Hello,

I've run into some trouble. I'm in first-year of a joint math-CS major, which involves the most difficult courses at this university.

Last semester, I put my uni. courses first. As a result, I made no progress in Japanese. I kept up with my reviews (I'd previously completed RTK1), but otherwise I did nothing.

This semester, I tried treating my Japanese more seriously. Each day, I've done Japanese (Pimsleur + Tae Kim) before any other work.

Unfortunately, this has caused me to fall behind in my math and computer science courses, and I've decided that I can't continue this schedule any longer.

I don't think anyone would consider first-year CS/math with Pimsleur (1 lesson / day) and Tae Kim (1 lesson / week) to be overkill, so I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong. (For example, I recall Khatz mentioning that he not only started the AJATT method during university--he actually learned his math and CS courses using Japanese versions of the textbooks.)

I figure this is the best place to ask for advice, as I know that there are plenty of fellow CS and mathematics students studying Japanese (any ideas why so many CS students are studying Japanese, btw?).

There will always be time for Japanese study. Concentrate on your university courses now since those records will stay with you through your professional career. Once you get your degree, use it to obtain a work visa in Japan.

Premade decks/list. Have anki feed you a few new ones each day. Slight increase in review time - constant growth.

In my opinion, it doesn't really matter what you're going to school for (or even that you're going to school). What matters is that you find yourself with conflicting interests that both want you to spend time on them, and it's up to you to decide what is most important.

Anything you spend money to learn or that is on a time constraint (or both, i.e. UNIVERSITY) is more important than something you could postpone till later at no real expense to you (i.e. 日本語の勉強). If you neglect your university studies, you will almost undoubtedly regret it if there is blowback (i.e. bad grades, losing scholarships, etc). So, with that in mind, i would recommend that you prioritize school > japanese in your mind. 4-5 years may seem like a long time to put studying your language of choice on the "backburner", but keep in mind that you DID choose to go to university, so follow through with your decision!

If you're looking to find quick and easy ways to keep your japanese studies up, i would suggest increasing your "immersion level" and filling your "time cracks" with japanese. the AJATT blog (which you seem familiar with) talks at length about both of these things. Just do what you can, and don't try to force it.

take bodhisamaya's advice!

When I was in uni, I had all the free time in the world. Your classes usually aren't all back to back, so you often have an hour or two here and there between your classes. That can be Japanese time. You probably also spend a large chunk of time just walking to and from classes every day. You mentioned that you are doing Pimsleur, so that walking time could potentially be Pimsleur time.
And at least 1 night a week is party time, amiright? :p

Give yourself daily goals of what you want to accomplish in Japanese each day. If you find that its too much for you, scale it back. You don't have to spend 2-3 hours on Japanese each day. Even if you can only find 20 minutes, that's better than nothing.

abdwef Wrote:(any ideas why so many CS students are studying Japanese, btw?).

Anime and Yellow-Fever

As someone who is also a CS major, I can sympathize with your situation. I have school 4 days a week, and work the other 3 days. Although my schedule is actually really easy (I only have 3 classes and hours of spare time every day of the week), it's not uncommon for me to just not want to "do" anything and just sit around doing something else.

My conflicting interests are Japanese, schoolwork, and running. Recently, Japanese and running have suffered. I think one of my problems anymore has been reading forums and the internet so much. I see so many people making amazing progress while having the same kind of time constraints as me (and much worse too!) and it makes me feel crappy about my own snail-pace progress.

I've already mentioned before that I hate doing RtK reviews most days, and anymore, getting on Anki to do my whopping 10-20 reviews a day is tough too.

My solution atm:

I've decided to sort of cut back on Japanese. STUDYING that is. While I keep up with my reviews everyday, I'm lucky to add 5-10 sentences from KO a week right now, but I'm OK with that. I get pulled away from my responsibilities by wanting to listen to music or go play videogames, or I'm too just too mentally/physically spent after work/schoolwork to want to do Japanese studying.

I listen almost exclusively to Japanese music, and pretty much only play FF13 or 零～月蝕の仮面 if I want to play games. Even though it's not actually studying and I can't understand 98% of the music or games I listen/play too, it makes me feel better knowing that I'm doing "something" in Japanese still, and enjoying it to boot

liosama Wrote:

abdwef Wrote:(any ideas why so many CS students are studying Japanese, btw?).

Anime and Yellow-Fever

Most CS students are geeks.
Some geeks love anime,
All anime lovers have yellow fever.
Are all yellow-fever suffers CS Students?

Joking aside,

@Offshore: Something you might try and do is make note of some words you see consistently in games/music and add those to your decks with the sentence they appeared in. Try to pick the words that occur over and over. Its usually easier to do reviews on material you liked and not stuff that seems like a chore. (That'd be AJATT philosophy).

