Sal, spanish, and a whole lotta "huh???"

To fully comprehend what I'm about to tell you, I need to give you a bit of a background story. This story is about my abhorrence of learning a foreign language. And it goes something like this:

In 1998, following one good year with Madame Darnell learning the French language, I found myself as a sophomore in Sal's French II class.

For those of you who did not attend Lowell High School, you should probably know that Sal is Ms. Sally Allen (referred to as "Sal" by her own request). She kind of resembled Ursula from the Little Mermaid. Same hair, only kind of a deep purple color. And her class went something like this: Sal never left her chair but sat behind her desk the whole time due to her asthma condition. She read out loud from the book, occasionally we repeated things out loud. The majority of our time was spent doodling, coloring, or painting our nails (all things supplied by Sal and all things encouraged to do by Sal). We got water breaks every 10 minutes (according to Sal, our attention spans did not exceed 10 minutes at a time). During tests, Sal played Madonna's Immaculate Collection over our language lab headphones. If we received an "A" in the class the first 6 weeks, we were allowed to be a part of her "Independent Study" program for the rest of the semester.

I did get an A (hard to believe the entire class didn't get A's, but whatever) and was part of that Independent Study, as I was for the next semester as well. In fact, I was part of independent study every year I took French (3 years). This might sound like a good thing, until you realize that "independent study" really meant me and about 4 others sat out in the hall or in the middle of the pod and talked every day. We weren't required to attend class. All we had to do was take the tests. This meant all I had to do was NOTHING until a day or two before the test, when I'd cram the vocab and verbs just enough to get an A on the test. I'd forget everything the day after the test.

As a 15-17 year old girl, of course I loved this class. I sat at a table, never had to go to class, and socialized with my friends and random friends that came through the halls with hall passes. On many occasions we walked around the school and Sal never even knew we left. It was fantastic.

In retrospect, I didn't learn a damn thing.

Fast forward to 2001, I'm a freshman at USI and have decided that in order to fulfill my foreign language requirement for a BA I'd rather take Spanish than French. (Primarily for two reasons (1) I kept hearing how everyone speaks spanish nowadays and basically nobody speaks french in America and (2) I'm, like, really awful at doing that whole French accent thing. I sound sooooo stupid).

So I find myself in a Spanish 100 class. Surrounded by people who took 3 or 4 years of Spanish in high school (presumably NOT with someone like Sal). Not knowing what's going on. Also, not really caring. Because foreign language is a nuisance.

Once again, I find myself in my own kind of independent study since I can't understand what the teacher is saying and i'm way too far behind to try and really LEARN any of it. Instead, I cram just enough so I can pass the tests. Never really learning the language or being able to speak it.

For three years i did this, sitting in class, not really knowing what was going on. Listening to the instructor speak in spanish and desperately trying to pick out the words I knew (y, yo, mi, gracias, pero, adios...that's about it), feeling slightly panicked and also amused that I've managed to come this far and yet not really learn anything. Wondering if my poor foreign language study skills are a direct result of listening to Madonna during French tests. Blaming Sal for letting me paint my nails when I should have been conjugating verbs.

You get the idea.

Anyways, my point in this very long, very dragged out blog is that I haven't felt THAT kind of dumb since. I haven't sat in a class room, surrounded by people who knew exactly what was going on while I sat in dumbfounded silence.

UNTIL yesterday. And today. Because today was day two of nurse's orientation.

I know what your'e thinking. "Linda, I didn't know you were a nurse."

I'm not (yet). I've also never worked in a hospital before. Or anything along those lines. And school doesn't start until the Fall. But now I'm going to be an orderly (bathing patients) and for some strange, unknown reason I'm required to sit through nurse's orientation following general orientation.

And it makes me feel like the dumbest person alive. Surrounded by 30 nurses- watching power point presentations for 8 hours about drug-resistant organisms and catheters and central lines and infusions and blah blah blah.

I mean, I KNOW what a catheter is. But when the woman up front is asking the class to shout out what size cath you'd want to use for a blood transfusion and everyone yells out a number while you just kind of sit there wondering if they come in "small", "medium" and "large"- you're going to get kind of down on yourself.

Or when the instructor asks the class why it would be a problem to infuse 2 mL of whatever over a certain period of time and everyone yells out it would cause some kind of condition I've never even heard of before. And then the instructor says "Ok good does everyone understand that? Alright let's move on!"


I kind of want to raise my hand and be like "Ok....you know that I'm NOT a nurse, right? Why am I here."

I feel soooo uneducated and dumb! The good news is within a couple years I'll be an RN and will no longer feel like the dumbest person alive. The bad news is, until then I'll be plagued with this knowledge that I know less than basically everybody working at that hospital. I can't stand feeling inadequate.