but oh well. Here it is again....
1. Write thesis
2. Finish MA
5. Get a job
21. Start saving for retirement
22. Take a stock market course or read a book about it and get more involved in your stocks
43. Keep track of finances better- make a detailed list of spending once a month
52. Pass Level 1 of the JLPT
63. Pay off as much of my student loan debt as possible (depending on job situation)
89. Go to a career counseling session
This category is kind of like my "big girl"/"time to grow up" category. I'll admit to having spent the last 4 or more years panicking about the future without actually doing anything about it. Just because I haven't figured out exactly what job I want to do yet doesn't mean I shouldn't have been browsing to see what's out there. As usual, however, I've put everything off until the last minute (I work better that way...or something). There are plenty of resources for job hunting, but I'm usually such a loner (=am really stubborn and have to do everything without help) that I haven't really consulted them, which I realize is rather stupid of me. Thus the "go to career counseling session" goal.
The same goes for my thesis...I've spent the last year and a half having it on a panicky loop in the back of my head without just pressing forward and seeing where it goes. Luckily I've ended up in some really random courses and hanging around with some fantastic people who have really shaped my grad school experience and helped me move toward a more defined goal. So what if I do it all this semester....it'll just be like one really huge final paper (that I characteristically left until the last minute to do).
So, I guess that the "graduate" and "get a job" goals are pretty clear, and really, I don't have much choice in the matter. The same goes for some of the financial ones, like paying off my loans. The money issue has been part of the stress of going to grad school and I'd like to get on my own two feet and pay off my debt as soon as I can. I do keep a rough running total of my spending in my head, but I think it might help me more to keep a really detailed summary and set stricter limits for myself (especially since my parents got me software to do exactly that, and I've just gotten lazy about using it........whoops).
Retirement savings and the stock market are things that I know I should have started already, but again, in typical fashion, I've put them off (probably until some unforeseen emergency/other event makes me do them), so I'd like to give myself a little kick in the ass and get going on them. I have some mutual funds but I've been really uninvolved in them, and I'd like to change that. Of course, these two goals sort of depend on me having a source of income, but hopefully that will work itself out. ;p
The JLPT goal doesn't quite fit with the others, but it seemed to go in this category better than any of the others (except maybe Personal?). The JLPT is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test used to evaluate non-native speakers of Japanese. There are four levels, with 1 being the hardest and 4 the easiest. I took Level 2 in December, but I hadn't studied at all because of time constraints, and I feel like I could've done a lot better. Who knows if the JLPT score will be relevant to future jobs or not...this one is more on here for me to prove to myself that I can pass the toughest level.
Japanese has been the hardest language I've studied (along with French, Spanish, German and Arabic) and I've constantly hit plateaus and struggled to get anywhere with it. It is incredibly frustrating to still not be able to say exactly what I want to say 5 years later. I don't know what it is about this language that has been so hard for me--language learning has always come pretty easily for me and it's something I've always enjoyed. I guess my innate stubborness won't let me rest until I've gotten to a level of Japanese that I'm satisfied with. ;p
Anyway, that's it for the first category. That was probably way more than anyone wanted to read about it, too.....
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