My German Lessons

Bitten off more than we could chew here, and for what, to get more girls to notice you? Oh well, it’s still NOT for naught, I suppose…translated…

It was the year I’d passed my entrance into my doctoral program, my roommate K dragged me with excitement, to take up a foreign language, on one hand, we can have another language added to our résumé, secondly, we can, add something new, to our life of experimenting in the laboratories. And, the ratio of men to women at our university was seven to one, and, the of the one, ninety percent of the female students are studying in the foreign languages department.

on a blackboard, found online…

Because of this last point, I was, moved, and so, I’d, decided, to audit the German courses. Why German? K said, that Japanese is too ordinary, and they didn’t have French lessons, and, wasn’t Einstein born in Germany? As science majors, there’s, a high chance, that we may, go to a German-speaking country in the future.

And so, I’d, carried my heart of excitement to class, there were, forty, fifty students in the class, over sixty of the student population were girls. Since I’d started in an all-boys school back in high school, I’d, not seen this scene. We’d bought the readers, the study guides, the German-Chinese dictionaries, the references, we’d become, so excited, as if we were, first graders entering school for our very first day. After class, we’d, given each other boosts, and decided we would, get together to listen to the teaching tapes, to quiz one another, to do the workbooks together, and our days were, very fulfilled, and, we’d become, different from those brute guys in the labs, scratched their scalps, sitting in front of the computer, and sighed on how they can, find the formulas for the programming they were writing, sighing, or cussing, or, just playing video games.

adults, sitting in a German class, photo from online…

The German instructor was a young woman, back then, we were, 25 to 26, and the instructor was, 30 at most, very western, dressed very baldly, with her personality, showing in the way she dressed, made all the girls in the class, barely, noticeable, and we, not having seen the world yet, were, awed by her.

The teacher held her class with great ease, but she’s, very focused in her lessons, and would quiz us in class often. At first, we’d felt, motivated, and as we sat there in class, we were, enjoying, this new found scent of something we’d never encountered in our science courses. But, after a few weeks, the fierceness of German started showing its face, the tenses, are hard enough, we’d, had it in English, and there’s, the masculine and feminine forms too, that’s no fun at all. The math formulas already had us, stretched out too thin, and, even if we’d, scratched our scalps until they’d, bled, there’s, NO way we could’ve, kept up with the difficulties in the German classes that’s of, no values to us.

And finally, one time, we had, reviewed, and, thought that we weren’t, getting called. And, as the professor stomped around the classroom, we’d, lowered our heads to the point, our faces are, to the desks, our faces red, our ears, heated, our hearts raced too quick, and, the footsteps, they came, closer and closer, and closer, and closer, and, it’d, stopped before us. We’d acted like two chihuahuas, drenched, in the rain, in the glares of the younger college female students, we were, so ashamed we were, about to cry. The professor shook her head, almost sighed at us too, very lightly, but straight to the point, she’d stated, “Go home and review, okay?”

And so, naturally, this wasn’t, a class we can, blow off in, K said, upset, “So, I guess we can only, think about finding ourselves girlfriends AFTER we graduate then?” And, many years had come and gone, K and I were, both married, and had children, and, the German I took, only had two simple greetings that stuck with me, but they’d, often become, the icebreaker of the conversations I’d held with students in the German department. Thinking about that, the fools we made of ourselves, wasn’t, completely, for naught.

And this still showed, how everything you learn will prove to be useful to you in some ways, which is why you need to, take advantage of now, and learn new things, because you NEVER know when what you’d learned, that you felt to be, useless, may come in handy someday…