Pensieve
This weekend it's Summer Sonic in Osaka. I wanted to go, but it is way too expensive. So instead I'm sitting at home.
The exams are over, I was told I should be happy about that, but it's really not much of a relief. We don't get the results until late September, thanks to the great Japanese system. Before you ask, no, there is no way they'd make an exception for me. No exceptions.
I can't plan ahead without knowing for sure that I hadn't in fact managed to scrape a degree. It will be cruel after two years of university at home followed by a year of Japanese studies and five and a half in Kobe to go home empty handed. Realistically though that is what's going to happen.
I find it quite ironic how I was thought to be smart and set for success. Even I believed that. Going to competitions in primary school hardly seem anything to be proud of now but at the time they looked impressive. I also know grades don't matter but still I passed the final exams in high school with straight 'A's. Who would have thought back then that among all those high school graduates I'll be the one that ends up without no degree. It'd make quite a funny story I tell at a pub if it wasn't about me.
Anyway, like I said, I'm vegetating since the end of the exams, not doing much. Playing Warcraft lost its appeal as well, everyone I liked playing with stopped already. Besides I shouldn't have been playing anything in the first place. Decent people work and study.
It's all very ambivalent: I want to just be done with this Japan experience, degree or not, and at the same time going home in shame isn't how I imagined it either. Writing a blog post is one thing, looking people in the eye and reluctantly tell how I stumbled and fell is quite different. Especially people who have jobs, careers, girlfriends.
As the Operative put it: There's nothing left to see.