Hello, classmates! Welcome to my blog!
My name is Lily Oliver. I'm a linguistics major and a Japanese minor. I'm a senior now and I was supposed to be graduating in December, but things didn't quite work out. It's a little bit disappointing since I'm ready to figure out what I want to do with my life, but I really enjoy learning and being in an academic setting, so in a way I'm happy to still be at OU.
As you can see in my Favorite Places post, I studied abroad in Yamaguchi, Japan in the Spring of 2013. I was required to take 7 classes so I took 6 intensive Japanese language classes and one Korean class. It was pretty intense but I wouldn't trade my time there for anything. While I was abroad, I also got to go to different places in Japan: Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Fukuoka, etc.. But my favorite of all of those was my new home Yamaguchi.
It's a stereotype that linguists and linguistics students study tons of languages. In most cases, that's not necessarily true. The "studying" that is done is looking at how languages work. But in the case of some of my classmates and I, we are total nerds who will try to learn any language that comes our way. I've taken Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Korean classes and I'll start a Chinese class soon. On my own and with friends, I've studied Irish (my favorite language!), Welsh, Swedish, Esperanto, and a few more that I can't remember at the moment. So as you can see, I like me some languages.
(a picture of library stairs taken by greenmonsterz7 at deviantart)
My future plans are pretty unclear to me but I'll most likely be applying for the JET Programme so that I can teach English in Japan. I'm not sure if that's the direction I want to go in but I think it's a good place to start. Random tidbit: If I could have any job in the world it would be living in the Gaeltacht helping to come up with a proper revitalization plan for Irish that would be more effective. Oh also, I'd totally be living in a thatched cabin. But for now I'm trying to be more realistic. So I'll go back to Japan, make some money, and maybe go to grad school somewhere for language acquisition or applied linguistics.
My hobbies other than learning languages include:
-starting craft projects I'm never going to finish
-reading books until the last chapter and then stopping
-scrolling through netflix trying to find something to watch until I give up and bug my friends on facebook instead
-listening to my favorite albums over and over again until I'm sick of them
I also like video games, but I haven't played many lately for some reason.
I love to socialize so if any of you read this and have any questions or comments or just want to talk about something, please let me know! It's nice to have friends in every class. :)
