Flat-Out Swimming

Written by Jadon:

At this week’s graduation cameras did come out—and a cellphone playing pomp and circumstance—but I’m not surprised, because our class covered every grammar lesson I have ever learned and did it in only five days. (Ps. Having been an English major in college, I’ve sat through quite a few grammar lessons.)

Okay, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. We didn’t have to diagram, thank goodness, but I think everything else was crammed in there somewhere. Seriously, our teacher told us on the first day that when she showed her syllabus to the program director, the director laughed and asked if she was being realistic with how much content she could cover in five days.  Well, we managed to hold to the syllabus, but at some point the brain reaches the limit of how many fancy terms and minutely specific rules it can grasp, and the new info starts dancing jeering circles around your comprehension and memory. As one of my classmates said Friday before lunch, “I don’t think there is any point in pretending that I am still bailing water.  At this point I am flat-out swimming.” (I paraphrase of course. I didn’t write it down on the spot.) But that is how we all felt. From the best of us to the worst of us, by Friday we had had enough.

But despite the blurring pace, everyone contributed and asked question, and we all helped each other, even on the breaks—of which there were many so our brains didn’t solidify into rocks—and we all learned so much about grammar and about how to better help our ESL students understand the English language. And yes, there were audible groans by the end when we had to delve back into yet another grammar topic, but we survived, and we very much earned our golden-embossed seals on those diplomas.

 So hopefully, my brain will get to slow down over the weekend, and will quit thinking about infinitives, modals, past participles, and whether or not to include the “that” in adjective clauses. I have just learned/re-learned so much in the last two weeks, and I’m crossing my fingers that it will all stay up there long enough to get used. And there’s one more class to go…but at least this time I get to take Brittany with me.