The Quest Outside the Blog
- Sebastian Samaroo
- Apr 30, 2018
- 7 min read
After March's major update post I decided for April I won't write anything talking about the Japanese language itself. No I am not making up another excuse to lead into "Sadly, I did nothing this month again but next month I will be better," there is a legitimate reason. My Japanese learning this month was very similar to what was done last month and I don't want an entire post being basically a copy+paste but minus the interview.
This blog is dedicated to you learning Japanese, what could you possibly put that relates to this?
Uh. Well throughout this blog I make references that the reason this blog exists in the first place is because it's a grade for my English class. And in every English class (at least that I've been in) you have to explain EVERYTHING. This time, instead of an essay, I had to give a presentation regarding my quest. Now when you are first told you are to give a presentation there are two types of people: "Really? This will be a piece of cake! A+ here I come" and "Can we like... Not". Sadly, I fall in the latter category. I think I've mentioned this previously but I am a reserved person. I don't like to be at the center of attention; and in fact, I do my best to make myself invisible. I have struggled with presentations in the past mainly because I'm not able to make it interesting. However one perk about being myself is that I never have a quiet voice when talking in public. How is it possible for a shy person to do this? Well It's pretty simple. I yell when I'm nervous. I get made fun of a lot by my friends because of it but I just accept it and move on. Though for this presentation I was determined to not have my ear piercing voice be my redeeming quality. I don't know what clicked in me but I just told myself "You need to do good, you need to not bore your audience to death". So I started out on my quest within a quest.
WHOA! This sounds like intense training leading up to the big moment of success! What happens next?
I did nothing for the next week and my teacher was furious.
W... What?
I mean it wasn't only me. It was every other person in the class except one... Heh... Yeah I can't come up with a five thousand IQ excuse this time. That entire week was just a blur for me and I barely remember what happened at all in any class; so I really don't know why I didn't do it. However, after leaving class that day it hit me that there was only one week before presentations started. After about one minute of silent panicking I managed to settle myself by repeating "The weekend is here" over and over again in my head. After calming down I formulated the greatest plan to not fail: spread my work out over the course of the three free days. Albert Einstein level, I know. However, unlike Albert Einstein, I'm a retard (alright I know that was a horrible transition, but it's the best I've got). I did nothing after school that day, nor did I do anything the following day; I woke up on the last day of the weekend and I was just like "Oh yeah. Work Exists". I then proceeded to spend the entire day doing nothing but slave away at my English presentation.
That was a lot less inspiring and interesting than you originally made it seem.
Is it really that surprising? You probably have seen all my blog posts up until now which means that you've seen at least two times where I explain I do literally nothing, and then do literally everything in one day. I wouldn't call it 'procrastination' per se as it's not like I wait until the day before to do everything. It's more like I can't do work on a structured basis and I much rather prefer to do everything in one long go. I have no idea why I think like this for work because everything else in life I prefer to have shorter bursts, but done over a longer period of time. That made absolutely no sense so allow me give you some examples. If my mom were to ask me to wash the wares I would prefer to do them as they arrive (so wash a little bit, leave, come back when some are in again, etc.) rather than have it pile up and then do it all at once. Another example is in music. There are people that would tirelessly work away at learning something for days until they are able to get it perfectly; I, on the other hand, prefer to go at it for about an hour a day, every day, for months. I'm not very good at giving interesting examples so sorry about that.
Hey. Just pointing something out. You haven't talked about your actual presentation yet.
Oh yeah that's what this was meant to be about in the first place, huh? Well I've already gone on long enough so I'm not going to talk about what I said during the presentation; I'm mainly going to focus on the pictures itself, what visuals I had during the presentation. Why? Simple. Because I think it's more enjoyable to read about pictures than to read about words. As I side note I also believe that they are genuinely good, and as someone who requires positive feedback before thinking positively about the work created I think that means something. So this does not end up like my January post in length (for your sake and mine), I'm just going to break it down to my favorite three visuals used.
3.
An accurate representation of everyone else compared to me (I'm a not cool boi). I used this picture at the very end when I was trying to rush over the cliche parts like "Follow your dreams" and "Look at me, I succeeded, that means you can too!" and more sugar coated garbage like that. Don't get me wrong, I believe in those things. Failure should not be looked at as a hindrance; however, its been repeated so many times by so many people that the actual meaning of the words get watered down to a point where nobody remembers it. I believe this visual does manage to capture that aspect of 'follow your dreams' without making the audience want to kill themselves. Wait...
2.
Okay, okay, okay. I can explain. So this was used at a point when I was talking about my quest progress throughout the year. This emoji was grouped in with four others (all separate slides) that were talking about my general feelings towards Japanese. And yes. It was necessary to include the noose. If I didn't include it then I don't think my point would've gotten across on how close I was to ending it all ('it' referring to learning Japanese). It adds that effect of "If I give up here then I am never going back to this". Yes, the emoji being there adds some element of humor; but in reality, for me, it was a choice of if I should give up this thing I had wanted to do for years. I reached to my decision after imagining coming face to face with the harbinger of my English grades with no work to show.
1.
Wait? What?! She has arrived unannounced! Oh no we're all doomed! Crappy type-acting aside this is an actual image that I used in my presentation. Yes, I did get permission to make it in the first place and to implement it in my blog to talk about it. Was this image necessary? Eh, maybe not this exact variation but something relatively close to it. To explain what i was talking about in this image I first need to explain what I was talking about before this image. So as you all may know I did basically nothing for the first half of this quest (looking back on my old posts it's kind of obvious). However, I did have friends who were interested in what I was doing and would constantly ask me things like "What does this mean" and "How do you say this". I had absolutely no clue and I think the way I worded it in my presentation best describes how I felt. "At this point my brain was saying: At the end of the year it's not going to be your friends asking you this, it's going to be 'this lady' and I am willing to bet that she is not going to let you off the hook that easily." Something that I wanted to add to this picture was a speech bubble saying something along the lines of "Show me your work and I give you your grade"; It was meant to be a reference to the devil asking for their soul in the afterlife in exchange for giving them unlimited power and knowledge in the mortal world. Sadly, I couldn't think of a way to word it that I was happy with that would make sense.
Some final notes for this post...
This presentation ended up being one of the most fun presentations I've ever done and also gave me a grade that I was happy with. The next post will be my last post which is kind of sad now that I think about it. I'll never work on this blog again. At the beginning I thought it was kind of annoying but now it has actually become fun. Wait. If I talk about everything now then I won't have content for the next post (it's a reflection basically)! I'll be back soon and if you've survived reading my posts for this long then you'll be able to pull through one more... I hope. じゃあね! (So I learned that sayounara is really used as a 'farewell', if you're not seeing the person for a long time; 'jaa ne' is more like 'see you').
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