nithin15 – Page 5 – Nithin's Blog

Episode III

Hello,

Tuesday marked the first day of classes at my university. With it, comes a new year of hopes, dreams, disappointments, and achievements. I am more than halfway done with college (this is my third year) and closer to ending college than starting it. In math terms, I am over 88% done with my educational career.

That sentence is scary, as I can no longer hide from the realities of the adult world in the ignorance of childhood. As much as I hope to leave the land of all nighters and stressful exams for the promised land of a fixed schedule and my own income, I know I will miss college tremendously not long after walking across that stage.

Given I still have two long years ahead of me, I am not yet out of the woods. But my fears of life after college are slightly dampened by my summer in Israel, which gave me a glimpse of the adult world, and how to survive it.

Mne-mon-ics

In the two weeks since I’ve last written, I’ve been learning Hebrew. At this point, I think the goals in my previous post are reasonable – I can achieve tourist level in the month I have left. However, I am doubtful that I can progress much beyond that, because of a lack of time.

I can ask simple questions (like what time is dinner?) and understand simple responses (7). I’m still at the point where any response I’m not expecting will throw me off, and I’ll have to ask them to speak slower, or revert to English. On Saturday night I went to a language meet-up hosted by Fluent TLV at the Abraham Hostel downtown. By the end of the night, I was able to have a 3 to 4 response exchange about where I’m from, how long I’m in Israel, and what I’m doing here.

Biking in the Golan Heights

I use whatever Hebrew words I know given the chance (I once asked for mushroom on a salad just because I was proud to have known the word for mushroom – pi-tri-yot). People on the program have also commented on my progress, saying I must be good at languages.

Hebrew Challenge

Shalom y’all.

When I was in middle school, I used to hide away in the mahogany lined study of my grandfather, reading blogs, forums, and books about learning languages. A particular influence was Benny Lewis of fluentin3months.com. He used to go to a new country for three months (the usual length of a tourist visa), fully immerse himself in the language (no English), and aim for fluency in the short time he had. He used language “hacks” such as mnemonics, memory palaces, and spaced repetition, as well as a relentless drive to use the language whenever he could.

Even when he fell short (like when he narrowly failed the German C1 exam), the level of achievement was mind-boggling for my 12 year old self. It inspired me to start learning Spanish outside of school, speaking to Spanish speakers every chance I got, and Skype-ing with people from other countries. I dreamed of all the languages I would learn and the dimly lit, smoky café back room I would visit on escapes from the gray, cold, western New York winters.

But just like everything else, I kind of got lazy and haven’t pursued that dream since.