Goals for 2019

Here we are, almost 3 weeks into the new year, and I’m just now getting around to posting my goals for the rest of the upcoming year. I’m finally emerging from the stressful, procrastination-driven thesis-writing vortex that I’ve been in for the past month (although it’s not quite over yet), and I can finally start focusing more on other things, like my language learning goals for the upcoming year.

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The Sudden Death of Dramafever – The Biggest Disappointment of 2018

I posted a few days ago about my biggest highlight from 2018, and that showcased the academic nerdiness that makes up a big part of my personality. Today, on the other hand, I discuss the biggest disappointment of 2018, and it has nothing at all to do with my academically nerdy self. Instead, it has everything to do with the hopeless romantic in me that loves the extremely cheesy and full-of-ridiculous-tropes phenomenon commonly referred to as a K-drama.

The Biggest Highlight of 2018

2018’s been a crazy roller coaster year for me, but throughout it all I managed to learn a bit of Korean along the way. I thought I’d try something new this year and post about the biggest highlight and the biggest disappointment of 2018.

Progress Report: 2018 in Review

What a year!  It’s hard to believe that another year has already flown by, but here we stand at the beginning of 2019.  Before I set my goals for the upcoming year, it’s time to look back at my goals for the previous year and see how I managed to do.

My First TOPIK Results!

I took the 60th TOPIK back in October, and it was quite the experience.  I didn’t really spend very much time preparing (or really any time at all), so I walked into the test quite unprepared.

I tried to make up for this failure to prepare by telling myself that this would give me a more realistic picture of my current Korean ability, instead of an inflated score due to last-second cramming.  As it turns out, it was very stupid to be unprepared, at least in one particular subject: the rules of the test itself.

My First TOPIK Experience

Three weeks ago, I finally fulfilled a long-time dream of mine — I took the TOPIK (the Test of Proficiency in Korean).  And even though this post is a little delayed, I still wanted to share all the details about my TOPIK preparations and test experience.

Korean Speaking Encounters — My New Part Time Job

For as long as I’ve been learning Korean, I’ve had the goal of improving my Korean speaking skills.  Unfortunately, even though I’ve made a considerable number of Korean friends and hang out with them pretty much every day, I’ve fallen into the dreadful habit of speaking 95% English to them and only rarely throwing a few Korean phrases into the mix.  The main reason for this is that I’m shy by nature and I’m terrified of making mistakes in front of them.  I realize it’s silly to be anxious and embarrassed of making mistakes in front of my friends, especially since they make mistakes in English all the time and it’s no big deal, but what can I say?  It’s just an unfortunate character trait that I have to overcome.

Since I’m embarrassed in front of my friends, you can probably guess that I definitely don’t speak Korean to random strangers — at least, I didn’t use to.  That’s changed a bit in the past few weeks.