El Fin De Espanol

Well, not anymore!

The nightmare is finally over.

After four years – good lord, was it really four? – of nonconsecutive Spanish torture, I’m finally done. No more conjugating, no more oral presentations, no more staring blankly at the diet pill ads on WordReference.com as my brain shuts down in the preparations for an examen. No more tildes over the lower case Ns, no more accents over the I but not the E. No more watching Spanish language short films, catching every third word and attempting to discern the plot through observing the characters’ actions instead of trying to understand their words. No more going to class and looking at the clock for fifty minutes, only to find that the clock will teach you very little about Spanish, and even less about patience.

I used to have the high minded idea that, once I’d completed the two years of a foreign language that are mandatory for Bachelor of Arts students, I would continue in my study of the Spanish language. As I saw it, there couldn’t be anything wrong with speaking a second language, and it could be a real character (and, more importantly, resume) building experience. As a journalist who could also speak Spanish, I figured that there’d be loads of opportunities available to me on Telemundo! if I couldn’t find any English speaking jobs. Of course, the more Telemundo! I watch, the more I doubt that even Spanish speakers can understand what the hell is going on there.

Let me just say this: If it were possible to speak a second language without having to do a whole bunch of extra work, I would totally do it. But that’s the thing – it really isn’t. They’ve basically got a different word for everything. So honestly, when you hear that I’m now giving up on Spanish, know that it isn’t because of any failure on my part, but rather a failure on the part of the Spanish language to be endlessly accessible, interesting, and easy. I mean, come on – there’s like sixteen different conjugations! Don’t you think that’s overdoing it just a little bit?

Building my Spanish vocabulary was a lot like my attempts to build grand LEGO fortresses as a kid – my plans were lofty and well intentioned, but in the end I would get distracted and things wound up half-completed and forgotten, and then maybe the dog would eat a couple pieces too. With each new term of Spanish this year, I came into class resolving to finally start reading every night and doing all my homework. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t take me long to realize that I could get by just cramming for the tests and keeping my fingers crossed on the pop quizzes. And then, at that point, Spanish became challenging for me not in the sense of “what can I do to learn this language” but rather “how little of this language can I learn while still getting a grade that convinces the school that I’ve learned this language?”

The answer, it turns out, is “very little.” In terms of learning a new language, I’m not so great, but when it comes to finding new and innovative ways to cheat the system and avoid learning a new language, I am basically the Mozart of sloth. As much as I hate math, I used a little of it and quickly figured out that even if I got a D on the majority of our 15 point pop quizzes I could still easily pull a B in the class if I scored high enough on our exams, projects, and presentations, which were scattered through the term like lumps in the viscous gravy of optional homework and neglected reading. Also, every term in the 200 level Spanish sequence this year followed the same syllabus, so by the end I had mastered the course curriculum.

Of our three essay-based examenes, I would usually do really well on the first, as it was still early enough in the term for me to think I was actually going to try. By the second one, I’d be so cocky about my good score on the first that I’d let the work slide and score lower in the B range, which would lead me to resolve to study very hard for the third exam. However, by the time the third exam rolled around in dead week, I’d be so burnt out that I’d study even less for it than for the first two. And yet, Bs.

I wrote a column for the Emerald about grade inflation which pissed off quite a few students and earned the praise of a few administrators. To the students who thought I was blowing the whistle on their meal ticket – trust me, I ride the curve just as much as anyone else. To the administrators who may find it hypocritical that I’m gleefully recounting my experiences exploiting a system that I’d said was in need of change – this doesn’t alter my opinion at all; I’m just enjoying the free ride while I can.

Apparently Spanish isn’t that difficult to learn compared to English, so keep that in mind before you judge me as lazy – I learned to speak English, one of the hardest languages, when I was a toddler, and I didn’t have the benefit of textbooks or dictionaries. I learned the whole thing by ear, such was my passion for language, and I think I deserve due recognition for that. Don’t ask me for an encore presentation, because that’s not how I work – David Blaine only levitates like once per episode, remember? It’s very stressful.

I am a lot of things – verbose, right-handed, tall, hungry – but bilingual is not one of them. My priorities, I guess, lie elsewhere. Residents of Latin American countries (about which I now know quite a lot, thanks to the cultura section in my textbook) and all speakers of Spanish, please don’t take this personally – it’s not you, it’s me.

Truman Capps still can translate “Feliz Navidad!” if you ask him nicely.