Hey Bloggers!
Its the freshman again and life at Oxy have been awesome so far. I love my music class, the food is sweet, I have a job, and I have great CSP. But one little detail has been bugging me: I am a music major (or at least want to be one) so why I am taking Spanish 102? I went along with the college's requirements and took the placement exam and placed into Spanish 102. At first I thought I would be placed into 101; after all I haven't taken a spanish class since my sophomore year in high school and even that was hard fact to remember. Still, I muscled up the courage and I went class the first day. The class settles in and professor greets us with a warm,
"Hola". This is doable, I thought to myself. The basics of spanish slowly returned to me but right as I began to relax, feel comfortable, she says something along the lines of:
"Cifdkh Essjlhbdfug Me Cakdgfaudgh" (at her pace and my creative embellishment). Translated: She asked us
"Como estamos me clase?" Regardless, my heart slowly dropped into the bottom of my stomach as the rest of the class answered with various inaudible responses but at least words popped into their head. It wasn't until I arrived at music class again that I recovered from that class where nothing made sense, nothing seemed to fit, and comprehension was beyond my capability. Notes, rhythms, dynamics are things I can handle. The present and prederite tense? Forget it!
Anywho, like any halfway decent story there should be some thoughtful and inspiring point otherwise I am telling a story for the sake of telling a story. And my point is that after a much less frustrating and aggravating hour of my life, another classmate walking with me back to my dorm moaned,
"Why is theory so hard? It is like another language." That is when it hit me. Music is another language, like spanish. I took a step back and also thought about how weird it must look to other people. The musical alphabet has seven letter to represent notes. Tiny black dots representative of pitches and octave classes. Small upside-down triangles indicate how loud you are supposed to play. Different ways to play each song and different notes written in different clefs so the music makes sense. It is essentially a language. Spanish is just like that--different tenses to explain different situations. An alphabet so you know what sounds you are supposed to be saying and small little accent marks are used to indicate what sounds are supposed to be louder. In my revelation I also remembered that learning music was hard. In perspective, even a little harder than spanish. So I quit complaining. Music is an incredibly worthwhile endeavor as is learning a language--it just takes time. So moral of the story is to be patient and not to knock a class down before you try it.(More directed at freshman than all you wise upperclassmen who have already been here). So if any of you are on the fence about either of these classes, perhaps this perspective might help. Oh! By the way, my classmate lived in ecuador for a year and is fluent in spanish: she is helping me with spanish and I am helping her with theory!
Hope you are all having an awesome day and at the end of this term Podre a hablo espanol!
Best Regards,
A Freshman at Oxy
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