Ruffled Feathers

I am feeling a bit lost this evening.

Yesterday, I had my first day of class with my new professor, German (pronounced Hermaaan with a rolled r in there), who immediately turned me off with his muy rapido speech. As Rosa told me last night, after a very frustrating day, "The FIRST rule for these teachers is to speak slowly." And I whole-heartedly agree. Because if the teacher speaks quickly, the student cannot understand a word that is said, and as a result, the student is both lost and she gets down on herself for being lost, even if the other students are lost, too.

The first thing the professor asked us all yesterday was, "How was your weekend? What did you do?" We each took a turn giving a fumbled version of our weekends, and this man, Hermaaan, kept interrupting everyone to correct their verb tenses. Well, Hermaaaaan, I am so sorry that I cannot say that I WENT to a futbol match, but I have not learned the past tense of the verb "go" yet. "I GO" is all I have in my vocabulary.

I would have simmered down if perhaps Hermaaan had decided to then maybe teach us the past tense, which was on the first page of our new book. But no, he asked us to please turn to page 45 - we will start with the imperfect tense.

The logic behind all of this was beyond me, but I went with it, trying to practice patience. But then we got into the "lesson," and I quickly lost my cool.

(For those of you who think I´m a "wordy SOB", please skip over all of this because it´s not going to be interesting, but it´s making me feel better to write about, so I´m going to.)

The imperfect tense, at least the way Hermaaan taught it, is used to describe non-specific events that happened in the past. For example, "When I was little, I went to church every Sunday with my family." If you were to say, "Yesterday, I went to church" you would need to use the PAST tense, though, because yesterday is a specific time. So doesn´t it seem like we might maybe possibly maybe might need to learn the past tense first? As Rosa said last night (Rosa is my sounding block for all things these days, clearly), if they would just teach us the basics first - present, past, future - that would be helpful. Perhaps then our sentences could make sense. Some sense.

By about halfway through class yesterday, I had decided to switch classes. Aside from the ridiculous pace of his speech and the skipping over of half of the book, his entire everything annoyed me. He continued to interrupt us to make corrections in our speech that were too advanced for our level, wrote irritatingly slowly on the board, and generally taught me zero. Zero.

I added it up today, and I´ve spent 18 years of my life thus far in school. So if there´s one thing I DO know about myself, it´s how I behave as a student. And when you put me with a teacher I do not like, I shut off. I will not do any work, I will not try, I will purposely be a bad student. I know, I´m 26, I should be a bit more mature than this. But, that´s the way it is. I cannot work with this person, HERMAAN; it is not a productive or positive learning environment for me.

Unfortunately, I did not get my class changed before classtime today, so I had to suffer through one more of his classes today, and I am sorry to say that Hermaaan broke me. I really am sorry to say it. We were taking turns reading our homework out loud (we were supposed to use the imperfect tense to describe what our home cities were like in the 19th century), and Hermaaan interrupted my description of life on plantations to go into some tirade on prepositions or something. I don´t think he intends to make you feel stupid, but he does it nevertheless, and well, I feel stupid enough in Spanish class as it is. I need my professor to make me feel SMART, to make me want to persevere!

You have no idea how irritating it is to have someone look at you, say "blah woei nwopie ñalknvoi lkna´ñl nwo ñlnvnowin blah blah?" "Um, no entiendo (I don´t understand, my favorite phrase)." "Okay...añlkjek woinwñl lk wñl lkn wohnvx, ei99?" "Um, now that you´ve said it THAT way...NO ENTIENDO."

So when I was finally allowed to pick up my reading where I left off, I was extremely flustered. I had said something slightly rude in English to him (temper, temper...), and I could feel my throat getting tighter and my mouth start quivering, and as I started reading, you know what... Again, you´d think that at 26, I might be able to NOT cry in class, but I did. And then I got up and walked out of the room. Ugh.

I´m a passionate person. What am I to do about that?

So anyway, I made a bit of a scene and felt thoroughly FURIOUS with HERMAAAAN, but after several minutes of pity partying in the bathroom, I came back into the class composed, trying to comfort myself with the knowledge that I was going to be starting a new page with a new professor tomorrow (because I did get that worked out, thank goodness).

And that´s really all there is to say about that. After class, I walked myself over to the city´s Museum of Fine Arts, plugged up my ears with some music from the ole ipod, and tried to forget about it. In the end, of course, writing about it has made feel better.

So starting tomorrow, I have class with Vitoria, from 9-1. I will have to start setting an alarm in the mornings again, but anything to get away from Hermaaaan. Tomorrow is another day, thankfully.

But for now, it is time to go find Rosa for a little supper. And of course, for a little support. Bless her.