brain wiltage

So, I just sent off a bunch of postcards. I'm horrible at postcards. It's not meaningful communication—what can you write in a two-inch square that means anything? Seriously. But the people demand postcards, and so they shall have them. And so, looking for things to write on said postcards, I ended up putting something about my classes on most of them, saying things like, "My classes are really interesting, and I'm learning a lot!"

This is a lie.

Honstly, I'm almost starting to hate my classes here. They're So. Fricking. Dull. There's virtually no student-teacher interaction, beyond the occasional "¿Me entienden?" ("Do you understand?") from the professor. (This is less true in my grammar class, in which the prof at least tries to put a "conversation" section into each class, but honestly, she usually ends up dominating the conversation herself. I don't know if this is more her fault or ours.) And sometimes when they ask if we understand a word, even if we all nod and say "yes," they still feel the need to go on and explain it anyway.* For example, in art history the other day, the prof used the word "efímero," which means "ephemeral." It's the same word, and it has the exact same meaning; he even said (in Spanish), "I think this word is the same in English, yes?" and we all said yes, it was, we knew it, we understood, but he went on to explain thoroughly anyway, using examples, and then returned to explain it twice more before the class was over. I mean sure, it's probably not something that we use in everyday conversation, but we are college students here—sometimes I think they forget that. Just because our level of language isn't so great, doesn't mean we're stupid. And we said we understood; I promise, we're not going to lie about not getting something—we want to understand.

And we have no homework. Now, if you know me at all, you'll know that usually this is something I would celebrate. But we don't have class work either. We don't do anything. (Grammar class is again the exception here; we've had a ton of workbook pages and a handful of mini-essays there.) I really want to know where our grades are coming from, since we're not expected to talk in class, and we've had exactly one assignment each in Spanish novel and contemporary Spain, and absolutely nothing in art history (not that I get a grade for art history, since it's an audit, but still, I'd be interested to know). When I get back to Knox, I think I'm going to fail all my classes because I will have forgotten how to put forth effort in anything that's class-related.

Well, I have to go to class now. Art history, as luck would have it. Guess what? I bet we don't do anything. In fact, we probably won't even talk about art. (We don't always. It's kind of ridiculous.) *sigh*

_{*The art history prof is by far the worst in this category, but the others do it too sometimes.}