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duck-shaped pain

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25 June 2003
Smaller numbers, bigger tenses.

I went to see the doctor a few weeks ago, to take care of a severe wax buildup in my left ear (I couldn't hear anything out of it except for very low, drony sounds, which means that at work, I could hear the laser printer, microwave, air conditioner and hard drive, but not hear anyone speaking to me -- fun). While I was there, I had to get weighed and poked and prodded like usual. The nurse, who was looking at my chart whilst this was all going on, remarked to me, "It seems that you've lost some weight." I told her that I had, at least based on the available evidence (clothes getting too big, random commentary from family and friends), since I don't own a scale. "Well," she replied, "going by what you weighed last time you were here and what you weigh now, it looks like you've lost around 25 pounds." I was surprised (that seems like a lot), but ultimately pleased to have some sort of number to roll around in my mind.

I'm taking the next semester of Spanish this summer as an independent study, and it's turning out to be quite a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. I got talked into doing this by one of my professors, after finding out that the Spanish class I planned to take in the fall (the one that I am doing the work for right now) conflicted with one of the history classes I really wanted to take. He was adamant that I should take this Spanish class, yet being that the history class in question was Latin American history, couldn't very well argue that I would be better off not taking it. So he originally proposed that I take the Spanish class as independent study in the fall, which was okay with me. But after passing his proposal through some of the other faculty in the department, he came up with a new plan, which was for me to do the work on my own this summer, and then take the Advanced Spanish Conversation class in the fall, which I ended up agreeing to, even though the idea of that class scares me a little.

Anyway, I thought I would enjoy studying Spanish on my own this summer, and I have to some extent, but I find that there are some things about it that are odd or majorly difficult:

1. I'm at the point in the book that Spanish gets all weird, with its jillion subjunctive tenses, and the book I'm using doesn't explain many things well at all. Were I in a class, I would be getting a better explanation of why this is like this and why you use this tense here except for when you don't.

2. Part of the reason I hate Spanish classes is because I'm always surrounded by slow people, or those who make lots of mistakes. I realize now that I actually learn a lot from listening to other people make mistakes, as well as being corrected on my own.

3. There are a lot of other things that sound more appealing in the summer than studying Spanish. Even when I do feel like studying, it's a lot easier (and maybe more instructive, given the sparseness of explanations in my book) to just turn on Telemundo and drink beer.

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