Written by Madison Mauro, (American University) Student Correspondent CET Jordan: Intensive Language, Fall 2018
They say there’s a learning curve in studying a language but I think it’s more like dangerous terrain peppered with mountains, hills, and plateaus. I’ve read a lot of CET blogs—current and past—and while they always exude confidence and adventure, I’m always left feeling like something is missing: the imperfection of human experience.
I’ve learned that people are always opt to share the most successful and adventurous aspects of their life—heck, I did it just a blog ago. But what they’re more often reluctant to share is the reality of experience. It’s not all adventures traipsing around a new city and, while it’s certainly laudable that you made a new friend and were able to speak to them in an another language (which you absolutely couldn’t have done a month ago), that’s just not what happens everyday:
You either wake up and stare at the ceiling thinking إن شاء الله (God Willing) your professor cancels class or you’re excited and can’t wait to get to class to show what you’ve studied and learn more. You get dressed after much deliberation on deciding whether or not you want to feel uncomfortable and self-conscious all day about what you’re wearing because if you choose the wrong outfit, that would certainly mean more cat calls, stares on the street, and the occasional “Is my professor judging me?”.
You listen to music while you walk to the university because you can’t deal with cat calls that early in the morning but headphones don’t protect from the thousand yard stares you’ll still get that are perhaps more uncomfortable than someone yelling at you. You get a coffee at the Nesquik stand nearby and the man knows your order already because you’re a regular and the ease in which you exchange pleasantries in Arabic makes you feel a little better. You get to class and you either have a blast or you can’t figure out anything your professor is saying for some reason.
Your teacher either loves you and somehow you can crack jokes in Arabic or you’re silent for a majority of class because all you want to do is quit and you decided that about an hour into the class. Your professor gives you a Snickers bar three days in a row and you’re convinced it’s all because you made a joke about “Spooktober” in the beginning of the week (don’t judge me) but she refuses to acknowledge it (I wouldn’t either). You eat it and you think about how you don’t always feel like yourself in this program and maybe the solution is to just keep eating Snickers because you’re just not you when you’re hungry. At least three times a day you have the incredibly intelligent thought that maybe another solution is that if you just never speak again, you won’t have to speak Arabic.
You get out of class and you either want to crawl into a ball and sleep forever or you want to go out and explore the city with your friends—who you met in Jordan during that night adventure every student abroad seems to have. You speak only in Arabic while awestruck by the incredible bustle of the city. You leave strangely content and ecstatic that you learned at least two or three new colloquial phrases that day from what are definitely the coolest kids in Amman (“شو في مافي صاحبي؟”—“What’s up, my friend?”).
You go back to your apartment and immediately fall asleep because you stayed up so late the night before finishing your homework but now that means that you have to stay up late again to do homework because you just took a five hour exhaustion nap (I know, it’s a vicious cycle). You tell yourself you’ll go to the gym after but you’re not sure if you want to talk to the gym owner who always shames you for not coming enough but somehow in the end always inspires you to be a better human. You usually talk yourself out of it—الحمد لله (“Thank God”)—because the gym is naturally just an emotionally tumultuous time anyways and you certainly don’t need that right now.
You reluctantly and rather sadly meander over to the cafe by your apartment to do homework. But then you see the waiter who always welcomes you with a smile, a well-needed coffee, and a kind offer to help you with your homework and you suddenly feel much better. After studying for what feels like far too long but somehow not long enough, you stumble home and go to bed about three hours later than you should, wondering if tomorrow will be just a little better or just a little more of the same.
The phrase “Studying a language is a learning curve” is a little misleading. The reality is that learning a language is scribbles drawn on the wall by a kindergartner who has just discovered crayons. Learning Arabic in Jordan is like hiking uneven terrain and adding just a little more weight in your backpack everyday (think new vocabulary and grammar here, higher expectations and standards there, and a sprinkle of cultural shock). Everyday you’re carrying a heavier load that requires a different balancing act and occasionally you, not used to the new distribution of the weight, trip and fall. It might be a little scrape on your knee or you might fall all the way down the mountain you had just climbed yesterday, crowing and proud of your achievement that you had reached the summit.
The term “learning curve” makes you think of climbing higher and higher with no plateaus and only moving forward. But the fact is that you sometimes fall backwards down the mountain, sideways down the hill, and face first down the plateau (don’t question the physics—it happens when you’re learning Arabic).
By sharing the imperfection of the study abroad experience, I hope you don’t leave this blog discouraged or disappointed because I didn’t write about one of the many incredible and enriching adventures I’ve had here. I’m incredibly grateful for the experience and the opportunity to study abroad. Living and working in Amman is certainly something I would like to do in the future. Rather, I’m sharing in the hopes that someone is having the same human experience as me abroad and reading this is a little like writing it—cathartic and calming.
I hope it lets you realize that the fact that you fell face first down a mountain in front of what felt like two hundred people is totally okay (a little dramatic—it was really just the four people in your class). Because despite the fact that your ego and knees are just a little bit bruised, you eventually finish the hike stronger than when you started. And, at the very least, you got to eat some Snickers along the way.
Pictured above: A wee candid of my language partner, Aseel.