Bad Decisions

I didn't do myself any favours by snubbing ILCE, I realize - too late. When I arrived in Spain, I decided not to take any classes from ILCE - basically, classes about Spain and Spanish for foreigners - at all. The main reason was that they cost extra - quite a bit extra, too, especially if you want to take any of the cultural classes like art history or specialized literature (read: the ones I would be more likely to get transferable credit for). I felt annoyed and deceived that I would have to pay a supplement while already paying full tuition to my school back home, so after some contemplation, I snubbed the program altogether, opting instead to enroll in all of my classes directly through the faculty of communication. (Another option that most Erasmus fill their calendars with are classes taught in English... but again, many of these were low level, and my Spanish was good enough to pass courses taught in Spanish, so why not?)

Looking back, it's not that I regret trying to take some 'authentic classes'. It's more that I might regret - just a little - snubbing the typical Eramus fare altogether. A mixture, I realize in retrospect, might have been better... here's why.

1.) Spanish Proficiency: I'll start with this one, because it's the one that has surprised me the most, and which I think is least obvious. I would have guessed my Spanish would have improved the most being directly enrolled in Spanish-taught courses with Spanish students. But did it work out that way? I've heard the upper level ILCE courses are quite good, after all, and more than once I got the feeling that I would be benefiting from actually studying a bit of Spanish. I think that if I was learning new vocabulary and grammar as I went along, they would stick like never before as I saw them all around me. Instead, though, while my art history courses were taught in Spanish, the Spanish was (of course) never explained - and I didn't exactly have the time and energy to examine the professor's grammar and word choice - I was too busy trying to learn art history!

2.) Cultural Insight: This one is similar to above. I actually did take one course in English, Language and Communication (basically entry level linguistics). I learned more about Spanish culture in this class, a small group about half composed of foreigners, than I did in the journalism courses where I was the only non-Spanish student. Why? Because in the Journalism school, they take the cultural differences for granted - they don't pause for them, they don't explain them, and most of them are so subtle at this level that they can easily slip over my head if some juxtaposition doesn't pull them out. Looking back, classes taught in English by a Spanish professor to a group of mixed students may actually pull out the cultural divide much more clearly.

3.) Isolation: I thought I wouldn't miss being in class with the other Erasmus students. Wouldn't we naturally bond anyway? Yes and no. I developed a core group of friends I kept pretty close with, even if the way we first grouped together was half coincidence. I had my roommate Jaime, of course. And I went to lots of the events, so I would see people there and have fun. Still, I often got the feeling that I was late to find out about things, that I was a little bit out of the loop. It took me a while to figure out exactly why - that so many parties and trips were planned around the cafeteria table between ILCE courses.

You might argue - well, didn't you get to know Spanish students better? Again, this is sort of yes and no. The Spanish students on the whole aren't super keen on the idea of making best friends forever with someone who speaks their language slowly and who is only staying around for four months - and who can blame them? They can be very nice and helpful, but moving up to feeling comfortable sitting next to some one is a fairly tough step, and moving up from there to meeting outside of class is a bigger one, one I only started to glimpse approaching in the last weeks.

Now, with this last one I do have a sort of alternative suggestion, if you really want to chase the Spaniards around. This is - realize that classes here are arranged much more according to year than back home. I was basically an idiot - I chose one course from year two, one course from year three, and one elective (not counting my one course in English, which was also a year one class, and my Euskera course that was in a seperate department) - altogether, I saw five different groups of people in my classes - one in each class - and all of them were different than the group I was seeing at organized parties and activities. This is not the best way to really get included in any one group. My advice would be to pretend to be a second or a third year student, and sign up for all of your classes with the students from those years - that way you'll see the same group again and again, maximizing your chances of making some real Spanish friends. You'll also avoid a lot of musical-chairs-esque stress, as professors often assume that all of their students are the same year, with the same classes, and frequently switch these classes assuming it won't be an issue - whereas I often had a DIFFERENT class at that time, and missed a lot of class this way. :(