The U-turn
nekosasu | February 13, 2009 | 3:39 amFollowing up on my last entry and comments, I am finally reaching a decision.
Once again I am sorry to litter up the aniblogosphere with my own personal problems, I initially tried to make it a relevant topic but now it’s just being a general annoyance. Saying that this would be the last post where I expose my real situation and feelings would most likely be a lie, because I have yet so much to say about life and stuff. Perhaps I should open a side blog or something, I don’t know.
Well, I did not have dinner, I fell asleep at 8 PM and woke up at 1 AM because my roommate, as friendly as he is, does lead quite an active night life and enters&exits the room multiple times until late in the morning (probably because of his local girlfriend or whatever).
Anyway, I cannot handle this pressure anymore. Thus I decided I am not cut out to live here. As of now, my mind is pretty much made up, and with a certainty of 99%, I say that I will quit studying at Ca’ Foscari, Venice. There is virtually nothing that can convince me to stay now. It is quite sad that I wasted so much time and money into this project, but I realized that I was pushing my ambitions a little too far, and now I am taking responsibility for it by withdrawing from this place as long as I haven’t lost too much money.
Certainly, this must look pretty pathetic, and irresponsible. Even though it was my future, I think I did not approach the matter with the needed seriousness; I was chasing a dream, an utopia, triggered by something that is just a mere hobby. Trying to do two semesters at once in unknown grounds was very risky, but I always thought I was able to handle it all easily. I really wonder where all of my motivation has gone – even now, I wonder why, and how it had to come to this.
I launched the huge fanfare, partly to boost my own ego, partly to pursue my dream “of studies relevant to my interests in a city relevant to my interests”, and partly to try to impress some people and increase my popularity- but now it’s pretty much backfiring. Many people on- and offline will say “yappari”, “after all, he is just all talk”, I will have disappointed and saddened most people, and what-not. It would be pretentious to say I don’t care about what people say, but all I know is that the most disappointed and mortified one is I, myself. I hate self-pity, but I cannot help but feel regret and cry over that spilled milk, very expensive milk.
The reason I talked with my mother yesterday was not only because I sought advice, but also because I felt so guilty of wasting her time and money, deceiving her about my goals and intents, and abusing of the trust she had in me. So many compromises, so many investments (laptop, plane tickets, car drives, clothing, etc), all for naught. If at least we were better off in life, all of this would have mattered much less. But sadly, despite the appearances, money is a rare commodity even for us. I thought I knew the value of money, and tossed it nonchalantly out of the window on many occasions last year. My mum never really talked much about it, but I know that the costs here are very heavy on her, and that she needs to adapt her already spare living style even further in order to keep going. Shit, had she not forgotten to pull the hand brake a few months ago… it would be less painful. But this is going pretty much off-topic.
Beyond the financial aspect, there is also the aspect of having lost one year of precious lifetime doing close to nothing. Had I used my brain objectively one year ago, I would have simply applied to UCAS after my refused Japan scholarship and then continued English as did almost all of my classmates back then. But instead, I decided to be lazy, to await the end of the academic year to start looking where to go next. (I remember I wanted to go to the US back then, hell, how stupid.) I wasted my time at home, irresponsibly trying to follow a path I took much too lightly. One year of studies, of socializing possibilities, of living my youth. Gone.
But despite the utmost negative impact this decision has had on me and my surroundings, truth be told, it will not be useless. For one, I will have matured, a lot – even though this is probably the worst and most painful way to experience it, I will have drawn many, many lessons out of my mistakes, and, as Will said in my last post, set a prime example for everyone NOT to follow.
For one, I finally have set myself a realistic goal, which would be to continue my English studies from last year in the UK. At least that year would not go to waste as well then. As I had also said in my last comment, career opportunities are much wider with an English BA than with a Japanology BA. Besides, after my BA I could continue studying English to become a teacher, or even consider going one year to Japan by then. There I go again with my future that resembles more a fictional story of GTO stock, but I believe that right now that perspective would more probable than what I had in mind up until now anyway.
In effect, I am most comfortable with the English language as well, and I want to progress and hone that skill further now. If I can’t communicate with people in Italian, at least I want to do so in perfectly structured English. (Don’t know if this is meant as a joke or not, can’t really laugh at the moment.)
About the general costs like tuition fees and living costs, they will certainly be much higher in the UK than they are here. Enrolling fees are three time as high, and lodging should be more expensive there as well – although, if you compare it with what I have here right now, I suppose it would be the same price/quality range. I will need to rely on a grant from my State, and surely even apply for a student loan (which I never considered before coming to Venice in the first place). I might probably feel the lack of money even worse there – but at least that money will be put to good and productive use for a realistic goal, and once I graduate, find a job and start earning money myself, I will be able to repay it.
