Taking the “Mother tongue” for granted
So as those on campus right now at Concordia are either gearing up for finals or packing to go home, I am starting my second week of classes of my second semester here in Jena. The weather is getting warm, it’s not raining (at the moment!), and it’s getting really hard to go to class. However, as STUDYING is part of a study abroad program, I am willing to put in the effort to learn something here in Jena.
One thing I have found interesting here is that no one really buys books. At least not those in the classes I have taken so far and those I am taking now. No, instead the professors will either lecture you for the whole hour and a half while the students take furious notes, or there is more of a discussion class where one reads a few texts or articles before going to class and then talk about them.
I am taking a mixture of both classes…and thank goodness since my discussion class on Women in the Second World War has a HUGE three-ring binder full of articles to read for class (I’d say it’s a good two to three inches thick).
But hey, I go to Concordia. We read books in a couple of weeks and write papers at the same time…and that’s only in one class! I can handle it! But wait…those books and papers and articles at Concordia are nearly all in English.
I say nearly all because I typically also take German classes on campus and yes, those texts are in German. So I hate to say it, but when the German students here at the University complain about how much we have to read for this one class, I somehow have little to no sympathy for them. Here they are, reading a text from WWII in their mother tongue, probably watching soccer at the same time, or chatting on the phone, or typing to their friends on ICQ (basically AIM or MSN messanger) and are then done in a few hours. And then there’s me…I look at these two or three articles that are about 30 to 40 pages each in length, and know that if I want a good understanding of these articles, I am going to need to start reading them about 6 days in advance. And not only that, I get the opportunity to sit on the floor (something Germans find strange) as my desk doesn’t have enough space so I can sprawl out my binder with the articles (though now I just take them out one at a time), two different color pens and highlighters (one for important passages, the other for the words I don’t know), my thick German dictionary which still doesn’t always have the words I need, and a notebook for any other comments or questions I think up along the way. And while the German students can have these distractions, I am typically sitting on my floor with no noise at all.
I have yet to figure out what happens if one shows up to class and has not finished the articles, though yesterday during our discussion on the three we were supposed to read, I felt a bit lost as the German students still use many words I don’t know and it’s nearly impossible to look up every word you aren’t sure of. So most of the time it’s just “guess at the meaning of the sentence and hope it’s right”!
Thank goodness classes here are just once a week….I think I would go even more crazy if they were two or three times a week like at Concordia! And with that said, I am off to read a bit more of these articles before heading off to my next class: a German as a Foreign Language class: Landeskunde Deutschland. Those classes are always fun - one is always meeting others with the same struggles as you! And don’t get me wrong…the articles are actually interesting and I’m not complaining that I have to read them. 
Have a great week all!