HSA Concentrations: Japanese

Today’s blog about HSA concentrations is a conversation with Anya Porter, a senior concentrating in Japanese!

How did you pick your concentration?

I came into Harvey Mudd, knowing that I really liked learning foreign languages. We were required in my high school to take three years of foreign language, so I did two years of American Sign Language, one year of Spanish, and I also took an elective called The World Language Survey. We get to learn eight different languages, each for two weeks or three weeks, and I just had a lot of fun in that class. I knew it was something that I wanted to try more when I came to college. The one I was especially interested in was Japanese. That was something that I really wanted to learn. I’ve been involved in a Japanese martial art called Aikido since I was six, and I’ve always wanted to go to Japan to practice that. I also tend to just enjoy watching anime and want to learn to understand it. And if that sounds cliché then it is! I really wanted to learn Japanese, and so I figured that it was a logical concentration for me. It would let me take the four semesters of learning the language and get some familiarity with it. Coming in, I even thought that I might study abroad to meet some of the concentration requirements. Obviously that was not possible during Covid, but I still think that it would have been a great opportunity had we not had that unfortunate event.

What Japanese classes have you taken?

So I took Japanese 1A, 1B, 51A, and 51B–which are the two beginner classes and the two intermediate classes–during my sophomore and junior years.  I also could have taken conversation or kanji classes, which are just practice in speaking or writing. I chose not to do those due to not wanting to add additional workload, but they are options that are pretty cool.

What does the workload for a language class look like?

At least in Japanese, and from what I’ve heard from other students who’ve taken language classes, they do have a larger time commitment. They tend to meet four or five days a week as opposed to other classes, which would meet two or three. So that’s an increased time commitment. There also is the time commitment involved in learning vocabulary, grammar, or anything involved in that just like you’d expect from a language that requires studying. In Japanese, we had homeworks due every week. I think that’s pretty typical for a language class. We also had quizzes pretty much every week, some smaller or larger than others. I think that that is also pretty typical. There was also a requirement for going to the Oldenborg language tables, since this was a Pomona language class.

Have you kept up any extracurriculars in college that are related to Japanese?

I did continue taking Aikido during my freshman year. That was some of my PE classes, through Scripts College. I did not continue it over the pandemic, because that would involve getting within six feet of other human beings. I have continued to enjoy watching Anime. I am on the Anime Club mailing list, although I haven’t actually ever gone to any of their meetings.

Do you have a favorite HSA class you’ve taken for the breadth requirement?

Aside from choir, my favorite class has been actually the one that I’m in right now. It is a Mudd art class on fibers and materials. So far we’ve done sewing, and now we’re into dyeing, which is really cool. We made our own T-shirts all the way from make–creating a pattern from an existing T-shirt, cutting it out from a bolt of cloth, actually sewing the shirt. Now we’re doing dyeing,  specifically natural dyeing, and we’re doing a couple of different methods of that. I’m really excited to see how some of those turn out in this coming week. Then, after that, we’re doing things like embroidery and felting and off loom weaving, which I’m also really excited for.

Do you have any advice for pre-frosh?

When I was looking at applying to Mudd, I went online and looked at the humanities requirements, since I didn’t love English or history all that much in school. But I did love things like music or languages, things that would let me fulfill this breadth and depth requirement without too much difficulty. So I went online, and I found the requirements and the class listings, and just tried to fill it out. If I didn’t think I could do that, then I don’t think that I would have chosen to come to Mudd, because it is a large part of our coursework. It’s important that it is not something that you hate. It doesn’t have to be what you think of in high school as typical humanities. It doesn’t have to be English or history. It can be things like art, music, languages, economics, politics, linguistics. There’s a whole lot wider selection in college than there is in high school. I would recommend giving that a try if you’re worried about it.