Spanish Class

On a sort-of wild hare, I enrolled for and began an adult education Spanish class today. I’ve been threatening to learn Spanish for a long time, and was doing the thing where I watched Univision with the closed captioning on and a dictionary to look up the words I wasn’t catching. Even when I can do a reasonable job of comprehending, it’s 10 times harder to generate even the simplest Spanish sentences and even harder to do it out loud. That’s why I took the class, to actually sit down and have a teacher drilling me on it.

The class meets in Evanston Township High School, and from the moment I walked in I started having flashbacks. Immediately, 25 years dropped away and I was a kid again, wandering the halls of high school feeling underprepared and slightly lost. I registered at the very last minute, bought the book this morning and felt like I was completely missing the boat. As it turns out, I was actually doing OK. I was on time to class (I hate being late for anything, ever) although other people were trickling in until 15 minutes after the starting time. I was not the best person in the class, nor was I the worst. I’m probably right in the top third or so but not the very top. That’s just how I like it. The adult me is a much better student than the kid me, and I was actually disappointed when the teacher did not assign any work for the next week. I’m going to work excercises in the book anyway, just because I’m motivated and I care. This is something the kid me wouldn’t have done.

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.