Grin and bear it

Ok every blogger gets one. We all get to use our open forum to vent about one thing that makes us so ridiculously annoyed. Everyone has a problem that feels like shouldering the world when dealing with it. Be thankful I am not taking a moment to go off on a feminist rant or posting pictures of abused animals. (By the way, if you ever want to crack my hardened shell, put one of those animal shelter commercials on the TV. How horrible do you have to be to put an innocent animal in harms way?)

Before I take off in a tailspin, what really has me going is the lack of initiative within the United States's school system to require students to be fluent in a 2nd language BEFORE they reach high school. Because I am a product of the American school system (lucky as I was to attend Fryeburg Academy) I am not fluent in 2 languages. French and Spanish might come back to me if I spent some time in those countries, but I am not banking on it. My German is kind of coming along and I can read it ten times better than I can speak it. That is, when I am willing to speak it, b/c my accent is so atrocious I am afraid of offending any native that gets it out of me. I did however sign up for a language partner and am looking forward to being able to exchange conversations in both German and English to learn more and more.

So since I am not fluent in 2 languages I am very thankful that the classes I am taking out here are in English. My German counterparts however are not. This isn't because they have difficulty speaking English - most of them speak it better than American's themselves, but the readings can be difficult when there are terms like the word embezzlement that don't translate to a German equivalent or presentations can be annoying when they're searching for an adjective and their list of English ones are limited.

The only reason this is at the forefront of my mind is because I just finished a presentation for one of my classes last week. As my group and I were practicing they kept looking to me for advice on how to pronounce certain words and the correct way to structure sentences. At the end of our practice session each individual group mate looked to me to approve how their presentation went with their English. Of course when you're doing something that isn't second nature to you, approval is always sought after, but none of my group mates needed it. They were awesome.

I can't imagine how they would feel if they were at an American university. Where no one's second language is German or really anything for that matter. I am lucky. It isn't too difficult to get by out here. 7 times out of 10 people speak English and it is rarely broken. On the other hand though, how on Earth would any student get by in the US?

Don't get me wrong, I am a proud American and it is really convenient that English has been designated as the language of business, but I am really annoyed that so many European countries have their students studying foreign languages (notice the plural on that word) at such a young age and the US just overlooks it. I now understand why parents spend thousands on private schools at an elementary age for their kids back in the States. It's to ensure that their kids are offered things like a language program that just isn't offered in mainstream education.

I know I am double booking my language partner and when I get home and find myself with free time, I am signing up for more language classes. I never want to be looked at to approve something simply because I was born into it. I want it to be because I worked hard for it, like everyone else around me!