Revision, at least for me is like the currents of the sea. One day its calm the next day its a raging torrent of waves that is battering the shore. The latter is what I feel like now. Its not that I know nothing about this subject. Its not that I don't know the kanji or the grammar. Its the vocab and to a major extent my essay writing technique - especially under exam conditions. I am now getting to the point where I am worrying about how to start, continue and ultimately end the essay.

To all extents and purposes, a fair chunk of the sakubun is guided - in that we are given information related to the topic which we therefore use to describe the situation or event. I don't think it will be a case of the question being "What do *you* think about Japan?" and have me sat there for a good 20 minutes struggling to come up with ideas. Obviously we are being tested under exam conditions, so the use of dictionaries and grammar notes are not allowed and we don't have the relaxed attitude of being able to form complex sentences and structures. But at the same time, a large chunk of the assessment is the overall narrative of the piece (how well does it work and fit together.) This is something I've struggled with and have only received top grades when I've had some logical sequence of events that has allowed me to build up a conclusive argument. I don't think my japanese is good enough where I can just sit there and sat constructing narrative in the same way that I would do in English. I am also struggling from the issue of overcomplicated matters for the sake of grammar. Curse my love of writing technical Japanese.

And as for my second fear, I'm going into my translation with no idea about the material. At the moment I am reading in preparation for that, some highly advanced texts (albeit for a gaijin studying japanese) and I can understand about 70% of it, if it wasn't for all those bizarre kanji. Apparently we won't be tested on anything we haven't learned, but I'm not buying that anymore. There has to be a point at which one can seperate those who have studied all the material and those who have studied that little bit extra just to be complete and utter smart arse-holes. (Like me, who learnt how to use してみれば the other day.)

Anyways, needless to say without sounding like an arrogant arsehole, which I am going to anyway. If I am panicing, I know for a fact A LOT of people on our course will be. Exam is in 5 days now and they should all be finished in about 10.

Hopefully once I get this hell out of the way, I can just relax for about 10 days.

Jaa ne.