Yeah abdwef, I had a similar situation in undergrad (physics major) and was only able to fit in Japanese classes until junior year. Sadly, in the end I had to pretty much give up Japanese for a few years in order to keep doing well in college and grad school.

Your problem is one I see this often with people I advise and tutor (and was one I had at your point in life). It's easy to get excited about learning and try to do too much at once. I wanted to have two majors, become fluent in Japanese, and still have time for a social life and sleep. This was a unrealistic goal for me so I had to re-prioritize my life. I won't try to make assumptions about what you can personally handle, but my advice would be to not overwork yourself in college since that can lead to general unhappiness. If you want to make a career out of math or cs, then that should come first. This is up to you to decide, but just keep in mind that there's plenty of time to learn things after you graduate.

I study maths at Cambridge and my daily schedule (in this order) is basically:

Come back to my room from lectures at 1pm
Chat with penfriend for a couple hours online in Japanese
Do my 250~ anki reviews and add 50 new sentences a day (takes 1.5~ hours)
Do as much maths practice/revision as I can + cook dinner

I still have a little free time after this, but not much. There's not really any end to maths, and I can end up getting absorbed into a question until it's bedtime and still not have solved it, giving me no time for other activities, so I feel it really is best to get the Japanese out of the way first.

I know my future career won't give me much time for following my own pursuits daily so it's either now or never.

dennybritz Wrote:

Quote:any ideas why so many CS students are studying Japanese, btw?

Love Anime -> Want to learn Japanese
Love Anime -> Nerd -> Study CS
=)

Love Video Games -> Want to learn Japanese
Love Video Games -> Nerd -> Study CS

I think that's a lot of it, too.

Regardless of how big your workload is, you aren't spending 100% of your time on schoolwork. Just try to fit Japanese into the the rest of the time, whether it's for fun or just studying.

dizmox Wrote:I know my future career won't give me much time for following my own pursuits daily so it's either now or never.

Heh, yes. The thing about the Cambridge maths course is it gives you a lot of nominally 'free' time, so there's huge scope for anything between 'do minimum outside lectures and get a lowish result' and 'do lots of work and get a decent result'. I spent a big chunk of my time messing around with computers and ignoring those maths problem sheets. It was getting pretty obvious that the reason I was doing the other stuff first and the maths only when I had to was because actually I found the maths boring and I just wasn't giving it the attention it deserved, so I actually ended up switching to compsci for my last year (best decision I ever made, in retrospect).

pm215 Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:I know my future career won't give me much time for following my own pursuits daily so it's either now or never.

Heh, yes. The thing about the Cambridge maths course is it gives you a lot of nominally 'free' time, so there's huge scope for anything between 'do minimum outside lectures and get a lowish result' and 'do lots of work and get a decent result'. I spent a big chunk of my time messing around with computers and ignoring those maths problem sheets. It was getting pretty obvious that the reason I was doing the other stuff first and the maths only when I had to was because actually I found the maths boring and I just wasn't giving it the attention it deserved, so I actually ended up switching to compsci for my last year (best decision I ever made, in retrospect).

Was that in the third year then? Did you have to catch up on lots of computer science or did you go into the first year or something?

hotsw4p Wrote:In my opinion, it doesn't really matter what you're going to school for (or even that you're going to school). What matters is that you find yourself with conflicting interests that both want you to spend time on them, and it's up to you to decide what is most important.

Anything you spend money to learn or that is on a time constraint (or both, i.e. UNIVERSITY) is more important than something you could postpone till later at no real expense to you (i.e. 日本語の勉強). If you neglect your university studies, you will almost undoubtedly regret it if there is blowback (i.e. bad grades, losing scholarships, etc). So, with that in mind, i would recommend that you prioritize school > japanese in your mind. 4-5 years may seem like a long time to put studying your language of choice on the "backburner", but keep in mind that you DID choose to go to university, so follow through with your decision!

If you're looking to find quick and easy ways to keep your japanese studies up, i would suggest increasing your "immersion level" and filling your "time cracks" with japanese. the AJATT blog (which you seem familiar with) talks at length about both of these things. Just do what you can, and don't try to force it.

take bodhisamaya's advice!

Well said. It is really a matter of maximizing the long term returns from how you invest your time. At this stage the best investment would seem to be your university studies !

A lot of people here have commented on the amount of time between classes. The number of contact hours tends to vary somewhat between colleges. But when I was at university most of the free time between classes I had to spend in the library or lab working on assignments !! I can't believe how many damn assignments I used to have each week !!

Another thing worth noting is that humans aren't machines, if you try and set yourself a schedule where every second is spent on productive activities you may burn out. Try and allow yourself time for socializing and recreation too !

Anyway you may be able to come up with a schedule where you can fit a little bit of japanese study in each day. Even 20 minutes would help. When school is out you can always do a bit more.

dizmox Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:so I actually ended up switching to compsci for my last year (best decision I ever made, in retrospect).

