Lying on my cozily quilted bed with jellybeans, a bowl divorced of its spaghetti, and an empty bag of wheat crackers strewn around me is not how I envisioned spending my precious few hours away from class. Week two of my intensive summer Spanish course has lumbered halfway through its course, and so far the score is University: 1 Tired Student: 0.
Allow me to elucidate for you: intensive and intense may be adjectives alike, but to say that a three week language class is merely “intensive” is not as accurate as it may first appear to be. It is, in fact, intense. Intensive implies yoga in the park—challenging but refreshing. Intense promises a challenge but casts a supercilious glance of disdain upon the notion of refreshing. Intense is yoga in a tornado. It is as impossible as it is ridiculous.
On the luminescent side, learning to speak another language is an experience that reaches into your soul, slaps your complacent monolingual identity awake and shouts, “There are other people and other cultures out there, you lazy, satiable linguist-to-be. Don’t compromise your potential by living as if they never were.”
How many of you speak another language? How many speak Spanish? I admire each and every one of you. For those who were bi- or multilingual from birth, thank God and your parents for such a marvelous gift. For those of you who have experienced or are experiencing the linguistic haze that somehow equals food, healthy and otherwise, tossed across your own snugly coutured beds, I know your labor of cultural aspiration. As I reach for more jellybeans… oh, do I know.
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