First, I'd like to start off by saying that I have never dropped a class in university before. I normally can't tell if I'm going to like a class or not within the add/drop period, and after that point I normally just stick it out until the end. (I'm very stubborn in that way.) The only reason I dropped this one is because I knew, after just one class, that this would not go well for me.
All will be explained in time.
It was Wednesday, the second day of school, and Japanese was my only class that day. I showed up an hour early, so I could buy some textbooks before class. The line, however, was so long that by the time I got out of there I was already fifteen minutes late on my first freaking day. No worries, though, not a big deal. I'll just sneak in quietly and sit near the back.
An excellent plan, if the door to the classroom wasn't located a mere few feet away from the professor, at the front of the classroom, for everyone to stop and stare at me as I scurried in mid-lecture.
Already, we're off to a great start.
After I sheepishly sat down in the first empty see I saw, right at the front of the class, the professor continued. She was going over the syllabus, highlighting certain assignments and whatnot, and while I felt a little lost without a physical copy in front of me, I could manage without it.
Then she said the following statement:
"You've probably noticed that, up to this point, I've been speaking entirely in English. That's because I want to make a gradual shift from English to Japanese, so you all can get used to speaking the language easier."
Seems reasonable, right? Defintely. And it was, for the next three seconds. After a slight pause and a nod, some unknown force picked me up and dropped me down in rural Japan--because my prof was speaking fluent Japanese at a rapid pace that I couldn't follow if someone was pointing a gun to my temple.
What made it worse? She was asking the class questions, and they were answering her. She was writing things on the chalkboard, numbered one to five, and I only recognized a single word out of the bunch. I sat there in shock and in panic, because clearly one of two things had just happened:
Scenario #1--I had actually somehow managed to register myself for an advanced language course, or,
Scenario #2--I had somehow fallen into a parallel universe, where everyone is automatically fluent in Japanese and such a course is simply an easy way to get a university credit.
(Or, Secret Scenario #3--it had simply been too long since my Intro class and I probably shouldn't have considered registering for a more advanced class without some thoroughly thorough review.)
So as I'm furiously pulling up dictionary app after dictionary app, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, the teacher starts calling on people. She picked one student at the far end of the class, and asked him to go first. This is good, I thought. I can work with this. I can listen to everyone else and narrow it down through the process of elimination.
Except that student wasn't ready. So she picked another student, sitting in the front row at the opposite end of the classroom--me.
I swear, in that moment, everyone heard my heart plummet from my chest down into the depths of the basement. My blood pressure skyrocketed, my brain fried, and as desperately as I wanted to say something--anything--any and all Japanese vocabulary evaporated, and the only phrases coming to mind were in French. (Yes, you heard me. FRENCH. After being dormant for five years, my sub-par French skills picked now to rise to the surface.)
Luckily, I got out of it, through a quick shake of my head once she finally asked me if I was ready. I desperately tried to follow along with the volunteers she picked to speak up and introduce themselves, but that ended up being pretty useless as, like I previously mentioned, everyone else in the class seemed perfectly capable of not only understanding the prof, but also replying just as quickly as she was. I exited the class feeling shaken, clueless, and in an absolute panic about how I could possibly manage to pass this course, let alone do well in it.
But like I said, I'm stubborn. I resolved to do the extra work, convinced that I was capable and could do it. I headed straight back to the bookstore, eyes set on that course's text and workbook.
Back in my intro class in PEI, my professor--bless his soul--made his own textbooks using outside resources. He sold it in the bookstore with a construction paper cover for six dollars, easily my cheapest textbook ever. No other prof I've had has done that, and I will forever be grateful for the money that professor saved me on my first round of textbooks.
HOWEVER. In the University of Winnipeg's intro class, they use a different textbook, which continues to be the requirement for the first half or so of the Intermediate class. Everyone else in my class had these materials--excpet for me. And I was convinced that if I could just get my hands on that workbook, I could power through all of the beginning excercises and emerge with fresh knowledge and understanding of the language that would, if not teach me to swim, at least prevent me from drowning entirely.
Except the problem is, the Intro text--while definitely required and used in the Intermediate class--was not listed as a required Intermediate text as the bookstore. Which means that the bookstore, through no fault of their own, only ordered in accordance to the Intro class.
Which means that, by the time I got there, the workbook that I had been counting on, the basket that I had put literally all of my eggs in, was gone. Sold out. Probably not going to be restocked, because that's just the way my life was going.
I bought the textbook that day, and contemplated over the next couple of days over how to proceed. But after I spent those couple of days stressed out to the point of not even being able to think...I just locked onto Web Advisor and dropped the course. I returned the text the next day, got my refund, and focused my stress and worrying on my other four classes.
Because that amount of stress, my friends, simply is not worth it. Sometimes you gotta know your limits and draw the line when you get there.
Hope you all enjoyed watching me suffer!
Until later,
- Justyne
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