Was that in the third year then? Did you have to catch up on lots of computer science or did you go into the first year or something?

At the time the Computer Science tripos included a "Part II (General)", which was a one-year course intended for people who'd done a Part I (ie first two years) in some other subject and wanted to switch. They've since dropped this, and a quick check of the website suggests that they now suggest switching to CompSci IB (year 2) and accepting that there's a lot of catchup work to be done...

Or you can just do badly in your degree (like me) and boost your Japanese skills more quickly

Seriously though, im finding it really hard to find the motivation to study for my course as i'm at a point now (mid-2nd year) where learning japanese is so much more enjoyable in comparison. I guess it helps if you find your course material vaguely interesting.....

abdwef Wrote:(any ideas why so many CS students are studying Japanese, btw?).

I figure they did the whole
"I like videogames" --> "I want to be CS major" + "Videogames come from Japan"

That didn't work out for me. I dropped CS because it was too hard. I moved on to Aerospace Engineering.

Anyway, it's kinda difficult to comment on your situation because there's a lot that could go on. Social life, which classes are you taking, are you dorming, what's your homework like, what are you struggling with, are you managing your time well, etc.

IIRC second semester CS is when you do basic data structures, which is usually the weeder class for that major.

The one thing you have to remember with college is that there's always more time than you think you have, unless there's a final.

To play devil's advocate, have you considered changing to a different major where you would have more time to study Japanese? That way at the end of four years you could get a good job plus have mastered japanese !

Although I did CompSci / Math myself, I wouldn't recommend it. IT salaries are falling, jobs are being outsourced to cheaper countries. Even if you want to work in IT, you don't really need a compsci degree.

Here is my suggested alternative major which would be less academically demanding but still give a give a good return on investment
- Accounting + Information Systems

Most IT jobs are related to business systems, and for those jobs an understanding of accounting plus programming is all you need. Forget about needing an advanced understanding of computer architecture, operating systems, digital logic, compilers etc.

abdwef Wrote:I recall Khatz mentioning that he not only started the AJATT method during university--he actually learned his math and CS courses using Japanese versions of the textbooks.

Not all universities are created equal. Who knows which (community) college or university khatz went to and equally who knows how well he did. I'm not really trying to bash the guy by belittling his education its just that your class might be thousands of times harder than his. So don't beat yourself up over it.

MeNoSavvy Wrote:Although I did CompSci / Math myself, I wouldn't recommend it. IT salaries are falling, jobs are being outsourced to cheaper countries. Even if you want to work in IT, you don't really need a compsci degree.

"IT" is a pretty wide field these days, covering everything from tech support, sysadmin, and writing company-internal special-purpose apps as well as specialist software companies. Yes, for a lot of these jobs experience of the relevant business field plus some programming ability is sufficient. On the other hand where I work we absolutely do look for people with an understanding of computer architecture, compilers, OS basics, etc -- and they're not that easy to find. So I'd recommend CompSci to people who enjoy and are good at it, but not to people who can't do it but are trying to pick a degree subject based on salary expectations when they're done :-)

Also don't forget that khatz tends to make up stuff all the time. I seriously doubt a Japanese version of any of his textbooks even EXISTS, let alone him having used it. (if he indeed said such a thing)

I am not in school, but have a family and full-time job - I would say that you will always have conflicts and not have enough time for studies. I am sometimes too busy to even do reviews and they pile up. You have to establish a study pattern - even if it is adding a few sentences a day. Just keep it up. The habits you form will stay with you.

Looking back at my undergraduate days - I wish I had the time I had back then. Even with both a math and CS major, I still had time to play and hack.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Also don't forget that khatz tends to make up stuff all the time. I seriously doubt a Japanese version of any of his textbooks even EXISTS, let alone him having used it. (if he indeed said such a thing)

Khatz did MUSATT?!

Also, I had a Chinese textbook for one of my engineering classes. The only difference was that the cover was in Chinese, everything inside was in English. =)

I think the advice of waiting till after you get your degree isn't really good, because you're always going to be busy. Just time box Japanese, cut back on whatever else you waist your time on and work with it. It's very doable, you just need to get really really organized.

If you do a double major... it's gonna be kinda hard. I was doing a double major in Physics/CS for the past 2.5 years and I ended up dropping the CS. To be honest, a double major; while it looks good, I don't think it's worth the trouble. It hurts your GPA but more importantly; it hurts your free time which you can spend making yourself more well rounded (if you spend your time well by, for example, learning Japanese). In my case, while I dropped the CS major I still take CS classes in the things that interest me. I don't need to worrying about fulfilling graduation requirements or any of that funny stuff.

PS: Obviously, I'm a little biased because I'm justifying my own decisions.