took a class on culinary tourism at Miranda's suggestion. We both needed a Japanese elective, we wanted to take classes together, and it sounded fun. It was. We learned about different regional foods and snacks across Japan, and the motivations and strategies behind food tourism. The professor was super laid back, never took attendance, but always had something interesting to say. We basically had one assignment the whole semester, a paper, and we worked on it in class a lot. A fun class for sure. You can read my final paper for the class above!
We needed a Japanese history credit, so we took History of Modern Japan. We started with some background, briefly discussing the Edo period (1603-1868) before moving through the Meiji period, the Taisho period, and the Showa period. We read a lot of primary sources from Japanese citizens and it was really impactful. Our professor was good. He was an ETSU alumni (super cool and unexpected!) and he tried to have lots of in-class discussion. I was sometimes frustrated by his comments or other students comments, but overall it was a really fun class, and I learned a ton. You can read my first midterm essays/responses above!
The last class we took was called Wa and it was about the Japanese aesthetic in art. We learned about painting, calligraphy, ikebana (flower arranging), sado (tea ceremony), textiles, ceramics, poetry, rock gardens, and much more. Our professor was French, and she was super fun and artsy. She drew these cute cats on our papers and on the whiteboard. I really enjoyed the ceramics and poetry lessons especially. You can read my paper on poetry above.
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