There’s a significantly different feeling between a typical vacation to a foreign country and a long-term study abroad. During my 18 day romp through Europe, there was a ton of stress to get things done and see what you needed to see. Enjoying yourself seemed to take a backseat to checking off a list of everything you needed to do before you left. It requires a different kind of personality to take a week long vacation in a very vibrant place, be content to sightsee only when you feel like it, and otherwise just enjoy yourself.

Obviously, looking forward to a six-month stay, I didn’t feel that urge to get everything done. There was no ticking clock compelling to make every day count. If my plans for a weekend were ruined by rain, I would just shrug it off and try it again in one of the many upcoming weekends. No sense of urgency, no real reason to get worked up.

I don’t need to look at a calendar to tell me that the end is drawing near. I’m starting to feel antsy, I find myself more conscious of what’s taking my time and I want to make the most of what time I have left. There are no more holidays. One more full week of class, one more final exam, two more weekends. The upcoming one will be the most free, because there are things scheduled for the last weekend. So, although I’ve been able to watch weekends come and go and figure that there will be plenty more, that ends now. I don’t quite know what I want to do. I’m kind of okay without knowing that. All the weekends that I’ve truly enjoyed involved stumbling upon something that I didn’t expect. The best I can hope to do is go to some of the last places that I haven’t set foot in yet.

I’m also feeling classes wind down. Although there’s nothing relaxing about the tests that are scheduled for the remaining eight days of classes, I seem to have lost the mindset that I had early on — I’ve got six months to devote almost purely to language learning, let’s see how far I can get. The push to get to the JLPT 2 level feels more crazy as I look back on it. I can’t remember ever devoting so much of my time and energy toward a single objective. At school, where I’ve averaged 18 credits over 6 semesters, it’s always felt like I could concentrate on one subject only as much as the other classes would allow me. I wanted to devote myself to my Cinematography class, but I had history classes with demanding work loads. I wanted to succeed in my graphic design classes, but communication classes soaked up my energy until I could just sputter out a passable project. But over these two semesters, I’ve taken a total of 24 credits on one subject. I managed to get further than I expected and I feel something that I hardly ever feel: genuine satisfaction that I gave it all I had.

I’m not going to lie. It hurts to still get slapped with 69 and 70 percent grades on tests like I did today. But I need to put it in perspective. The Japanese language is significantly harder for western students. When I think about how frustrated I get about not being as good as my friend Encaron (Chinese), I think about how he’s grown up his whole life knowing the kanji. When he sees a compound in Japanese, there’s a good chance that it looks very similar to a word in Chinese. He understands words just by seeing them, and can give an educated guess on the reading (which is often accurate). I, and all my American classmates, had to learn from step one. Literally, we had to be taught that “一” means “one”, and that it is read “ichi”, except when it is read “hito” or “itsu” or “i” or “kazu” or one of eight other readings. It was a nice motivator to pretend like we were on the same level and I could get ahead by just working harder. But it’s time to come back to reality. This is a freakishly hard language for westerners to learn. Every gaijin living over here who has a working command of the language, I give complete props to. It’s a very long, steep road to walk, and the number of people who think “gee whiz, I’ll learn Japanese” is much, much larger than the number of people who can actually pass JLPT 1. I don’t care if you had the luxury of classes available to you since junior high, or a large Japanese population in your home town, or a Japanese friend you could practice with. All the Americans at KCP deserve a ton just for making it over there.

I’m not complaining. And it’s not like I’m suddenly realizing that this is a hopeless endeavor. I started learning because it seemed hard. I figured if I had one really difficult-to-acquire skill under my belt by the time I graduated from college, then I could look back and feel like I deserved some of the responsibilities and freedoms that adulthood naturally give you. I used to call it “justifying yourself.” When you hit age 22, it would be nice to say that you accomplished something. So I’m completely okay with this being difficult. It will make it that much satisfying when I can finally reach the peak of this metaphorical mountain. For now, I’ve found a nice spot to stop on the side, where I can look back at the path I just walked and appreciate the view.

So, I’ll still do everything I can to do well on the final exam. Getting out of this place with straight A’s (on the “80 and above = A” scale that KCP thankfully employs) would be a nice stat to pat myself on the back with. But for the most part, I know that this huge ordeal that was so long on the horizon is about to come to an end, I met it head on and performed as well as I could hope.

In the end, that’s what this trip was about. I know that the travelogues kept people interested, and my pictures may have been a nice touch, but in the end the point of this trip was to stop complaining about how circumstances are always less than ideal and doing what I could with the time and the resources given to me.

So I’ll take my 69 and my 70% papers home, look over my mistakes and try to learn from them, but I’ll ignore the note written next to my score. “A little bit more!” Mr. and Mrs. KCP, you’ve gotten everything I have to give.