I had no idea what I was doing, I just knew I wanted to be learning things again and back in a school environment. I had applied for Spanish Literature but when I arrived at OSU quickly realized that graduate school Spanish was a far cry from college literature courses and that it was not for me. I panicked. Then I went to meet with the dean and asked to switch to the Spanish linguistics program (even though I had only ever taken one linguistics course in my whole life). I am sure the dean thought I was completely nuts - who goes to grad. school without a focus or a plan? Me. I just wanted to be back in school. But they let me change and after a very stressful quarter of being on academic probation, I was in. And I loved it. Grad school was awesome and one of the best experiences of my life. I want to go back someday but I don't know what to study. Big surprise.
Being in China has been especially fun because I get to live on campus and be right in the middle of an academic environment. My first year I thought I could get by learning Chinese with my own motivation and hard work. I was wrong. It's really hard for me to learn a language without any kind of structure. I love learning in a classroom because of the constant interaction and competition. This year Sean and I are both taking Chinese classes and I LOVE it. I wish I would have taken them last year.
After some pressure on our supervisors (mostly from the hard-nosed Germans, I admit) our department decided to offer us some free Chinese classes twice a week on Wednesday and Friday. In addition, we still take a class with Max on Friday mornings and I take another class at a different university on Thursday nights. On Tuesday nights, my tutor comes over to help me with homework for the classes and go over the material that I don't understand. Not to mention the fact that I live with Qin Chen who is either constantly talking to me in Chinese or has her friends over and is always talking to them in Chinese.
My favorite class is the one at Changzhou University of Technology. I absolutely adore my teacher - she is great! She is from northern China and has been teaching foreigners for 7 years. Her English is not very good which is helpful because it means she has to always speak in Chinese. In addition, she isn't a big fan of pinyin (the romanized spelling of Chinese) so she only teaches using characters which is quite difficult. There are only 6 people in the class: a German, two Koreans, two Japanese and me. This makes things pretty hilarious since each of us have different problems with grammar and pronunciation.
The class is from 6-7:30 and when I leave I am completely drained - but I love it! We spend the first part of class practicing pronunciation, then we do some exercises like writing down dictations, putting tone marks over the right letters and pinyin spelling. Then she teaches us some new words and phrases and we practice dialogues and role play with our partners. Finally we listen to some Chinese conversations and answer questions about them. My partner is a middle-aged German named Gina. She is great and is becoming a good friend. What's even better is that she has her own car and driver in Changzhou so instead of the 1.5 hr. commute by bus for me to get to class, she picks me up 20 min. before class starts at the gate of my university.
It's really fun and interesting to go to class to not only practice Chinese but to see the Chinese teaching method in action. Instead of the Western methods of interaction, games, and a 'figure it out for yourself' kind of attitude, the Chinese method is very strict with lots of repetition, direction, rote memorization and not much room to express yourself, your opinion or be creative (about 5 min per class). Here's a sample of an exercise that we practice every class to work on our tone combinations:
lālā lālá lālǎ lālà lāla
lálā lálá lálǎ lálà lála
lǎlā lǎlá lǎlǎ lǎlà lǎla
làlā làlá làlǎ làlà làla
It makes me want to pull my hair out.
Her chalk writing is not so good though. 嘿嘿