Higher Learning

Learning can be awesome. It can be fun.
It can also be unnervingly painful.

I took a particularly intense language class this year to try to liven up my schedule and also because I love language. Unlike most normal, sane human beings, I enjoy conjugating verbs and memorizing different words for things. I like knowing the little exceptions and strange intricacies of other peoples' grammar. It feels like I'm going through someone else's belongings, like when I was a kid and I would go through my mom's purse, my sister's shoeboxes of random writings and knicknacks, or my brother's 'secret' drawer (which was the top drawer and which often didn't even have a front to it--thus not so secret).

But I do not love this.
I keep trying to make it fun and there have been changes that have helped (like story-reading and a few film clips and a skit or two for activities), but I keep getting stuck. First, it's unclear what the homework is or what we're supposed to know for tests, which wouldn't be so bad except there's no book anymore and we just get barraged with vocab all the time. Plus, the vocab from last year that we were told was unimportant is something we are supposed to know now, though no one but native speakers do. Second, I do not get along well with the leader of our learning---I get wicked mixed signals. So, I'll be told I'm motivated and then that I should come to the board if I think I know everything (which, by the by, I was writing notes on the grammar points when told that I think I know everything [!]). Last, but not least, whenever I ask a question about anything, though mostly grammar cuz that's what I love, I get a response that has nothing to do with what I asked. I've tried explaining what I mean, only to have the exact same response repeated several times until maybe, just maybe, I get my original meaning across.
But usually, I just say sure and nod my head and wait for the spotlights to clear. Then, I stick my head in my book (which apparently distracts from my learning from sporadic and disorganized explanations) and try to wait out the day, the semester, and the year.
So, I have decided that language is for the summertime---cuz at least then I only have one crazy person to deal with, as opposed to many.

Basically, learning gets less and less fun the higher up in ed I go---though it doesn't have to. I have one class right now where I was told: here's a list of books, read the ones you dig or can find cheap, and then call me when you've read the first group you come up with-later! Which is cool, and apparently very European.

So there's that.

And here's this: