Selling Sno-Cones at the Beach

winding down

Well, the language school experience is winding down. Yesterday was our written final (a complete train wreck) and today is the oral final. I expect even more of a train wreck.

The basic problem is that unless I study for about 10 hours every day, I can't retain the volumes of vocabulary and idioms that we "learn" in class. It takes me hours and hours to learn new words, and I just haven't been willing to spend that amount of time. Sadly, I'll remember that we were "taught" the word, and sometimes I can even generate a first letter or sound, but that's about it.

I hope that's not evidence of my aging brain and its diminution of cognitive ability.

After my exam this morning, I plan to either walk around our neighborhood gathering my notes and information about the built form of the communist ideology. Or, if the weather is really nice, I'll go to the Old Town and stroll about, possibly have a drink in a cafe. It's been a very dry three weeks.

Then tomorrow is our river ride and then I think the farewell party (the faculty and staff are oddly ceremonial and sentimental about such things, even though they must do this several times every summer, year after year). Then Sunday is for souvenirs and packing, and I leave for Paris (!) before the crack of dawn on Monday.

Alas, with only a three-hour layover, there won't be time for sightseeing there.

Summing up: it was good overall that I came to this program. I showed myself that I could manage alone in a foreign country. I was way beyond my comfort zone, and handled it. I feel I have made some major potential breakthroughs in exploring dissertation topics and focusing on the kinds of questions that can be asked. I enjoyed the economics course (even though economics in my view is an extremely limited epistemology that claims far more than it delivers) and have lots of resources to investigate this fall.

But I have to say honestly that I didn't get a huge amount out of the language course itself. The grammar was entirely review, and thus pretty boring, whereas I had huge difficulties understanding the spoken language, and a lot of difficulty responding even when I could understand.

If I hadn't come, I would have regretted it and wondered what it would have been like.

I really have to think about how to manage the language work this coming academic year, what is realistic, and how that all squares with dissertation work.

Posted by otto0114 at August 12, 2005 12:08 AM