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I hate language courses. Nothing is worse than a class with mandatory attendance, high levels of mandatory daily involvement, and success determined by wrote memorization. My experience with the Japanese language has been mostly good, but the class grinds me in the wrong way.

Note: attendance is key to success in hard courses. However, time is manageable. I miss classes when necessary. Mostly when it is necessary that I stay in bed for a few more hours instead of being worthless in class.

This brings me to my next note: involvement is good in class. It provides immediate feedback between student and teacher and both involved benefit. However, when I'm forced to go to class when I'm barely awake, my involvement is sorely lacking. I could learn the material quicker and better in my own time, so class is actually a detriment to my learning and personal health.

Also, I hate memorization. Any course that relies on pure memorization is a class that's not worth taking. That's right. Every history, literature, and most introductory biology courses are not worth taking unless your job will require that you can cite information from these courses immediately (surgeons, for instance). There is no benefit in memorizing the order of shoguns in the 14th century. If I was going to use that information, it is in some reference. History professors rarely teach how to analyze historical documents until graduate school. This is completely different from Computer Science. After your introductory programming course, no one asks you to write programs from memory on a test. You have assignments that allow you to reference material necessary to write the code. The tests and quizzes test your understanding of algorithms and abstract concepts. The concepts can be understood and applied to any programming language. Mathematics requires you to "memorize" theorems, but just memorizing them does you no good. You need to understand them to the point that you could recognize that a proof requires it, apply the theorem, and complete the argument.

However, language courses are in a difficult position. Vocabulary is the medium in which the knowledge is passed. I don't memorize. I understand. I know the forms, conjugations, and can extend them better than anyone in the class. If I get mixed up on wether kaitte means "to buy" or "to recieve" and the context can't help me distinguish between the two, I suffer. However, with a very limited selection of common vocabulary I can make complex sentences longer than most English sentences I write here.

The benefit I gain from actually understanding the language I am learning is far outweighed by the amount I suffer through vocabulary. I'm sad to admit that I probably won't complete my Japanese minor because I'm just getting sick of it. That, and I'd have to wait another year before taking the next class.