Anyway. Tomorrow, I shall go to the International Students Office of Ca’ Foscari, and already announce my leave, while asking if there is any way left I could obtain a partial refund of my enrollment fees- although odds do seem pretty low. But I’d still like to try and perhaps ridicule myself even further with such outrageous demands.
Once I make sure I am no longer enrolled here, I will book my plane tickets home, probably for Sunday or Monday. I most likely will have to return once next week because of my baggage, but I’d rather pay less for two plane tickets and waste two or three days on the road than paying another 150 euros to RyanAir for excess baggage.
Tomorrow as well, I will fill in the online enrollment form for another term at uni.lu again. I asked my teacher if I still could redo the English course. Why, you ask, well… Last year, I already passed my first year with enough ECTS points, so after that I would have had to go to the UK to continue those studies. Now, since I did not go to the UK, and while waiting for Ca’ Foscari enrollment, I signed up once again to English here at uni.lu, with the pretense that I would be catching up on the courses I had missed out on in the first semester last year. Apparently it worked, but I barely did not attend any of those classes after I was sure to be enrolled at Ca’ Foscari. So now, before venturing a refusal because of my poor performance last semester, I’d rather have a confirmation from the head teacher from the English Department that I can still enroll, and prepare myself accordingly for my studies in the UK. In case I should not be allowed to redo English, I might enroll for a semester of French, or whatever. Anything to keep my brain active for the next few months.
Finally, tomorrow I would also start writing my Personal Statement for the UCAS application to the five university I have chosen. I will need to type up to 4000 characters with info about myself and my motivations and ambitions. Knowing myself, I will definitely exceed that limitation, and need to be concise for once.
…I sigh. Here I am, curmudgeon, disgruntled, heart-broken, but most importantly, tired. I think I have fever. I don’t really know what more to say to save my face, mistakes are so easily made in one’s youth but this is quite shameful. I know of many people who went abroad to pursue their desired studies, then gave up their studies for something better too. I should perhaps ask them how they coped with the situation. Maybe they’ll just tell me that they had enough money so it didn’t really matter to them?
In any case, this is a real dream that I am about to end, I cannot say I enjoyed it while it lasted but at least I tried. In the end, it will have been nothing but “expensive holidays”, as my mum told me.
I am extremely thankful to everyone who cared for their heartwarming support and their kind words they have provided me, it was a great moral support in these difficult times.
Once again, I am so sorry to have worried those who cared for me, to have disappointed those who believed in me, to have wasted the time of those who don’t care at all about this.
I may add further comments and replies to your comments, of whatever nature they might be.
English is insane! Though, if you can do the 1 year GTO, do it… unfortunately, my past days don’t allow me such liberties [at least not in the US]… so it’s a dream I can likely never fulfill :(
I don’t think it was wrong to turn back, but make sure to give your mother a large hug every day for the entire year ^^ If you want to study Japanology, why not head to the West Coast of US or Canada (Vancouver)? Hawai’i has some good stuff as well, but it’s extremely expensive.
Anyway, I hope you have an enjoyable trip back home… good for some directional reflection. There is usually always tomorrow.
Sorry to hear about that, but l agree with Ryan that if you feel that strongly about it then turning back is probably the right thing to do. Take it easy for now and you’ll be back and on your feet in no time.
Oh, don’t be sorry! Making mistakes is not something to be ashamed of.
Many among us strive to be creatures of perfection, but that’s simply impossible. It’s impossible because there are times when we need to make mistakes. To experiment.
Scientific process, as it is. To make a blind assumption based on our own biases and what we know. Perform an experiment to prove the assumption, then observe and report what really happens.
By the same process, everything is a “theory”. Nothing’s completely absolute. The physics major’s golden rule, string theory, and many other studies built on shaky foundations might all be a house of cards. To be completely blown away and thrown in the wastebasket by some future discovery.
Hey, did you hear any of those economic theories about the strength of free market capitalism? HAH! Glad my dad didn’t live to see that all he learned in Law School was a bunch of hooey.
So let me leave you with this, then. You may look at this as an expensive vacation, but I see more to it. You saw a slice of the world for what it really was. You came to realize where your real priorities should lie. You have a plan. A PLAN! That’s something few people are able to piece together when they’re down in the dumps.
Oh, and don’t get too hung up about the money thing. Money… in excess, it truly warps people. While there’s some wealthy, charitable folks out there, I find that most rich kids grow up to be man-children. Old folks without any sense of what it’s truly like to live, of what qualities really should be appreciated.
“I’d rather trust a countryman than a townman,
You can judge by his eyes, take a look if you can,
He’ll smile through his guard,
Survival trains hard.”
