The Other Sandy

I'll be heading out the door shortly for my 2 hour Spanish final involving lots and lots of grammar. I do okay when I'm dealing with one tense at a time, but I get all confused when I have to work with multiple tenses at once. I'm looking forward to it all being over.

Think positive thoughts for me. I could use all the help I can get.

Tonight was the first class for my second semester of Spanish. I registered for this particular class period because my instructor from last semester was teaching it, and because my study partner from last semester had also registered for it. At class tonight, however, I found out that my previous instructor had resigned, and my study partner was no longer in the class. Bummer.

My new instructor is from Mexico. This is a good thing in that I'll get more practice listening to the accent of a native speaker. This is a bad thing in that I have a hard enough time trying to figure out what she's saying in Spanish; struggling to figure out what she's saying in English too is not helpful.

My new classroom isn't in the basement this time, so it's actually been painted and is reasonably clean. Unfortunately, it's also very small and has no air circulation. I'm not particularly claustrophobic, but it was making me uncomfortable anyway.

I seriously considered transferring to the class of an instructor who substitute taught for my last class. I liked him a lot, but he's teaching a 7:00-9:00 class. The 7:00-9:00 class almost killed me with sleep deprivation last semester, which is why I switched to the 5:00-7:00 class I'm in now. I'm in the only 5:00-7:00 class, so I can either take a class from an instructor I like in a time slot that will make me crazy, or I can take a class in a time slot I like from an instructor that will make me crazy. I guess I'll just stick it out and see what happens.

I'm in the middle of a truly hellish string of exams in my Spanish class. A week ago Monday, we had a standardized reading comprehension test (which still counts toward our grade) and a pop quiz on the chapter. Last Wednesday, we had the chapter test. Last Monday, we had a standardized listening comprehension test. Tonight was the only night free of exams, so the instructor attempted to cram almost an entire chapter into the lecture. Next Monday, we have a writing proficiency exam (we don't know the topic, or even what tense it'll be in) and probably a pop quiz on the chapter. Next Wednesday is the chapter test. The class period after that is the final.

And tonight, one of the students who regularly whines about how she can't possibly be expected to do the homework or know the material threw an actual tantrum because she couldn't understand the lecture (everything the instructor was saying was in our assigned textbook reading for the class session, in English, with charts, which she would've known had she done the homework). She stomped out in a huff in the middle of class and didn't come back. There really was an actual huff, and stomping, and she slammed the door on her way out. ::boggles::

I can't believe there are only two weeks left in the semester.

Spanish grammar is going to be the death of me. First was the discovery that double negatives are grammatically correct in Spanish. It took a lot of work to overcome the English programming that double negatives are wrong before I was able to write them semi-comfortably. Then came the preterite tense, where there are more verbs that are exceptions to the rules than there are those that follow the rules. I never thought I was going to be able to get those down in time for the test. I still have trouble with them.

Now we're working on object pronouns. That doesn't sound hard, does it? Sentence structure is fairly simple: Subject Verb Object, right? Well, yes, but in Spanish, you can also have Object Verb Subject and (this one kills me) Subject Object Verb. I feel like I'm trying to work one of those sliding tile puzzles where you have to put the numbers in order. First, I have to reorder the words so they make sense to me, and then I get to figure out what they mean.

I also had two unpleasant surprises this week. In all our previous units, our worksheets were due on the day of the chapter test, which is next Monday. Yesterday, I found out that the worksheets for this unit are due tomorrow. So much for the basking in Heroes squee I had planned for this evening. Also, in all our previous units, we had a pop quiz at the end of the last class before the test, so I was expecting a quiz tomorrow night. We had it last night, instead. Oops. I was not expecting it at all, but I think I did reasonably well. I know I got two answers wrong for sure, but I'm also sure that I got both of the extra credit questions right, so hopefully those will balance each other out.

I would be counting down the days until the end of the semester, except I have a major exam every class period but one between Thanksgiving and the end of the term. I'm contemplating sleeping through the first half of January.

I noticed I haven't written about my Spanish class in awhile, and it's also been awhile since I've written a rant, so I thought why not kill two birds with one stone?

I had a another test last week, and as usual, the instructor put up some PowerPoint slides with review questions on them that we were allowed to work on in groups before the test. The first slide had twelve questions on it and we were given five minutes to complete them. Now, I normally work with K (she sits next to me and we work well together), but this time we were assigned to groups of four, so I was working with three other people I hadn't worked with before. As soon as the review questions went up, I asked if everybody thought my first answer was right. I was met by a collective blank stare, followed by a litany of reasons why none of them could possibly be expected to know the material half an hour before the test on it. My favorite was "I work full time," as if I don't. When the instructor called the two minute warning, we were still on question one because they hadn't finished giving me their excuses yet. I finally tuned them out and did all the questions by myself. Then they got mad at me for not including them. Which I had tried to do, but they were too busy telling me why they didn't know the material to participate.

