ジェフ・ブラム
Jeff Blum
I first became interested in Japan while an undergraduate at the University
of Rochester, where I became friends with several students from Japan and
several others who were Japanese majors (though I was too busy to take any
classes myself). One especially close friend studied for a year in Nagoya
and then joined the JET program after graduation. Conversations about her
experiences in Japan further solidified my interest in the country, culture
and language.
After spending several years working for a Fortune 500 company, I started
re-evaluating my future. I decided to get my MBA at UT, but I also revisited
my interest in Japan. My friend had mentioned that getting a job teaching
English was fairly easy and that it was rewarding work. So, I requested and
was granted a one-year deferment on my admission to UT and then interviewed
with a couple of English conversation schools that had offices in North America.
I accepted a job with one of them (AEON) and off I went to Japan for one
of the best years of my life.
Upon returning, I began my MBA studies, but the UT bureaucracy made it impossible
to take any undergraduate Japanese classes. After graduating, I worked for
several years before finally deciding to add some formal Japanese instruction
(my learning to that point had been mostly self-study). Thus, I began taking
classes at UT as what would have to be considered a non-traditional (and
non-degree) student.
I enjoyed the UT classes I took and found their structured environment very
helpful. In fact, my appreciation for the value of combining structured and
independent study led me to start compiling various Internet resources on
a personal website. After taking the introductory courses that use the Yookoso!
textbooks, I decided to compile notes from those books and add those to my
site as well. At that point, I thought others might find the notes and resources
I had collected to be useful, so I created a more public website, which I
named after the textbooks (Yookoso!).
Around that same time, there was a Kanji of the Day (KOTD) email list run
by another former UT student (Jason Vertrees), but his server crashed and
the list disintegrated. Since Jason’s service had been the only one
of its kind, I began investigating the technology necessary to create an
alternative service and then added it to the site as well. Since that time,
I have continued to add resources to the site and I have added RSS feeds
for the kanji lists. I have also worked with David “DC” Collier
at jgram.org to offer
daily grammar emails and RSS feeds.
Currently, I am leading an entrepreneurial life and I have no professional
need for the Japanese language. Still, the interest I developed in the language
so long ago remains strong and I continue to self-study. I am also fortunate
to have some good friends in Japan that I occasionally visit. Perhaps someday
I will significantly improve my meager Japanese proficiency and maybe even
find a professional use for it. If not, I will nonetheless always consider
the classes I took at UT and the time I have invested in the country and
language to have been well worthwhile.
Jess Blum
Founder, MBA Depot
Resources for MBAs & Managers
http://www.mbadepot.com