My Last Meeting With Joe # 6

This past week marked my last meeting with Joe. It is sad to think that our meetings have come to an end. I really had no idea that this assignment would have the impact that it did. At first I was assigned a different partner to meet with, but as so many of us have experienced, the communication was not working. I had doubts that this assignment would work out for me even though I was putting in a lot of effort to meet with my partner. Thankfully Dr. Williams and the IEP coordinator were able to help me get set up with another partner. Joe happened to come to TCU in early October, right around the time when I was struggling to communicate with my past partner. The pairing with Joe worked out so well. I am sad that Joe will not be here next semester because it would have been nice to catch up with him during the year. The good news is that Joe and I are Facebook friends so I will be able to talk to him and see how he is doing all the way in Japan!

At our last meeting Joe and I discussed where each of us was heading in the coming year. I discovered that Joe is moving a long a lot quicker than I expected. He only has a few months left at his university in Japan before he graduates in April. After graduation he already has work set up at a company where he lives. It seems so strange that he already has so much figured out. I explained to Joe that I have a lot of goals and aspirations about my future but they seem so far away at this point in my life. I told Joe about my plans for graduate school and the spiraled us into a conversation about differences in universities here in the United States and Universities in Japan. I know I have briefly discussed this in one of my previous blogs but I really want to explain how important I this aspect of our conversation was. I never thought about what it would be like to go to school in a completely different country. I know a lot of people study abroad but still they are mostly focused on their majors and are just exploring it in a different culture. What I mean by this is even though people go abroad to schools in different countries, most of the time they are focusing on what their major is here at TCU or just taking credits to satisfy the core. What Joe and the other IEP students do is so much different than that experience. Joe left Japan to fully immerse himself in American culture and learn the language and its components. I am not saying that Americans who study abroad don’t dive into another culture but rather they aren’t really taking an intensive approach. Joe and the other IEP students dedicate Monday through Friday 8am to 1pm on learning the English language and all of its components. I have high respect and appreciation for what they do for I know it must be so much more difficult than what I do at TCU even though I consider what I do challenging a lot of the time. Because I am a Speech-language Pathology major I have learned a lot about the acquisition of learning a language. There is something known as the Critical Age Hypothesis which essentially states that we are biologically better able to learn language before we reach a certain (before puberty) and after that critical period has passed learning language because increasingly difficult. I guess this makes sense when I look back and realize I took four years of French in high school and can pretty much only say bonjour and au revoir. Any way, back to Joe, given this information about learning language I find it fascinating how dedicated he is to learning English. I know that there are people all over the world who learn languages at later ages but it is scientifically proven to be a challenging task. The idea that Joe and the IEP students give up everything familiar to them to learn a whole new way of life is amazing to me. I think that Joe is so smart and it really has been a rewarding experience getting to know him.

Joe always tells me that he thinks I am a genius and am really smart which always brings a smile to my face. When he was given the assignment he was told that he would be meeting with an honors student to speak in English with a native speaker. I guess the honors thing makes him thing I am a genius but hey I like the complement. I would say that Joe and I have formed a friendship through this experience and I am very appreciative for that. I had no idea how much both Joe and I would benefit from talking to each other but it clearly has. Talking with Joe has been so funny, awkward and all together rewarding. I feel like this experience has allowed me to gain a global perspective of humor and another culture which is far beyond what I expected to get. Even though there are challenges with this assignment in terms of communication I believe it should continue to be a part of this class!