Today we had Martin the intellectual/revolutionary again. I did my homework for him, which was kind of confusing at first and even Saul was confused by the directions, but like the good student I am trying to be, I did it and even re-wrote it this morning in the cafe before my tango class.
We got to class and he checked it. Cynthia read every answer out loud and Nancy and I had to answer after Cynthia was finished. It was irritating that Martin was not doing anything to be democratic, but was letting Cynthia take control of the class.
We did something unmemorable after checking our homework, and then Martin said we were going to the multimedia lab to watch a video - he took us to the computer room and had us log on to You Tube. We found a strange video called "las callecitas de Vuenos Haires tenien eso se yo" or something like that (the streets of Buenos Aires have this I know). It was very strange. We watched it and then he told us to write something about our opinion of it. I had no idea what he wanted us to do. Before we went to the computer room we had looked at using the subjunctive for expressions of opinion. I thought this was what he wanted us to do, but I had no idea how to do it. I asked him again what we were supposed to do and he explained it again and again I didn't understand. Nancy had already started to write and had several paragraphs and I don't know what Cynthia was up to. I wrote a description of what happened in the video, but didn't know how to do whatever it was he wanted us to do, so I just sat there, and watched the video again to buy some time. Martin walked away from me and sat down in front of a computer and I saw a video about bunny critics that caught my eye. I clicked on that and there were these cute bunnies saying silly things. It was very funny and cute. I only got to see a little bit of it before Martin got up and came over to see what I was up to. Why was he checking on me and not Cynthia?
Anyway, I was busted. He just came up and took control of my mouse and shut down the bunny critics. He then said something about me being like a child, which I found very offensive. It's because his lesson was making no sense to me and I was rebelling by looking at bunny critics.
I guess he realized it was dangerous having us in front of a computer with cute bunny critics calling out to us, so he had us return to the classroom. He lectured us a little about something, and then had us read what we wrote. Come to think of it, I don't think Cynthia read anything. I was really annoyed by the whole thing because I really wanted to talk and not write. I am not here to learn how to write criticism of You Tube videos.
Because the video was related to the theme of city life, we were talking about the anonymity of life in the city. I could have killed Nancy when she asked Cynthia what it was like in China. Boy, talk about overgeneralizations! A country of how many millions of people, in Cynthia's eyes, everyone is exactly the same (even those Tibetans and Taiwanese who mistakenly want independence). So Cynthia went on this sterotypicalizing tirade about how in Buenos Aires people don't care about other people and if there was an accident people wouldn't stop to help, but in China everyone would stop. I was really at the point where I was just going to get up and go home, but I had an appointment to get a haircut and would have had to kill time if I left early.
We had a break and I saw Martin standing in line in the cafeteria as I was drinking my cafe con leche and finishing up my churros. Afraid that he'd come and sit down with me and try talking to me about my girlfriend (he asked me last week if I had one), I took my coffee up to the classroom before he spotted me.
When Martin came back to class, we dropped the subject of the video and moved on to some sort of grammar. We did an exercise which was difficult, but we were able to do successfully and then Martin started lecturing again on god knows what. He was suggesting that on Thursday he would review all of the tenses with us. Nancy told him that the problem for her was not that she didn't know the tenses, but that when engaged in a conversation, it is sometimes difficult to know on the spot when to use which past tense or to use the subjunctive or whatever. Martin agreed that this was difficult and for this reason he was going to review it all for us on Thursday. I was totally irritated at this point, and interrupted him (because it seemed like the only way I could get a word in) and told him that I had taken many Spanish classes and had many teachers "explain" things to me, but like Nancy said, at the point of using things like the two different verbs for "be" or the two different ways to talk about the past, or the subjunctive, the problem was that we needed more practice and not more explanations. I don't know if he heard me or not, but I have decided that on Thursday if I am not getting what I want, I'm simply going to tell him. My three little hours of class every day are the one for-sure opportunity I have to speak Spanish. And my goal is to be able to speak fluently - not to write, not to conjugate verbs, or even to improve my ability to listen to videos - I want to speak. Class time is for me a very important opportunity to have focused, supervised practice.
Claudia has been very good about providing that for us, but Martin wants us to be revolutionary/intellectuals and when we are not engaged in intellectual criticism, he has us sit and listen to his intellectual lectures, which really don't help me one bit. Since he insulted me and told me I was like a child, I guess I have to be more adult and tell him when his classes are not suiting my needs.
I was glad to get out of class today. I went and got my haircut, which linguistically, I was totally unprepared for. I managed ok, and ended up with a good haircut, but it would have been nice if my class had prepared me a little for this real life situation I was going to encounter rather than waste my time writing a criticism of some art student video.
Bah!
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