Autumn semester: Complete

Sorry for the long period of nonresponsiveness! As of this week, exams are over, results have been returned, and holidays begin!

It's been no short of hectic this semester, since the results from this semester and this semester only get sent to our prospective universities. Everyone has been studying the hardest they've been to date, and arguably, the hardest they ever will this entire academic year. There is a final winter semester left beginning in January before we graduate, but we need no more than a passing grade, regardless of which university we are aiming for next year, so I'm anticipating a lot less studying and a lot more enjoying from here. 

Exam schedule for end of semester exams

There was a weekend in the middle of our four day exam period. We were so grateful for it! - till the details of which exams took place when came out. Literally ALL of the time consuming subjects were held before the weekend, while those that took only a fraction of the effort to study for were after it. At the time, everyone was like, I don't even…!

Later I realised that the exams that take the longest for us to write, also take the longest for the teachers to mark. And all of the exams were scheduled to be marked and returned to us the day after exam period was over. Since the exams containing the most content would also take the longest time for the teachers to mark, it made sense that they were given the weekend to have more time. I can sympathise with the teachers here in Japan who operate under such high pressure.

So in continuation of recording my results for future record, and sharing them with those back in Oz:

Kanji writing/reading	99
Japanese grammar	99
Japanese reading	92
Japanese listening	100
Japanese speaking	90
Japanese composition	88
Politicoeconomics	8586
Japanese history	100
Japanese studies	90.4

Not even worth mentioning is how the marking scheme for the politicoeconomics exam has once again been altered post-exam. Should I mention that this time, he also modified the exam itself, halfway through the exam? The topics we learned about this semester were identical to those covered by Japanese high school students - or at least we would have learned them, if we'd actually been taught it properly. Why couldn't he use an established textbook to structure the syllabus and learning content instead of talking about something completely irrelevant to the handouts he gives us each lesson and then expects us to retain both the handout content and what he was talking about? This is the only exam for which I stayed up beyond my normal bedtime, three days in a row, before the exam itself. And it still ends up as my lowest scoring subject. Enough venting from previous posts, so I'll leave it here.

I might mention here that there is negligible difference in final university preferences between getting a 90 and getting a 100. The grading system used by the school here is that 90 and above equates to an "S", 80-89 is an "A", 70-79 is "B", 60-69 is "C", and below 60 is fail. So ultimately, that means the two 100 mark subjects aren't anything special, and instead, for two subjects I failed to get an S grading. According to the teachers, I lose my chances of getting into Tokyo University, since their minimum expectation is apparently an S grading for all subjects.

I'm not disappointed or anything by that, since at least most of the universities in Japan have a high standard of education. If anything, it saves me the temptation of boasting in my own ability by starting to think I did it all by myself, and forgetting God's grace and His sovereignty. I do admit that whenever I contemplated studying at TokyoU these past few months, it only ever fed into my pride, which is already a major spiritual struggle to deal with. I'd appreciate your prayers for an awareness of how I as a sinner have nothing to boast about before God, and to remember how I depend upon the grace of Christ poured out on the cross for my sin.

Sorry for my long absence from my blog, and thanks for all your prayers through that time guys :)