Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Saved the best for last

As with the physical science requirement and the gym requirement, I saved yet another college inevitability for my senior year: Making a complete and utter fool of myself in a class. So today was my first time at the weekly Political Cultures of the Left, since I'd been away when it met during first week. I hadn't read the description, but saw that it was listed as a history class and thought, "I'd like to know the history of the left." I got to class and began noticing that my classmates were speaking to one another primarily in Spanish. The thought crossed my mind: What if this class is taught in Spanish? But I felt like this wasn't the thing to ask--what if it just happened to be the case that many Latino or Spanish students were in the class, or if it had a focus on a certain region (like a couple French classes I've taken) but was nevertheless taught in English. I wasn't sure how to bring this up, so I asked one of my classmates what books had been assigned (hint, hint, what language were the titles in?) and he didn't remember. Had there been a syllabus? No. So then I asked another classmate what language the readings were in. "Both," he said. Both? "What language is the class taught in?" I finally asked. "Spanish." So I said, "Oh no, I should leave then, I don't know Spanish." At which point my classmate said, "Not even a little?", to which I unfortunately had to respond, "None." He kindly offered to help translate stuff for me, but I explained that it was a hopeless cause and walked out, dejected, onto the Midway, wearing an outfit (jeans, black boots, black 3/4 sleeve shirt) completely inappropriate for the hot Chicago day.

2 comments:

Libby Pearson said...

So what was the class? It couldn't have actually been Political Cultures of the Left?

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

Yeah, that was the class. I have no idea how everyone knew it was supposed to be in Spanish.