Dear legions of the faith,

It's time I preach to you once more. Today's topic? Not particularly defined. I'd estimate we'll dab into the horrifying inevitability of having to find a career, perhaps gaze somewhat into my own personal traits due to a descriptive Japanese assignment requiring just that, and anything else I think of along the way.

I can smell your excitement. Let's begin.

So it's an undeniable truth that ultimately, no matter how long you are in the education system, a requirement for complete independence will ultimately mean a self-sustaining career. Myself, and others in Tertiary education have known this. In fact, we've known this since the moment we asked our parents why they went to work ever day and got the explanation of provision. However, despite this it always seemed a far off and distant thing, that would ultimately just "fall into place". Obviously this is not the case.

Heading into University, I've had to make some calls in regards to specialising in particular fields. The benefits of majoring in Psychology are apparent: highly developed people skills and a great understanding of human behaviour, as well as advanced critical thinking and analysis skills, which lead to increased employ-ability. I enjoy learning about Psychology, but there is one flaw in my learning processes. I am completely, utterly and hopelessly, terrible at organisation. Despite my best efforts, I've still come up short with my organisation this year, causing tasks to go rushed or stay incomplete, leading to a pile up of work (much as the case has been, and is, this easter break).

This is why my minor is so much more easier for me to fulfill, and my ultimate dream job. A professional fiction author. The only professions that could possibly trump this would be an illustrator, band guitarist or games designer, but unfortunately I lack the necessary talent and patience required to master those skills. As a skill, writing, much like my skills in the German language, are completely innate - and I'm truly lucky I have any of such skills at all. However this just means I should humble myself, and put the skills to good use. I plan to try and write at least one short story a month, beginning this April. I'll hope to post the final drafts on this blog for anyone who wishes to read them and critique them. You're insight would be much appreciated.

However, I'm too frightened to completely devote my time to this skill, as I have a constant fear of under achieving, and to place my complete financial dependency on fiction writing would be a very poor decision, completely ignoring a thorough risk assessment. This means I must still push for Psychology, and at the very least, complete my Arts Degree with a major in the subject, and see where I go from there. The alluring 300k salary of an Organisation Psychologist is tempting, but it remains to be seen whether or not I have the talent and passion for the subject matter, as well as the ability to obtain the skills from my tutelage.

The drawn conclusion? Treat my major as a completely accademic pursuit, and try to acheive the best I can. However at the same time treat my minor in more of the light of a hobby, and pursue it with more passion than the former. This is naturally going to be quite difficult, but it should allow for the latter's work to fall more into leisure time, and therefore be less straining than if I treated it more academically. I intend to read David Lodge'sThe Art of Fiction, and employ some of the techniques he describes into my own work.

Moving on to the second topic of this blog's agenda, I've been set an assignment for Japanese 1, worth approximately 6% of my unit mark (why such a strange interger- I don't know). The task reads as follows, "Compose a self-introduction/profile in Japanese (15-20 sentences), using the language you have learned in weeks 1-5. The profile should include at least 3 adjectives". These sentences must naturally be handwritten in hiragana, but that will not be what causes the most difficulty. In truth, I've been struggling with Japanese, I won't lie. Primarily because of the incredibly difficulty of learning two alphabets in 5 weeks, guzzling pressure time I need to actually learn vocabularly and grammar. Still, this task will hopefully not be too challenging. It's due in on Monday, so I thought today (Friday), would be a good time to start.

However I need 15-20 sentences to describe myself with. So here's a few:

1. My name is Scott. わたし　は　スコット　です。
2. I'm a Monash University student.　モナシュ　だいがく　の　がくせい　です。
3. My major is Psychology.　せんこう　は　しんりがく　です。
4. I'm 18 years old.　じゅうはさい　です。
5. I'm young. わかい　です。
6. My birthmonth is November.　
7. I live in Ferntree Gully.　しゅっしん　フェルンツレグリ　の　です。
8. I'm Australian.　オストラリアじん　です。
9. I'm a first year student.　いちねんさい　です。
10. I'm quiet.　しずかな　です。
11. I'm thin.　らすい　です。
12. My girlfriend's name is Kim.　わたし　の　かのじょ　の　なまえ　キム　です。

Yeah, so good luck to myself.

Happy living!