So, I do have one rather large, non-fertility related interest, and that involves the fact that I have gone back to school to get my M.A. in English Education to become a high school English teacher in New York City. I'm in my second semester at a large, expensive university in the city that I'll call Needlessly Yucky University, that I chose because I thought it had one of the better organized programs around and since this was a career change for me (I currently make my living as a copyeditor—never mind the typos in my posts!), I wanted to a program with as many bells and whistles as possible.
But now, here I am in my 3rd day of the semester, with my 3rd new class schedule. I keep changing classes because Needlessly Yucky University just can’t get their act together in terms of prerequisites and so forth so I keep showing up to classes only to find out that I really don’t belong there. Not that that’s not fun and an extremely efficient way to kill a couple of hours.
Anyway, the newest class I’ve added to my schedule is Beginning Spanish. Now, I took high school French and learned just enough to test out of my college language requirement, but still, I haven’t taken a foreign language in 15+ years. My working knowledge of Spanish extends no further than hasta la vista, baby, which I say in an accent that can only be described as Schwarzeneggerian. This is all a way of saying that I don’t bring a lot to the table in terms of the Spanish language.
So, I went to my first class this morning, and it’s being taught by an overly enthusiastic man with the unlikely name of Chad who insists that every word spoken in class be in Spanish. I understand the impulse, but endlessly repeating “¿Como se llama?” isn’t going to make your beginning Spanish students suddenly know how to respond as if by osmosis. The occasional English language clue is helpful—even essential. Somehow, with a combination of gesture, mime, and just plain cheating, Chad muddled through and we survived. Having spent $145 on the textbooks for the class, I feel pretty committed to learning Spanish. If nothing else, this will be a nice distraction (and you don’t want to know what this distraction is costing me)....Higher education almost makes injectables look like a bargain. Almost.
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