mDuo13

This is it. I officially concede that I will not make the deadline for the JET Program this year. There was a small chance, but in the end, I simply could not find it in me to demand letters of recommendation to be written within a matter of hours. Although I wanted to do JET, in the end, I didn't get my act together in time, and this is the result. I will do my best to apply next year, and that's about the extent of what I can do.

So, what will I use to fill the void in my plans left by JET? First and foremost, I'm going to prepare myself to be a better candidate for JET in the future, and that means taking the JLPT test. The deadline for JET is earlier than the date of the test, but just being able to say that I'm registered will probably help my application. The next decision is what level to apply for... I expect that I'm not too far from being able to pass Level 4 as it is, and being as I have so much time, perhaps I should aim for at least Level 3. (Lower numbers are higher difficulty.) In any case, this probably means I should go back to using Ice Mocha more frequently.

The other problem is what to do when I graduate. I had hoped to have already finished my last summer of depending on my parents for a house... but doing JET in another year makes it something of a concern, since that would mean settling down for a year somewhere else, only to be uprooted again. This faces me with all those "growing up" kind of questions that I had been avoiding all this time, such as whether I should get a car, or whether I can depend on my job at MontaVista to support me living independently. And, of course, living with my parents seems like a much better way to save up money for my eventual trip to Japan. It's a choice between following through on 'something I decided' or doing what seems 'rational' in the situation.

And, of course, this spare time when I'm not preparing for JET is more time that I can also work on more important goals, like writing...