Gracias Profesor(a?)

I am overwhelmingly grateful for how patient and kind my Spanish professor is. Seriously, she deserves a medal or something. You see, I am in a Spanish class with several other graduate students who need to pass the same language comprehension exam in order to get our MAs. We're mostly American history and English students, so this language thing is a big pain in our you-know-whats. Luckily, the course is designed especially for us. All we have to do is translate written Spanish into English. "Como estas?" conversations or written assignments that read like a children's book ("el gato es negro y blanco...") are not our concern. Plus, the course is pass/fail or audit only, so we don't even have to hand in assignments.

But what we do have to do is go around in a circle and translate, and it can be tedious. I mean, we're in the class because we don't really know Spanish and we want to learn it in one semester (ha!), and we don't even really want to learn it but we want to graduate. So we go around reading the Spanish text aloud in English, but the professor must correct every other word we say (it seems) and sometimes we just stare at her blankly. I imagine we must be incredibly disappointing. And yet, she is always smiling and understanding. I don't know how she stands it, but I sure am thankful that she does.