There’s One in Every Class
Today I had a pretty shitty day. Perhaps I am hormonally imbalanced, (it has been known to happen from time to time) but I think a lot of it has to do with my new class and one person in particular.
A couple weeks ago I was complaining that my class was too small and I was tired of doing all of the homework. Well, this week we got a new teacher (he is a bit unconventional, but I don’t have any problems with that) and 7 new people joined our class. This made me happy because I no longer felt like the full responsibility of class participation was on my shoulders. However, sometimes I feel like I am the only one that knows what is going on and one of the new people in particular (let’s call her Olga) is really trying my patience!
Our class evolved from a simple Mittlestufe III class to a TestDaF Preperation course. This was done because all of the people in my earlier class are planning to take TestDaF and the school was planning on offering such a preparation class anyway. At this stage, technically we are supposed have learned all the German grammar that we need to know to pass the TestDaF. That isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be practicing it, but learning grammar should no longer be the issue. Well, Olga was bitching about the fact that we had spent two days doing reading understanding but hadn’t done any grammar exercises so that we could learn grammar.
Personally I wasn’t complaining that those silly fill in the blank grammar exercises had been abandoned in favor of reading understanding. I find that one of the best ways for me to really understand the grammar is to see it in the context of something that I am reading. And besides, reading understanding is a HUGE part of TestDaF and though Olga acted like she understood everything we were reading, when it came down to discussing it, it was obvious that she had no clue!
And then another person in the class was having a hard time understanding why a physically disabled person could not participate in ballet. (Don’t ask; it was a weird exercise.) The problem was that he did not understand the German word for ballet (which incidentally is Ballett; I have no idea what it is in his language). Therefore the teacher was trying to explain concept of ballet to him so he would understand why a physically handicapped person could probably not do it. (This involved me modeling the five ballet positions because apparently I was the only one in the class that had taken ballet lessons.)
Now the teacher probably took a little longer explaining than necessary, but the important thing is that eventually the guy understood it. However, at the break Olga had a fit that the teacher took so longer explaining a concept that “everyone” should know.
Take Olga’s smugness, add a headache, and simmer for five hours and the result is an officially crappy day for the blondelibrarian. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to bed where I have officially declared a dumb-bitch-free zone.
