Mi punto de romper (My breaking point)
Last night in Spanish class, tuve un arrebato - I had a fit - when our professor assigned the homework for Wednesday’s class. It consisted of:
Mind you, the name of this class is “Spanish for Oral Communication.” This is a fairly typical quantity of homework to prepare for a single class, in this case with forty-eight hours in which to complete it. I have a full-time job and a second class which meets on the intervening night, and I’m not the only one in the class in that position.
It’s been like this all semester, and I just…I can’t keep doing this. We’ve been assigned so much written work that there are a few homework assignments we’ve never had time to go over in class.
Razonable o no, I didn’t even care anymore. I began a protest, at first under my breath, which grew louder and louder. Shaking my head, I muttered, “Muchas, muchas, muchas tareas…Estoy anonadada…[looking around at the other students laughing] ¡En serio! No puedo hacerlo.” (Many, many, many homeworks....I am overwhelmed...Seriously! I can't do it.) I sit right next to la profesora (it’s a class of about 15, and we all sit around a conference table), so this was not going to go unnoticed, which was totally fine with me. “Entre ahora y miércoles, no tengo el tiempo para hacer toda esta tarea.” (Between now and Wednesday, I do not have time to do all this homework.) My profesora is a nice, funny woman and a good teacher, but she’s a Gryffindor who, I think, does not fully grasp the mortal Ravenclaw angst which someone like me brings to this situation.
My outburst resulted in Michelle, probably the best all-around student in the class and my assigned partner for the dialogue (which we were to begin writing on the spot and then finish up by email - there's a LOT of finishing shit up by email in this class), patting my arm, taking pity on me, and basically writing about 80% of the rough draft of our dialogue with only superficial input from me. I let her do this, because on the previous two occasions we’d been paired for dialogues, I was so paranoid that she, the stronger student, would either a) do all the work or b) get all the credit, that I preemptively wrote our rough drafts before she could get a word in edgewise, and she made only cosmetic tweaks to my work.
All my tantrum really accomplished was to make me look like an attention whore and/or a niña de cinco años (five-year-old). It didn’t make the homework assignment any less. I tried to do it today, at work, so I wouldn’t have to do it tomorrow at work, but it was like forcing fingers down my own throat. Why can’t the homework ever ease off a little? I feel ready to throw up.
I am breaking my ass in this class. I started with poor comprehension relative to the class average and have knocked myself out with the written work, where I’m stronger, in an attempt to compensate. In the process, I have become a strange sort of failed teacher’s pet - a student who tries too hard and achieves for my efforts a level of competence so wildly varying that it confuses everyone in the class, including me.
I've lost all perspective on this situation. Perhaps I'll delete this post by tomorrow.
- Writing a one-sentence synopsis of each paragraph of the short story we had read for that night’s class. The story, “Cine Prado” by the Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska, is three pages long, 2000 words, 13 paragraphs. It is a reasonably advanced, if highly repetitive and tiresome, account of a movie buff who, mortally offended by the indecent onscreen behavior of his favorite actress, is writing her a “Dear Francoise” breakup letter (the actress in question is Francoise Arnoul, if that name means anything to you).
- Writing a short composition (preferably a single sentence, I think, though I’m not totally clear on this because mi comprensión es como mierda - my comprehension is shit) using twelve unrelated Spanish words selected by various members of the class. (We are supposed to come to each class with una palabra nueva, a word that is new to us, and provide its definition in Spanish, plus synonyms and antonyms where applicable. Three people are chosen out of the class to write their words, definiciónes, etc., on the blackboard. These 12 words were the words presented in each of the last four classes.) The words are:
- Cifra (a code which requires a key to decipher)
- Estudio de grabación (recording studio)
- Ramo (a bouquet, as of flowers)
- Respaldar (to support or back up)
- Aguafiestas (“party pooper”)
- Travesura (misconduct or trickery)
- Gorronear (to mooch)
- Rezar (to recite religious text)
- Pesadilla (a nightmare)
- Declarar (like it sounds - to declare)
- Clarucho (soaked, drenched)
- Empujar (to shove, thrust)
- Writing, with another member of the class, a dialogue based on the following scenario: Uno/a de ustedes va a un cásting en autobús. Hay mucho tráfico y decides ensayar la escena. A tu lado hay un/a chico/a muy simpático/a y empiezan a hablar. (One of you is going to an acting audition on the bus. There’s a lot of traffic, and [due to the delay] you decide to practice the scene [which you’re going to use at the audition]. Sitting next to you is a nice guy or girl, and the two of you start talking.) This is not a situation in which I will ever, ever find myself, either in Spanish or in English, and being asked to suffer over a scenario so frivolously irrelevant to my own life gets on my last nerve.
Mind you, the name of this class is “Spanish for Oral Communication.” This is a fairly typical quantity of homework to prepare for a single class, in this case with forty-eight hours in which to complete it. I have a full-time job and a second class which meets on the intervening night, and I’m not the only one in the class in that position.
It’s been like this all semester, and I just…I can’t keep doing this. We’ve been assigned so much written work that there are a few homework assignments we’ve never had time to go over in class.
Razonable o no, I didn’t even care anymore. I began a protest, at first under my breath, which grew louder and louder. Shaking my head, I muttered, “Muchas, muchas, muchas tareas…Estoy anonadada…[looking around at the other students laughing] ¡En serio! No puedo hacerlo.” (Many, many, many homeworks....I am overwhelmed...Seriously! I can't do it.) I sit right next to la profesora (it’s a class of about 15, and we all sit around a conference table), so this was not going to go unnoticed, which was totally fine with me. “Entre ahora y miércoles, no tengo el tiempo para hacer toda esta tarea.” (Between now and Wednesday, I do not have time to do all this homework.) My profesora is a nice, funny woman and a good teacher, but she’s a Gryffindor who, I think, does not fully grasp the mortal Ravenclaw angst which someone like me brings to this situation.
My outburst resulted in Michelle, probably the best all-around student in the class and my assigned partner for the dialogue (which we were to begin writing on the spot and then finish up by email - there's a LOT of finishing shit up by email in this class), patting my arm, taking pity on me, and basically writing about 80% of the rough draft of our dialogue with only superficial input from me. I let her do this, because on the previous two occasions we’d been paired for dialogues, I was so paranoid that she, the stronger student, would either a) do all the work or b) get all the credit, that I preemptively wrote our rough drafts before she could get a word in edgewise, and she made only cosmetic tweaks to my work.
All my tantrum really accomplished was to make me look like an attention whore and/or a niña de cinco años (five-year-old). It didn’t make the homework assignment any less. I tried to do it today, at work, so I wouldn’t have to do it tomorrow at work, but it was like forcing fingers down my own throat. Why can’t the homework ever ease off a little? I feel ready to throw up.
I am breaking my ass in this class. I started with poor comprehension relative to the class average and have knocked myself out with the written work, where I’m stronger, in an attempt to compensate. In the process, I have become a strange sort of failed teacher’s pet - a student who tries too hard and achieves for my efforts a level of competence so wildly varying that it confuses everyone in the class, including me.
I've lost all perspective on this situation. Perhaps I'll delete this post by tomorrow.