I am really not prepared for this midterm tomorrow. I seem to have lost some motivation this term -- is it sophomore slump? Last semester everything was new and challenging and I had something to prove (since they'd moved me up to Level 2 after I bugged 'em and bugged 'em about it). This term I'm coming late to class every day and hardly studying at all.

A fellow gyo-po (Korean American) this morning told me that if there's a time to slack off it's now, when I'm in Level 3. Level 3 is reputed to be the easiest level. It certainly has a much lower work volume than Level 2, in which we'd speed through two chapters a week and get an entire workbook chapter to do in one night. There's no workbook in Level 3, and sometimes no homework either.

Previously I thought that the grammar in this level was pretty easy, while the vocab was killer, but one of my classmates, the basketball-lovin' Etsuko from Japan, opined today that Level 3 was actually pretty difficult, because we are now delving into the nuances of the grammar we learned before.

So, for instance, in Level 2 we learned that "-nun dae" (can't reproduce the sound in English, I'm afraid) can be used to compare two things (i.e., "She's pretty but her brother is not.") But in the past five weeks, we've learned that it can be used in at least three other situations:

1. A polite way to express an unpleasant situation in order to request an alternative (i.e., "I'm afraid I don't have the time now, shall I come again?");

2. Someone does something, and subsequently discovers something that is not a consequence of the action (i.e., "I went to school and there was no one there"); and

3. as a polite way of introducing something (i.e., "Pink is a singer who is famous").

Confused yet? So am I. I hope I freakin' pass this test.