Well, several months ago I registered for what I hope is my last quarter of classes at my community college. Thinking it would be really neat to have a foreign language under my belt, especially since it’s often required to have some knowledge of one for other colleges, I decided to take Spanish. Spanish, after all I heard, was the easiest language and oh so very useful. Perhaps I would eventually become fluent enough in the language to become especially hirable in the job market and become wealthy wealthy wealthy! Mwa ha ha ha hahahaha! (side note: How knowing Spanish would make one especially financially solvent I actually am starting to wonder now, but at the time I thought I had it figured out). At any rate, I had taken the first step. I was registered for a Spanish class five days a week for roughly an hour. I would soon be habla-ing with the best of them! I was excited. I could soon impress my friends with my vast knowledge and say things that they couldn’t understand, which we all know is the very epitome of being cool. After all, knowing something that someone else doesn’t is about as cool as you can possibly get. And I was about to get impossibly cool. So, I showed up the first day of class, feeling a bit nervous and wondering if I was in the right place. I asked a couple at the table I was at if this was Spanish 101 and they nodded, which of course made all three of us do a collective sigh of relief. We waited the customary ten minutes to starting time, and the teacher finally came in. She was a strawberry blonde, pleasant looking and well dressed. She got up, smiled, and immediately starting speaking in a string of rapid (at least to me anyway) Spanish. Suddenly feeling a panic attack coming on, I looked about the room in confusion. Had I gone to the wrong class after all? Was that friendly couple in the wrong place too? Why was she speaking in Spanish? Didn’t she know we don’t know Spanish? Maybe SHE was in the wrong place? The girl next to me turned and whispered, “Is this Spanish 101?” I gave her a nod, though I felt very unsure of the accuracy of my answer. Maybe she was just showing us how much we didn’t know. Maybe it was a lesson for us to see what the language was like or something crazy like that. Eventually she did break into English to explain parts of the syllabus to us, but mostly it was Spanish the whole time. And so it went. Every day she would teach in almost non stop Spanish and I would flounder along and feel very upset for some reason. I was to soon feel more upset when she made flashcards with our names on them and then pick one out and ask us a question in Spanish. This was to be part of our grade in class participation, and you were expected to answer in proper Spanish as well. She also gave us fake Spanish names to replace our own. I was to be called Beatriz, a name I have come to loathe and fear, for every time she has said it it’s because she expects me to answer questions I usually don’t understand in front of the class. And now it has been nearly two months and I still flounder. In fact, I am pretty certain I’m going to have health problems by the end of the quarter. My knees shake. My head is light, my heart feels like it’s body slamming itself against my chest and wants to escape, and rightfully so! It’s only a matter of time before I have to run out the door screaming “Yo no sey! Yo no sey!” (better known as ‘I don’t know’.) Every time I sit at my table I feel the need to find a paper bag and hyperventilate into it for a good ten minutes to try to breathe properly again. It was a nightmarish time for me in which I stumbled across strange words I forgot the meanings to, did poorly on tests even when I’d studied like mad, and lived in constant and perpetual fear of the name “Beatriz”. And now that I am nearly finished with the class I find myself closer than ever to a breakdown. I find myself drawing blanks when asked simple questions and nearly having panic attacks when asked to turn on the lights. I feel sick whenever I step into the room and my eyes are always going back to the clock in the desperate and futile hope that it will magically be 10:50 and I can be free for another day at least, and I swear to myself that I will somehow learn the entire language before the next morning so that I won’t have to be afraid again. This of course means that I don’t even pick up my book naturally, and by the next morning I am once again making false promises and lying to myself and to God, who I talk to quite often in that class as I’m usually in a near constant state of prayer, saying I will never sin again in my entire life and I will make a garden and read books to little annoying children if he will please please please let her not call on me today. More often than not she does though, which I suppose is only fair cause I wasn’t going to be keeping my end of the bargain anyway. The next day is of course, an exact duplicate of the day before then, only the outrageous promises to god are greatly amplified in the futile hope that I can somehow make my offer sound more tempting and that he will somehow grant my request. Seeing as how it’s nearly the end of the quarter you can imagine that my promises have become pretty grandiose. Last I checked I was supposed to start an orphanage, stop world hunger, fix the ozone layer, and donate all of my non essential organs to the needy. Who knows what I’ll be owing by the end of the quarter, but I’ll be lucky to have any free time in the next millennia at the rate I’m going.

So, besides a need for psychological counseling, has taking Spanish done anything for me? I’d be lying if I said no. Despite my total ineptness with the language I have learned a great deal more than I had before and at least I know how to ask simple questions like, “How are you?” And respond that I am either good, very good, or sleepy. Unfortunately they didn’t teach us how to say I’m doing horribly, so I guess I have no choice but to be happily tired if a Spanish person asks me how I am. Besides the actual learning part I would be lying if I said I haven’t had fun amidst my long talks with god and my total mental breakdowns. The people in the class itself were wonderfully kind and understanding as a lot of them sucked almost as bad as I did! One could see themselves in the nervous eyes of the fellow student who likewise did not seem to know where they were born, at least when asked in Spanish at any rate. Nothing builds comradery like total abject terror, and many pleasant acquaintances and even friendships were made. The teacher, though I sometimes say she is an agent of the devil and is out to get me, is in all truth quite a pleasant woman. I don’t like to admit that because it doesn’t really fit with the whole right hand of the devil thing, but in reality she’s very fun and energetic and all things good and teacher like. Not to mention she has really nice boots. You can’t hate someone with good footware. So despite the fact that my experience has been emotionally disturbing, I think I have come out better for it, despite the facial twitch and the orphanage I still have to build…