It is now week 7 in my term back at Birmingham for final year and it is quite a lot of work. Most of my classes are quite interesting and I enjoy them - such as translation and philology - but others are really quite difficult! Advanced Japanese is, well, advanced! I am having a little trouble understanding most of the classes, and there is a lot of learning of vocabulary and kanji.
French interpreting is also pretty stressful. It is interesting, but when you are given a sentence in English and have to translate it straight away into French (and vice versa) it is really tough. Often I forget what I was supposed to say so it is a little difficult! It made me think a bit about being an interpreter, which was something I considered after unviersity. I have decided it is not for me as it would be quite a high stress job. At the moment I am thinking about going into Translation, but I am still unsure.
Overall I really cannot predict how my degree will turn out. Translation either way is very difficult to grade as there is no definite right or wrong answer. Most of my studying has been just learning vocabulary and new words and trying to think of various ways to say things. It is tough but I think if I can keep it up then I will do quite well in my exams!