(Yes, I love Peter Gabriel just a little too much. “The Chamber of 32 Doors” really is a marvelous song…)
Also, it’s perfectly natural to think MY GOD I’M 21 MY LIFE IS PASSING ME BY, but it’s one of those silly obstacles that you shouldn’t get too hung up on. You’ve accomplished plenty thus far.
Take it from a person that dropped out of public school due to family circumstances and had to hoof it with home schooling. What you do now doesn’t matter as much as you’d think. Oh, it’s important, but… it’s not like everything has to be perfect.
You’re YOUNG, dammit! You’re supposed to do these things before you’re old so you can get them out of your system! ; )
Nicholas: Very interesting way of putting it, thank you so much for your comforting and encouraging words. It’s true that, despite all the worries it has and still will cause me, I will be taking this mishap as a valuable (albeit expensive) piece of life experience.
About the money aspect, well, sure, I would not want to be filthy rich, I know that it would spoil my life, but I would like to at least have enough reserves to withstand such throwbacks and keep evolving. Since I do come from a rather modest background (immigrant parents with no education), any wasted money hurts a lot, especially if it reaches the magnitude of 1000 Euro and above like in this case. It does indeed leave a rather huge dent in our savings. That money would definitely have been put to good use for my future studies if it had still been there. But oh well, what’s done is done, I hope I learnt my lesson. I’m sure I’ll soon find a 500 Euro bank note on the street. Or win the Jackpot in the lotto. Haha.
TJ, RyanA: Thank you guys for your support, I’m sure I will soon recover from this event, perhaps stronger and more motivated than ever. Actually, Ryan, before going to Venice, I already had considered going to the US to study either English, Japanese, or both. California sounded quite interesting back then, too. I even had gone to the US embassy to gather relevant information about enrollment procedures, visas, and what-not (btw, lol @ their tight security there). But I realized that enrollment fees were quite horrendous, as well as all the other expenses concerning traveling to US and living in Cali. I quickly gave up that idea. Hmm… now that I think of it, back then, my university had an agreement with the Miami University… in Ohio, but a friend of mine who had been there for a year said it was not really all that great, and still expensive despite the scholarship.
—
So, today, I went to the university pretty early in the morning to get it over with as quickly as possible. But, being redirected from office to office, always being forced to join the new, endless queues, it took me almost three hours to finally be able to formulate my wish. I filled out all the forms, and could already have handed them over, but I needed a stamp of 14,62 Euros from the closest tobacco shop to complete the request. Of course, with the usual Italian bureaucracy, the queues did not vanish at all, and since offices would close anyway, I decided I should return on Tuesday (they don’t open on Mondays, nooo) and finish it once and for all. I will get back my secondary school diploma, and be gone from here.
Oh and of course, I will get no refund whatsoever from my ~800 Euros enrollment fee, even if I did not take any courses at all. Well isn’t that just easy money, I certainly paid someone’s salary in there! Ah well, I’m joking, it was quite ridiculous to think there was a refund policy in the first place anyway. (But they could have mentioned it somewhere, like on the enrollment form for my university, “once the money has been transferred, no refund will be possible”)
For some reason now though, I feel as if a heavy boulder just got lifted off my shoulders. I’m not really sure why, but the noise in my head is now gone, and the fever from yesterday almost disappeared. And as I walk through the now familiar streets of Giudecca, Zattere, and up to the university, I finally find the Venice of my dreams back. Now that I know I will be gone in a few days, I relearn to appreciate these surroundings. Sitting in the waterbus station, seeing the sunlight reflections on the surface of the water, watching the boats come and go, observing the people, young and old, living their life as usual here… yes, I probably should just have remained a tourist here.
Either way, I just filled out the online enrolment form for uni.lu, I will be doing yet another semester of English here. I will attend all the courses regularly, so I can get back in shape and prepare myself accordingly to my university career in the UK. However, In order to avoid redundancy with what I already completed one year ago, I will only be taking the exams I did not take back then. It’s pretty facultative, but that’s what makes most sense.
(This is also the compromise I made with my mum, because she thinks she is not strict enough with me and keeps blaming herself for my misfortune here; so now she’s forcing me to do some serious work at uni. Can’t blame her for guilting out like that, although in effect, it’s I and I alone who has to decide everything for myself.)
And what will I do until Wednesday now? Well… I don’t know. Take a stroll, wander around all day long with my camera in hand, like the tourist I have reverted back to? Oh, I forgot.
Carnival is starting tomorrow, so I might actually enjoy the beginning of the celebrations while I’m still here! Should make the best of this trip now.
Okay, I suppose that should be all from my angsty self. Once again, I am very grateful to everyone who put up with my endless walls of text and offered their support in this tumultuous period of my life.
