brandon7s Wrote:I have no girlfriend, no social life, and a full-time dead-end job with the nice perk of being able to study for about 2-3 hours a day during my time at work. I work at a hotel as front desk third shift, so on slow days (of which there is plenty), I can study for nearly 8 hours a day, including my time away from work. I've not taken advantage of this yet, but I will certainly be putting more hours into Japanese once I finish my kanji. I can only take 2-3 hours a day of memorizing kanji, then my brain explodes.

I also play guitar, am an avid gamer, and have recently gotten into photography. Until a month ago I was taking Krav Maga (trained for 8 months), but considering it was 45 miles away from me, I just got sick and tired of the drive.

I think I need a life.

Sadly, that makes me envious... you probably make more than I do too

Never underestimate, and always take advantage of the perks of a dull job.

mafried Wrote:Man, get out and socialize sdntx. You're going to regret it when you graduate, get a job, and have even *less* free time (trust me!).

Yeah.. but I know of no "socializing" that can be done without any money. I can't really get a job since even though I'm taking only 14 creds, my schedule is retarded with 4 hour gaps between classes and I spent pretty much all day at school (till 8-9PM some days).

jacf29, I'm impressed to see you keep going even with opposition. Well, everyone has opposition, internal as well as external, to anything worthwhile. We're supposed to just be like everybody else, keep quiet, do what we're told and don't rock the boat. In some ways there's nothing wrong with that, but I think we should all be able to have a bit more fun out of life, so I'm glad to see you making the effort to get somewhere you want to go (geographically as well as metaphorically!)

Basically I think everybody's scared they will lose you, so that's why they try to stop you. I'm sure you would let them go off to wherever-it-is to do something they dreamed of. I would certainly let my children follow their dream to anywhere (if I get any children!) - the people who tried hard to make their life good will be strong and good people will come to them, the people who didn't try quite so hard to follow their own dream will need to keep other people close to them using various trickeries and blackmails. But it's REALLY HARD to strike out in the direction of your own star so we should always understand people who haven't found enough bravery yet.

Anyway I just wanted to send my support. >>Everyone should send him $10!

For myself, there's a lot of things to balance. The trick is to remember what you actually want to achieve at the end!

I really believe that properly learning something to mastery is slow at the beginning, but eventually unstoppable. It can seem demoralising, but the trick is to keep looking at where you have got to. As long as we all keep going, every year we will be further forward! It's obvious but nobody seems to realise that's why they don't get anywhere. Not trying! Just worrying!

Nothing really..

I sub for the local school district, but I can chose when I want to go in.

For now I'm only studying Japanese, but after this year's JLPT test I'm thinking about getting back into studying Mandarin and French.

krav maga? try a proper martial art like Aikido instead.

School (which is about 40 hours a week), the rest goes to Korean (don't study JP).

I don't have that many committments, yet I still feel I never have enough time to study (and it's true).

Although I live in Japan and am able to listen to Japanese in various forms every day, I also work as an English teacher which creates a day still dominated by English (which isn't soooo bad as neither Japanese nor English is my native language, but ....)
I work from 2-10pm 5 days a week, if everything goes well 4 days a week starting from next year.
After work I'm too tired to study. During work I am not allowed to study (some of you might remember one of my previous threads about how to secretly study at work *g*) and most of the time I wouldn't even have the time to study at work.

That only leaves a little bit of free time BEFORE work.
As I finish work at 10pm I never manage to go to bed before 12.
I've tried to get up early various times, but it seems that my body needs 8 hours of sleep, so I just can't get up before 8am.
Until I finish morning toilet and breakfast and all it's usually 9:30-10pm.
Which leaves me with about 3 hours of study. Usually way less as I also have other things to do like running errands and stuff.

I have an average of one hour to study per day.
On my days off I study as much as I can, though.

liosama Wrote:krav maga? try a proper martial art like Aikido instead.

That is one of the single most ironic statements that I've heard all year. "Proper", and "martial" shouldn't be used in the same sentence. - Also, Krav isn't a martial art, it's a self-defense system.

I would love to take Judo, but unfortunately every good dojo is at LEAST 50 miles from me.

Quote:Sadly, that makes me envious... you probably make more than I do too wink

Never underestimate, and always take advantage of the perks of a dull job.

