school suxs

Today was a depressing day. I went to school. I didn't like it. I left. And I've had a big headache.

The school was an adult education class run by the city, "Svenska som andrat språk" - "Swedish as a second language". There were 32 people in the class, including me. But let me back up a bit. Last week was orientation for the new people. I didn't remember until late so I got there about 15 minutes after it was supposed to have started. I went to the room I was told to go to, and it was another class. I was very confused, as I often am when I'm doing things in Swedish, but eventually figured out that the teacher who was supposed to be doing the orientation for us was sick that day. It didn't matter that I was late.

I got a copy of the class assignments. The class itself started about 2 months ago so it's 1/2 way through. I then didn't know where to get the book, but the orientation staff (it was orientation for other classes) helped me out there. I got it, and over the last couple of days read through the text for today's lesson.

I showed up today. A bit late because I again had the wrong room, but that's okay as the teacher was also late. There were 32 people in the class, which is 90 minutes long. You can do that math yourself - about 3 minutes individual time per person. It's not worth my time to go to such thing. The Folkuniversitet classes aren't free, but the intensive courses meet every day for 3 hours and there's about 10 people in the class. Much more teacher time, much easier to ask questions.

It also seems that people are in the class in order to get the equivalent of a high school degree. There's worry about the number of points possible in the class - the points are needed for grade advancement, perhaps? Compare to the Folkuniversitetet course where 4 or 5 of the students were trained as doctors and wanted the knowledge to be able to do work in this country.

Once of the differences in pedagogy is that there are actual tests in the course I went to today. That, and the class environment, brought back some horrible memories of high school. I had forgotten just how much I did not like my English classes, and this felt like that. The Folkuniversitet course had at times worksheets to practice on, but that was all self-evaluated. So when I didn't like the problem set at least I could end it with "I didn't like it" and move on.

In ninth grade English class we learned about "diagramming sentences". I remember to this day, and continue to complain, about an assignment that started "have you every seen a pilot fish?". (another time I complained). I thought it was about pilots who fished, and I diagrammed it that way. Of course the other sentences were about "pilot fish" and sharks, but I thought they were just a bunch of random sentences and couldn't figure it out very well. I didn't do well with that assignment.

A few weeks ago in my Folkuniversitetet course we worked on an exercise to convert between passive and active. The text started with some sentences about how the Aztecs used cocoa and how it came to Europe. Swedish recipes are written in the passive voice so I interpreted the first few sentences to translate as a recipe. Which made the last three lines rather harder to interpret.

In class, on a different exercise we had to use "nog", "väl", and a few other words. Those are "probably", "well", and so on. In some cases it was hard to figure out which word to use, and indeed the teacher used a different word than the answer book used. With only 8 of us we could ask about different variations, and get feedback. With 32? No way.

Why the headache? I'm trying again to wean myself off of the juice of the Coke. Now I've caffeine withdrawl headache. Usually it only hits me about 24 hours after I stop, but this one came on a few days later. I tried earlier last year to stop drinking it and managed for a few months. But when I started teaching in South Africa I picked it up again. It's a sort of security blanket - more of a psychological addiction than the physical one. I started drinking Pepsi when I was in elementary school and it's pretty well associated with, say, late night hacking sessions. Though "energy drinks" appear to be taking over that niche.