Motivation gone missing

My mind is everywhere but where it should be

We are having mid-term exams this week at Suzhou uni. Although to me it only means 2 exams (in listening and writing) because in our other courses we have exams after every 3/5 chapters (I prefer that one! Even though it means that we are always having some sort of exam).

This semester has probably been the most boring one I’ve done this far, and the one to blame for that is no one but myself. I’ve lost most of my ‘studying Chinese motivation’ –don’t ask me why, I just have, and that makes going to class quite dull. For the last few months I feel as if I haven’t learned anything new. Of course I have, although it really feels as if my learning curve has slowed down/stopped and even gone downwards a bit. I guess it’s always like this when learning a new language though… first you feel like you are learning a lot, then you are not getting anywhere for a while until it kick-starts again. So it's all normal. Still, I would lie if I said it doesn't bothers me.

My radio is working like a champ although it feels as if it’s impossible to find a radio channel that actually plays music here in China. It’s just "blab la blab la blab la bla…." Talk, talk, talk. Constantly, non-stop. Well, actually, it’s good, because that’s what I need to practice on listening to, but in the long run it would be nice with some music breaks to make the listening experience a little bit more enjoyable. What I do now is turn the radio off every 10 minutes to give my bleeding ears a break.

Yesterday we had a test-HSK-listening exam and I was surprised of how well I did! It’s funny at these tests. You are sitting there, listening, filling in the answers, thinking to yourself that ‘bloody hell, I know nothing!’ and then when you go through the answers with the teacher you realize that you have scored something like 80% (which is more than enough for me to be happy about!). So basically you DO know most of the stuff, although you think you don’t? Ah… well, at least better than not knowing at all!

I was surprised of how rude one of the Ou-Mei (western) student in my HSK class was yesterday. After our listening test, which we all did OK at, the teacher said that she felt very happy that we all had improved our listening skills. Then the one guy goes:

-Well, the fact that we have improved our skills have got nothing to do with you!

And the teacher was just like….:

-Ehhh, no… well.. I just said I feel happy for you guys. Seeing that I am your listening teacher and care about your listening progress.

(I guess he’s one of those who might not have improved seeing he seems so sour about it).

The next HSK test is on June 21 and this time I am not going to forget about signing up. But motivation, oh, where art thou!?! I wouldn’t mind feeling a little bit more happy about learning Chinese at the moment, and not as if it was ‘something I have to get over with.’

Now, off to an essay writing exam. My favorite. Not. Whoever invented electronic dictionaries is a genius.