I know, I really should be studying more - I can't wait to start on the Core2000 deck, and I'm already working on Tae Kim's guide - I just gotta finish this RTK and then I can spend a lot more time with it, since RTK is the only thing holding me back at the moment.
Any ideas of effective ways to study WHILE doing RTK?

brandon7s Wrote:

liosama Wrote:krav maga? try a proper martial art like Aikido instead.

That is one of the single most ironic statements that I've heard all year. "Proper", and "martial" shouldn't be used in the same sentence. - Also, Krav isn't a martial art, it's a self-defense system.

I would love to take Judo, but unfortunately every good dojo is at LEAST 50 miles from me.

I agree Brandon. Judo has my stamp of approval. Aikido is good when done properly, which is rarely the case.

Maths at university which takes up my time until 5pm generally ( I hope to go on to do graduate studies in Japan) and... feeding myself and anime and MMO commitments. >.> That's basically it.

Besides studying japanese( just finished RTK1 and now reviewing, next->sentences),
I´m a highschooler in the 11th grade (math and physics class). 35 hours of school a week. Recently I don´t do any schoolstuff during my free time(inc. homework), so that I can use all my time for kanji. Soon it´s going to be easier, with sentences...then I´ll be trying to be better at school.

I play guitar for 3 years now (5 since I started), and I like it very much, but I don´t see any career in it. I´m much more skilled in guitar, than japanese and thus It´s very fun. So both are time-consuming. Guitar is probably my most advanced skill.

I want to become an architect, so I read all kinds of books and articles on that.
I went to an art school for 5 years and graduated... so I can paint and draw decently. And I have various ideas about what I want to do in the future.

Besides the previously stated important things, to be healthy I skateboard with friends( been doing that for 5 years now). Recently I have started doing yoga occasionally, and I have gone to meditation lessons twice.

My top priorities are to study as much about architecture as I can, about the subjects and interests associated with it. And japanese.
I´m planning on starting drawing more sketches of designs soon. And then maybe paint the buldings I drew.

I hope that learning with sentences is much more fun and motivating than Kanji. And I hope that I can use less time on learning japanese now, so that I can put my time more into what I will be doing in the future: designing buldings.

jettyke Wrote:Besides studying japanese...........

I wish I was half as much on the ball at such a young age

I'm currently studying a Masters degree in video game programming.

At the start of the course (Septemember 2009) I assumed I'd have tons of free time to study Japanese, but sadly I have crazy amounts of work, soo my 日本語 has actually got worse. However, it has been good as I've had free weekly language lessons from the uni Japanese scoiety, and made many new J-friends.

Course finishes in 2 weeks, then disertation, soo I'll have plenty of free time again. Hopefully I'll be totally fluent by this time next year (yeh right..)

I'm a corporate attorney. I work 50-70 hours a week, so thats most of my time right there. I also try to spend as much time with my wife as I can and try to fit in a bit of gaming here and there. My wife and I have been learning Japanese together for nearly 2 years now.

astrangerhere Wrote:I'm a corporate attorney. I work 50-70 hours a week, so thats most of my time right there. .

Wow that´s a..lot! I can´t imagine how you can handle it that way.
I hope you will have more free time.

High schooler.
I'm on university entrance exams year.
Around 30h/w of school, plus almost my whole day studying.
F**ng mad at how I have to study so much for almost nothing.
Fat (just overweight, come on...).
No girlfriend, no friend of the female sex, only a few friends actually, most of them annoying as little kids or just plain retarded.
That's pretty much what I'm dealing with this year, and almost the same since I can remember. Shit just started to piss me off.
Not trying to sound the "depressive/rebel teenager", but already sounding like one.

For me going into my last year of school, I still have quite a great deal of time to work on japanese as school doesn't take long if I srs/time manage. Srsing only takes 1-2 hours each day. The rest is immersion/reading japanese stuff. As for other stuff, i'd say family, sometimes going on with friends,etc. Not much else at the moment, but could be getting into a relationship(serious i mean) soon.

I don't work at the moment, did a few months ago. Trying to find another job since.

I'm currently finishing my Game Design & Development course, currently in the fourth year doing my masters degree. Besides that and studying Japanese I also take Iaido classes once or twice a weak. I also have a part time job as an iPhone App programmer.

The plan is to finish my master in September, then work full time till March, and then I'll be off to Japan for a year at least