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September, 2019: Low hanging fruits and Deep Dives (Koga S.)

September, 2019: Low hanging fruits and Deep Dives (Koga S.)

Koga Suzuki

              It’s been a month and a half since I came here at North Central College. In this report, let me share a couple of reasons why I decided to come here and some experiences so far.

              I’m quite sure some of you guys have a hunch that my English is hands down up to snuff already. However, I’ll come clean and admit that actually I was just scratching the surface before I came here. In other words, I was studying for the sake of studying with no clear goals. I used to utilize online conversation lesson when I was in Japan because I could ensure to have 25 minutes lesson every day for such low costs like $50 per month. Having said that, I was fed up with my English in that the number of vocabularies which I could come up with instantaneously in conversation was quite limited, and pronunciation sucked as well despite it’s 101 of communication. As you can tell by above information, I just needed to get more exposure to English. At the same time, I didn’t want to be a vanilla person, I mean I found it incredibly mind-numbing to do the same things as other students. This is why I made a call about taking advantage of this kind of opportunity. By the way, do I need to wordsmith this report a bit? Anyway, let’ move on.

              I’m taking three classes in this semester, ESL which stands for English as a Second Language, Writing, and The Science of Climate Change. Let me do a deep dive into the science class. I expected it was a kind of low-hanging fruit, but the reality was it’s totally tough one. Sometimes it’s one ear, out the other as the professor speaks with so much expertise, slangs, and gibberish which a lot of them are unheard of to me. The other day, I really dropped the ball on the quiz, it was a bit of a downer. Hindsight is 20/20, but I should have knuckled down to prep for it. That indicates I have to dig deep to get decent score on the next one. I’ve got to get the necessary credits by hook or by crook. Otherwise, I’m going to get kicked out of America. Yes, I can do it. Knock on wood.

              In my downtime, I pretty much have a chat with friends or study at the library which is one of my go-to places. In general, lots of students go to the party and drink if they’re not under 21. In my case, drinking is not my cup of tea and I’m not a party animal, so I basically stay in the campus even on Friday night. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I get a real kick out of studying English.

              I’m basically slammed with a lot of stuff every day, but I have to bite the bullet and stick it out as a representative of Iwate Uni.

              As an FYI, I don’t have good pictures so far since I don’t often take them.