Day by Day

Learning Chinese is going to take very long time.

Now that the term is getting closer and closer to it's conclusion, I'm starting to realize just how big a task it is. I thought I understood before, but I had no idea. With English as a first language, Chinese isn't just something I can study for a few years in college and then expect to be fluent in. Progress is and always will be very slow and very tedious compared with learning a Romance language or even a phonetic one. I didn't go into this expecting to pick it up quickly, but I didn't expect it to take so long either. One day I feel great about my progress and think I could be fluent if I stay a few more months. The next day I feel like I haven't learned anything and no amount of time learning could help. It literally goes back and forth everyday, sometimes more than once day. But I say this not because I'm going to give up or because I want to belittle the value of learning Chinese. I say it because I've never been more determined to learn the language or more determined that people would benefit from learning it, and would just like to be realistic.

The fact that it's so difficult to learn makes learning it even more important. The next century will unquestionably be host to a wealth of collaboration as well as conflict between individuals and organizations in China and the U.S. It will require people who understand both societies to mediate those interactions, and those people will not be in abundance.

The reality is it can happen, but it won't happen quickly. All I can do at this point is just work as hard as I can and not evaluate myself by the standard of a Chinese person's Chinese level. Day by day, 好好学习天天向上。。。