I am pretty tired now, slept from 8 till midnight yesterday, and then talked with my roommate all night long, been awake ever since. I suppose I could take a small nap now. (Poor guy, hasn’t slept in 30 hours and he’s being dragged to the Airport by his girlfriend to pick up her father.)
By the way, I could download Toradora 19 this evening. I should dissipate this morose atmosphere on this aniblog and restore it to business as usual. (That’s right, facker, you’ve been slacking off quite a lot lately. Get thee to do some work, bastage! -natsuneko)
Looks like you are getting back on the right track already. Glad to hear that. Yeah, some ToraDora should take your mind off of things, although episode 19 isn’t one of those cheery episodes (it’s still very entertaining though).
By the way, thank you for adding my site to your blogroll.
So, you’ve made your decision! Great! Because it’s always great when things are decided, rather than leaving them hanging from the ceiling. This experience of yours made a hit on me too: I was always saying how you inspired me and how I wanted to do the same. Now after this, somehow I still want to do this, even more than before; I want to outlive your legacy, and making your dream of “studying something relevant to my interests in a city relevant to my interests” true. Of course, somehow it has something to do with my brother too: from September, he’s going to Japan as an exchange student, and with knowledge of the language. Just like him, I want to go somewhere as an exchange student. The goal was Japan for me too, but as I can’t eat any Japanese food, it seemed that dream of mine is done for. Then came you! So I decided, and now I learnt from your experience: I’ll go there. As an exchange student, and with the knowledge of the language.
Of course, this is just me talking, I didn’t even made it to college yet, and in my country it’s extremely hard to get to one (almost like in Japan). At least, if I get there, it’ll be free.
And I still have a language (English) to perfect before I start another one.
@TJ: You’re welcome. I still haven’t watched TD 19 though, as predicted I napped pretty early yesterday. My roommate woke me up at 9 pm to bring me a few slices of pizza, which I quickly gobbled up before going back to sleep. Could’ve watched this morning though, but I spent more time playing Disgaea DS and browsing internet than anything. Later today I hope ^^;
@Will: That’s great, and I wish you good luck in any of your plans, whatever they might be. May you find more fulfillment in this project than I have.
(Quick note, taking part in an exchange project (mostly ERASMUS in Europe) usually comes with grants and/or scholarships, and should not last longer than one year (6 months for most), so the conditions are much different from mine now. But who knows, maybe I would actually have enjoyed this experience, had I been an exchange student and not an independent one?)
If the University really uses Italian to teach, and they didn’t tell you…bah. Or maybe, there was a lack of preparation. Learn from the mistakes and grow. I hope my Beijing studies goes well.
I might be in the UK 2009-2010.
TD19 is a turning point – and the events were exactly as spoilered by my best friend reading novel summaries.
X10A: Some courses are in Italian, but that is not stated on the International part of the website. Typical Italian bureaucracy, mixed with my lack of interest trying to browse further on the Italian part of the website. Actually, now that I analyze the way they approached my case of wanting to resign, that most foreigners are exchange students (and that part is pretty much well-updated too) so they don’t really pay that much attention about the rest.
Anyway good luck to you in Beijing!
And I raged about TD 19, more about it in the next post ^^
First… I envy your writing skills.
When I write like that, my friends would say, “Paul, you’re so funny when you’re emo.” Anyways, back to you. First, a mistake is a wrong way to think of it. At our point of life, we should be trying out different avenues of life. Since that’s what you did, it’s perfectly fine in the grand scheme of things. It’s actually great you made the decision, in your mind it may be too late, but in contrast it was correct. There are other things in life that would require this, whether to find, stay, move on from a girl/family/friends/major (career paths)/job, etc.
Though now that you have done it, you can now say, you can now say,”Hey, I tried it and it didn’t work.” That is actually better than saying, man I wish I just tried (it)…
Money thoughts are normal. People who say, “Money can’t buy you happiness”…don’t have money. Though you can use that motivation and turn it to positive energy to do something about it.
BTW, I had to quit Santa Clara University before starting any classes. I requested for more financial aid, got declined and decided getting a bachelor and a $100,000 USD student loan on my record, wouldn’t be the brightest of future, even though it would be from one of the possible nice private universities. Though I did get my $400 deposit back. (Funny, I would end up going to that school almost 6 days a week…not as a student but as a mailman…delivering and picking up mail in the school’s little student post office right around the girls-only dorm) Also at the time, I decided to change majors as I didn’t like the votality of being a Computer Scientist…Programmer.
So…Life is like a river, it always flows forward. Your current path isn’t a straight one, so it is not a U-turn but a slight diversion around a hard spot.
Last, you’re way younger than me xD You visited more places than I can dream of, have a brain that can absorb different languages and have a 2+ year old blog. Last thing…I wish I had the opportunity to study aboard. Since, school is vacation. Vacation is when you don’t have to go to work.