"I didn’t expect to stay in Japan more than one year, but thanks to my effort and perseverance in learning the language, I was able to join a company and have experiences that far exceeded my wildest dreams, meet my husband, and coexist happily with his family."
Major(s): Japanese Language, East Asian Studies
Language(s): Japanese
Graduation Year: 2015
What motivated you to study this/these languages?
I had studied Japanese since middle school and desired to further deepen my understanding of both the grammatical structure as well as the intricacy in which the culture was woven into the spoken language.
What do you remember about your UW language classes? How were they different from other classes you took?
The classes were content-heavy and fast-paced while being intimate and structured for learning the most amount in the given time. After working in Japanese education I can say they accurately resembled a genuine class that would be held in a Japanese school. My classmates and I were extremely close, whereas I felt there was notably less camaraderie in the other subjects I studied.
How valuable were your out-of-classroom experiences? How did they add to your undergraduate experience/coursework?
They further deepened my relationships with my classmates and became some of my most influential experiences during my university years. To this day I’m still in contact with many of those who I met through living on the Japanese language floor, etc.
What have you done in a professional capacity since graduating from UW-Madison?
I moved to Japan through the JET Programme and worked as a teacher at a senior high school in Kagoshima for 3 years. After that I joined a conference planning company in Tokyo where I worked directly with the Olympic Organizing Committee for Tokyo 2020, the EU Embassy in supervising the EU Green Gateway to Japan, and finally emceeing multiple G20 Ministerial Meetings, some at the explicit request of the Japanese Government itself for my exceptional performance. Due to marriage, I have since relocated and currently reside in the Kansai region. I work as the supervisor and coordinator of incoming JET Programme participants in our city.
What are ways, either expected or unexpected, that your language study has benefited you in your career?
I didn’t expect to stay in Japan more than one year, but thanks to my effort and perseverance in learning the language, I was able to join a company and have experiences that far exceeded my wildest dreams, meet my husband, and coexist happily with his family.
How have you maintained or improved your language(s) since graduation?
Since coming to Japan I sat for both the N2 and N1 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test and passed both tests at the time. While one advisor recommended I stop pursing the language as a major due to my lack of ability, I now possess full professional fluency of the language and work with contractual levels of Japanese on a regular basis.
What advice do you have for students who are studying language(s) about how to incorporate their interests and skills into their future goals?
If something interests you and helps expose you to the language, hold tight to it and keep at it. Also, someone not believing in your abilities can be leveraged to propel you forward in proving them wrong. The most important thing is believing that you can do it and then finding fun and entertaining ways to do so. One cannot exist without the other, in my experience.