StandingWater Creations

It looks like I am on track to graduate from BYU in December of '08. This is rather exciting and not necessarily something that Erin or I thought would be happening. Why? you may be asking. Well, the English Department here in the College of Humanities at BYU has a second language proficiency requirement. This requirement, admittedly, is the result of wanting to be more competitive on the international stage and has existed for a lot of years.

You may be wondering why this is important. Let me tell you.

My first semester at BYU I took French 101 with the expectation that I would take French 102, 201, and finally the class that fulfills the proficiency requirement. However, by the middle of the class I was so far behind that there was no way to catch up. My intent was (eventually) to take French 101 again with the hope of doing better on the second attempt.

Then I met, dated, was engaged to, and married Erin who has a background in the Spanish language, in part having used it in England on her mission and in part having had it as a part of her undergraduate studies at The University of Scranton (before her mission and transferring to BYU). This meant that I could use Erin as a resource when studying. Good idea.

However, the outcome this semester was very similar (read the same) as the outcome my first semester here at the "Y". I am so far behind in a class I study for somewhat religiously that I have no idea, most days, what is going on. When Erin and I work on Spanish, very simple concepts of the language confuse me and don't make connections inside my head. Where I should be able to hold a rather simple conversation making syntactic connections in Spanish, I am lost and have trouble not only understanding what is being said to me, but also how to respond to those statements.

Realizing that I was in trouble (this is true of American Sign Language as well... I was never able to make the connections in what was being signed to what I needed to do to respond to what the response should be) and that my ability to graduate hinged upon completion of a requirement that requires me to not only pass, but move up in difficulty, a language, I realized that I had a few choices.

• Change schools.
• Change programs.
• Get a waver.
• Drop out and stop working toward a degree.

What most of these options meant was a) not completing what I came here to complete; or b) adding a considerable amount of time and money to the cost of getting a degree. Erin and I had discussed a couple of the options, most specifically changing schools, which didn't really sit comfortably with me, but was something I was prepared to do in order to graduate from college and move on with my career and personal goals/objectives.

So, after much frustration and personal reflection I decided to go and speak to the department. You see, I knew that this was a department specific requirement. BYU and the College of Humanities does not require every graduating student to have a second language proficiency. More, I knew that there had to be more people (than just me) who had trouble acquiring second languages.

I went to the department and in a verbal spew of information explained my frustrations, what had to happen, when I could graduate, and the lack of responsiveness I had, intellectually or mentally, to acquiring new languages. The lady I spoke with asked me to send her an email with the problem, suggested we may need to find out if I really do have a learning disability when it came to second language acquisition, and then said the department would make a decision in the next few days.

That was good enough for me. I wrote the letter, outlined my case, used every example I could to show that being at BYU was not difficult and that I could handle the regular coursework, nor was I trying to get out of something simply because I didn't want to do it, and how every instance of trying to learn a language had resulted in confusion, frustration, and annoyance (on my part) as well as the personal embarrassment of having to constantly ask for help and clarification in what was happening.

Six days passed and, at end-of-business on Tuesday night I received an email telling me that so long as I graduated on December of this year and fulfilled the Languages of Learning requirement (essentially a math requirement) that the department would wave the second language requirement and I could graduate.

Until that moment I didn't know I had a weight sitting on my shoulders. Granted, I was trying to figure out how to graduate and do it in the foreseeable future, but I didn't think it was weighing on me as much as that one area was. Yes, I still want to learn a second language. This is not just a matter of learning a language, but also proving that I have the ability to do something that, at the moment, it appears I don't posses the aptitude for this, but I know (because I have worked hard in other areas where I did not/do not possess aptitude) I can learn it... eventually.

However, at the moment (and this is good news) I can graduate without the stress of trying to learn Spanish or French or German or any other language. And I expect that I will be graduating from BYU with a BA in English come December of this year.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

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