Resolutions 2021: Almost end of the year | Last update

Today is December 2nd, and I haven’t updated this blog since May 😅. With this in mind, we already know that the resolutions about being active in my blog already died. But… almost everything else went great, let’s dive into it!

So the year is already ending…

Continue learning Japanese and take the N4 certification test (I’ll try to skip N5 and hope for the best).

So… let’s start with some more bad news. I focused all my efforts during the summer on my last internship, so I stopped doing Japanese. Currently, I’m scared of going into Wanikani again because:

I have a lot of work to do 🙁

I hope this month to reduce those numbers, and basically, I know that this resolution died ultimately, but maybe next year (?).

Be more active in writing here my learnings, experiences, and thoughts.

So after 6 months of inactivity, I’m finally writing more stuff down here; that should count for something! But other than that, I still have a bunch of drafts that I never finished, and who knows when I’m going to do them.

I’m still planning to write more, but I’m not the most dedicated person; I need deadlines and a bit more pressure other than the non-existent one I gave myself.

Obtain my English certification (I need at least a B2 to be able to graduate from college)

Excellent news at this point, I did obtain my English certification!

One of the reasons other than my internship why I stopped studying Japanese was because I started studying for my English certification exam. When I was studying, I actually thought that I would fail that exam, I was really nervous, and all the activities I did online were more difficult than expected.

I took the Cambridge Linguaskill Certification on July 24th. When doing the exam, I think preparing myself was helpful, because when doing the exam it felt not so different from the activities I did before. In fact, my final score was terrific; I got an overall of C1 or above and just B2 in the speaking section (I knew that was my weakest section during the test).

My grades!

I have to be honest, it was a good thing I prepared myself like two weeks in advance for the exam; I was really confident about my passive skills (reading and listening), but my active skills were not ready for the exam (speaking and writing). I mainly used for practicing these two sites, and if someone ends reading this, I hope it helps them too:

These sites are not the best when grading, but they helped me understand how the exam worked, assess my abilities, and look for areas of improvement. Both use some kind of AI to grade your work, and are created by Cambridge so if you’re taking a Cambridge certification it might help.

Finish my last internship successfully at Facebook

I got a bunch of swag from Fb this year! Ironically I didn’t take any pictures, so I’m just going to leave one here:

Photo from a friend of part of the swag 🙂

Besides the swag… The best news for me was that I did, in fact, get the Full-Time Offer! My manager thought I did a fantastic job during the summer and decided I “Greatly Exceeded” expectations 🤯.

An extract from my offer – I’m going to Seattle next year!!

Finish college (I expected to graduate in December 2021!)

This was my last semester; from August to December, I took my last three courses, and I just got my final grade. I’m graduating finally! 🎓

My final GPA will be around 98/100, this helped me obtain a full scholarship for a masters program in my university. Still, sadly, I will not be taking this opportunity because the scholarship is conditioned only for research programs requiring a full-time commitment and to be in person. Currently, I’m focused on starting working next year.

Maybe in the future, if I’m interested, I’ll look for a masters program, perhaps even in the U.S. or some other country that has the program that interests me.

What’s next?

The year is ending, my graduation is on December 15th, so I think I’ll go to my graduation ceremony. And I hope to start crunching those numbers in Wanikani to focus more on my language studies next year.

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