There is a good reason why I haven’t been posting much lately! I’m very busy having a nervous breakdown, due to the upcoming Module 3.1 exam.
Oh, when I look back on how naive I was about a month ago when I first began this class… I thought that being in the most intensive program would be FUN! I thought it would be a challenge and I was so excited! Now, I’m having anxiety dreams and I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of some random Danish phrases, having no idea what they mean.
I get about 40 to 50 new vocabulary words per day, plus a new grammatical concept just about every day. On Friday we did future tense, but now it’s Monday, so we’re on to past tense. Yes, we’ve had the basics. We learned how to introduce ourselves, how to talk about our family and our day. We leaned the numbers and how to tell time. We’ve learned possessive pronouns and reflexive pronouns. Singular and plural. The two genders in Danish that aren’t really genders. We’ve also learned about inversions and assimilations. Sometimes we learn words that can’t be translated (like gerne). All this in about a month.
Correction: we were taught all this in a month, but whether we learned it or not remains to be seen. I spend between an hour and two hours per day doing homework and repeating and repeating and repeating. I spent a small fortune on index cards (have over 500 by now). I am at my wit’s end.
Now, I just want to say, to any prospective future Danish students, this is just me. There are students in the class who are much better at this than I am. There is one 18 year old German girl who speaks four languages fluently and plans on learning Mandarin. There is a French guy who seems to know everything and instead of paying attention in class he usually just looks at Instagram on his phone. There is a couple from Iran who either have been in this country five years or had taken this class before. There is a Lithuanian woman who seems not to stress about this at all and shrugs when I tell her about my anxiety. There is another smart German girl in the class and a very studious Italian girl as well. There are two Polish women (one more dedicated than the other). And then there is me, bringing up the rear.
Today I went to the school office to ask about transferring to an easier class. The office staff was very reluctant to give me any information about this. They suggested I talk to one of my teachers. So I did. He was very concerned and said he’d talk to the other teacher. Then he gave me a pep talk. He said the exam will be easy. I will pass, for sure. And if I fail, I can then go down a level.
I am trying to prevent failure! I would rather get into an easier class and succeed (although you could say that switching classes is a failure in itself) than stay in the advanced class and fail!
Well, two more weeks to go. Send me your thoughts and prayers.
Post-Amerikan 