Learning Japanese - Goals for this Semester

The long version:

I indulged in various forms of Japanese media as a child and developed a great interest in learning more about the Japanese language and culture. To my disappointment, my secondary schools did not offer Japanese language courses. Luckily, a high school friend introduced me to a website called "All Japanese All the Time," which details the experiences of an American self-studying Japanese from scratch and securing a programming job in Japan all within 18 months. Despite my initial skepticism, I eventually decided to follow his method, which combined spaced-repetition software and language immersion. I soon found myself waking up to Japanese news stations and reading Japanese comics untranslated at night. By the end of my sophomore summer, I understood more Japanese than Spanish, despite having taken Spanish classes for four years.

However, things began to change after I entered college. As I started transitioning to college academics, work-study, and extracurricular activities, I ended up devoting less time to Japanese. By my second semester, I had entirely stopped doing anything Japanese-related, and slowly began losing my grounding in the language. I forgot most kanji, had difficulty recalling hiragana, and struggled to engage in even the simplest small conversations in Japanese. 

Fortunately, as a senior now finishing up the medical school process (hooray!) I can take this academic year to pursue a majority of electives. My goal in First Year Japanese I is to use the grammatical lessons in this class, in combination with my own self-studying, to regain a grounding in Japanese that will allow me to place into a more advanced class during the spring semester.

The short version: 

Due to my interest in Japanese media and culture, I built a foundation in the language in high school. But, that fell apart in college. Now I'm using this class a a refresher while I prepare for the spring Japanese language placement test.