Last Monday, I got assigned to work with a guy in my class that I usually try to avoid because he rarely shows up, mouths off when he does, and thinks he should be getting an A by virtue of his personality. We were supposed to ask each other questions in Spanish about what the other had done the previous weekend, then write a paragraph in Spanish about what our partner had done. Well, Z didn't understand any of the questions I asked him in Spanish, so he decided we should just give each other five sentences in Spanish and turn it into a paragraph. He chose five sentences at random from a worksheet we'd just done, leaving me to try to write a coherent paragraph out of sentences like, "Last weekend, I spent a lot of money on books this semester," and "Yesterday, I went to Madrid for two days." When I pulled out my notes to check the spelling of one of the verbs, he was shocked. "You take notes? Every class?" I guess that explains why he's failing.

Now, I know that some people just aren't good at foreign languages. I happen to be one of those people, so I've been busting my butt to try and stay on top of the material. I go to class, take notes, do the homework, and study for the tests. What I don't understand is the people who don't even try--the ones who rarely come to class, don't do the readings or homework, and who don't study, then are mystified as to why they're getting bad grades. Okay, I can kind of understand it for the kids who are traditional students and are required to take a foreign language when they don't really want to, but what about the adults in the class? Between course fees and books, that class is about $600 per semester. Why on earth would you shell out almost $600 for a class, and then not even try to learn something from it? Trying and not getting it is one thing, but to not even try? Why bother taking the class in the first place?

I just got my first writing assignment and first test back in my Spanish class. I got 3 out of 3 points on the writing assignment and 30 out of 30 points on the test, plus 2 out of 3 extra credit points!

::runs around shrieking::

Seriously, you have no idea how huge this is. I barely passed high school Spanish. In fact, the only reason I passed high school Spanish was that if I failed, I'd have to repeat the class and my Spanish teacher never wanted to see me again. I never in a million billion years thought I could do this well in a foreign language class.

::does Snoopy dance::

I wish I could find my high school Spanish teacher and show him this test just to watch him faint.

I had my first Spanish class tonight. So far, so good, but that's because all we did was go over the syllabus. I'm very pleased that the incomprehensible workbooks of my youth have been replaced by online quizzes. I've taken an online class before, and I like the online quiz structure and the immediate feedback. Learning new software is really easy for me (much easier than learning Spanish). I'm also pleased that I'm not the oldest person in the class. There are at least 4 other grown-ups there. :-)

The classroom itself is horrible. It's very tiny, unventilated, and dirty, and it has those little tiny chairs with a built in desk surface about the size of a sheet of looseleaf paper. And there were fruit flies. Yuck.

The teacher was very approachable, so I stayed after class to ask her about some things that were making me nervous. She was able to give me some tips for dealing with things that have been a problem for me in the past when I've taken language classes. She also said that there will be only one oral exam at the end of the semester and it'll be given one on one, not in front of the class. \0/

We'll see how this goes.

I've been bad. I haven't cleaned since Wednesday. I haven't done much of anything, really. I've been feeling really listless this week. I've been talking to friends and coworkers, even the teller at the bank, and they've all been feeling the same way. I hope it passes soon.

Meanwhile, I had a much longer, dragged out afternoon yesterday than I'd planned. I went to the local community college to sign up for a Spanish class, since I need to learn to read Spanish for work. There were dozens of Spanish I classes, all of which seemed to meet for a different number of hours and have different course fees which the course catalog did not explain, so I wanted to speak to an academic advisor to make sure I signed up for the right class. All the advisors were in a big room processing incoming freshman. The main advising office told me to tell the people at the desk that I was just signing up for one class for work and to let me in. The person at the desk was having none of it. He made me wait 37 minutes until the next orientation session started and made me spend an hour sitting through it before I could see an advisor.

I got to spend an hour hearing about placement tests I don't need to take, an explanation of the credit hour system that hasn't changed since the first two times I went to college, and about how I could transfer my credits to a 4 year school. Whee. I'd pointed out beforehand to the wonk at the desk that I have a B.S. and an M.L.S. so I'm pretty sure I know how college works. When I finally got in to see an advisor, he apologized to me about having to jump through that hoop. "You must've been so bored." Anyway, I'm now signed up for a semester of Spanish. It will meet 2 nights a week for 2 hours each night.

I'm not looking forward to it. I know it'll do me good both personally and professionally, but I am not gifted in learning foreign languages. I took Spanish in high school and Russian in college and sucked at them both. I was apparently accidentally manufactured with 2 left brains, so if you need analytical skills or someone to balance your checkbook, I'm your girl. Anything involving the arts or creativity is a total wash. I think I would probably do better with something like the Rosetta Stone software, but work wouldn't buy it for me (they're paying for my classes, though) and I won't get credit for the training hours (I'm required to take 60 hours of training in something professionally relevant every year) unless I have proof of exactly how many hours I spent (I can prove I was in class, but I can't prove how much time I spent on homework, so those hours don't count).

On the other hand, I'm feeling strangely giddy at the prospect of buying school supplies for the first time in 11 years.