05 January 2009

A Contradiction

AKA: The Silver Lining.

An Introduction is to introduce people, but Christopher Robin and his friends, who have already been introduced to you, are now going to say Good-bye, so this is the opposite. When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an introduction was, he said "The what of a what?" which didn't help us as much as we had hoped, but luckily Owl kept his head and told us that the Opposite of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was a Contradiction; and, as he is very good at long words, I am sure that that's what it is.

- A House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne



The night before my physics midterm, back when I was in high school, I was stressed to the breaking point. Physics, along with most math-based subjects, eludes my talent for aural learning. In a wild attempt to prevent my mental collapse, I pulled A House at Pooh Corner off of my shelf and opened up to the paragraph you see at the top of this entry. That alone was enough to break my tension and, without reading much further, I happily went to sleep.

Unfortunately, my stress-breaker for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) was not so happy and kind. My friend and I, due to some confusion, took a train going in the opposite direction. By the time we had corrected the incident, we were too late to take the first part of the exam. We were told by the proctors that missing the first part of the exam would result in an automatic fail, though we could take the next two parts and get our scores for those sections.

Frustrating? Beyond belief. I was in hysterics.
Disappointing? Hell yes.
An all-together bad thing? I don't think so.

I had devoted so much time and effort to studying for this test as it approached. I told my mother the night before that I couldn't wait for the test to be over so that I could "finally be a real human being again." But why? What was the reason behind it?

When I first arrived in Japan, I decided I wanted to take the JLPT. Not wanting to stress myself out too much, I decided to not take the most basic level, level 4, a few months after I arrived and instead would take the next highest level, level 3, the following year. That was the last time I really considered whether or not I would take the JLPT.

I'm not planning on staying in Japan; even if I were, I would have to pass the 2nd or 1st level exams - the 3rd and 4th levels are fairly meaningless as far as professionals are concerned. It's amazing, then, that a test that had no real value, outside of being a manner in which to test my level of Japanese, left me in hysterics when I was told I missed the first part.

This thought occurred to me as I sat outside of the testing location, waiting for the start of the second section. And, with it, came a wave of relief. Had I taken the whole test, would the general lack of importance of it have occurred to me? Probably not. At least, not for a long time. Nor would I have been relaxed enough to tackle the next two parts as effectively as I feel I did.

While it's still unfortunate that I can't have this accomplishment under my belt, I think I've learned a better lesson about evaluating my situation. Truth be told, it's a lesson I've needed the past month. And that, friends, is the silver lining.

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