Losing K's Language Requirements

I am an excellent student. I’m not trying to brag; there are many characters flaws I possess. However, being a bad student isn’t one of them.

I have always prided myself of my academic ability. That is, until early in fall quarter of this year, as I sat in my first day of class in Spanish 201. Described as “grammar intensive” it was a class I had been putting off throughout K.

I have never been particularly gifted in Spanish. In high school, I could study for hours for tests, and yet, when I sat hunched over a desk filling in grammar rules during an exam, the words and letters seemed to mix together on the page. While the level of effort was usually proportional to the grade I received in courses, this was never true in Spanish.

Fast-forward to this year to that Spanish 201 class. I have never felt so frustrated by anything in my life. In the ensuing weeks, I spent hours studying the grammar rules and problem sets I was assigned. I studied by myself. I studied with other students in my class. I would use flash cards, I would write and rewrite conjugations. I looked up websites that would help me study tense conjugations. I made an extra effort to speak in class and in lab. It didn’t matter: none of it worked.

As hard as I worked, I received the worst grades I have ever gotten in my life in that class.

Desperate and without another alternative, I walked into Zaide Pixley’s office hoping that I might be able to convince my instructor I could take the class pass/fail. I described my struggle and the frustration I was feeling. Mostly, I confessed my biggest worry. What was wrong with me?

With Zaide’s encouragement, I withdrew from the class. I was also scheduled for an appointment with Dr. Alan Hill, in the counseling center, to begin testing for a language learning disability.

Over the next three weeks, I took over 8 hours of testing, which varied from arranging blocks into different shapes to defining different vocabulary words. The activities at first seemed a little silly, and I often felt a little self-conscious, but I knew that I needed to figure out what was wrong.

The good news is that I am actually pretty intelligent. Much as Zaide had suspected however, the testing revealed that I do indeed have a learning disability. As this was explained to me, I realized so many of my study habits and quirks were ways I had invented to compensate for the disability.

What explained my challenges in language was my percentile score in foreign language aptitude. Out of college seniors nationwide, I had scored in the second percentile.

In light of recent discussion on campus about academic requirements, I think it is really important to remember that students have different strengths and weaknesses. Why should students be pushed into classes that can quite possibly test every area of their weakness, as opposed to allowing them to pick classes that can fully develop their strengths?

As of this quarter, I have been granted permission to substitute the language in light of my learning disability. And I began this year being someone who did not “believed” in learning disabilities. It has been a rough process, but I am testimony for why we should take into account different needs and different academic orientations. Education is not, and should not be, a “one size fits all” kind of thing.