How I got here
One of the requirements for a BA in Honors History is the completion of 6* senior language credits (meaning a prerequisite of 6* introductory-level language credits). It is this stipulation that nearly kept me from applying to the program - in fact, it did cause me to shy away in my second year, which is when most students apply.
It wasn’t until the end of my second year (2020), when I had garnered some confidence in my academic abilities and more-or-less suppressed my anxieties about learning a language (I struggled through just enough high-school French to know that new languages do not come easily to me), that I plucked up the courage to apply.
Fast-forward a couple years, and I am counting my lucky stars that the language requirement didn’t keep me from applying to the program best suited to my interests and career goals. So if you, like me, have lost sleep fretting over whether or not you will be able to pull it off, I hope you don’t let it stop you from giving it your best shot.
“Why Latin? Isn’t it a dead language anyway?” Is generally how people react when I mention what I am studying. My answer to both of these questions is easy: my focus of study is the history of medicine–herbal/botanical medicine in particular. Not only is Latin more useful to my particular research than any other language, but it is also actively used in botany and medicine to this day (and therefore not dead at all). In other words, this wasn’t a challenge I could shy away from facing.
Now, I don’t wish to scare anyone off of Latin or classical languages. I feel quite certain that I would have faced a challenge with any language I endeavored to learn (as I’ve mentioned, I gave French an honest shot once). Latin was not the problem - my own unrealistic expectations for myself were the root of my trouble. That being said, Latin became the bane of my existence - for a time, anyway.
How it started
The very first Latin course I took was an asynchronous online lecture in the peak of the pandemic. I worked on every assignment from the comfort of my own home, with charts upon charts of tenses, conjugations, declensions and miscellaneous rules pasted to the wall above my desk for reference. I had access to an online dictionary, which offered considerably more detail on demand than any physical copy of a translation dictionary ever could.
I focused on understanding the concepts in English, and forgot to memorize the nuances of the language. I knew that the subject of a sentence takes the nominative case. I could not tell you what words looked like in the nominative - I had not committed the many case endings to memory. What need was there? It was all displayed before me at my workstation. I got a B+ in the class.
The next intro-level course progressed in the same way. I continued to use the various resources that I always had at hand, while doing my best to comprehend the new materials we were covering. But I still hadn’t committed to memory those basics from the first class, so my foundation of understanding wasn’t what it should have been. I participated in class whenever I could and convinced myself that I would never need to memorize the basics, because I was growing so used to the convenience of consulting my resources.
Anyone who has studied a language will know already that I was kidding myself to think I could reference an ever-growing binder of notes in a remotely effective manner. I was losing valuable time ceaselessly flipping through page after page of explanations and rules that I had carefully filed away without actually storing much of it in my head. My grade hadn’t slipped yet, but I feared that it would when I entered my first senior level course.
How it went
On September 2, 2022, I attended my first senior level Latin class. I was handed a worksheet to demonstrate my current level of understanding. It asked if I was familiar with the passive voice. I confidently wrote ‘yes.’ The next question provided a noun and a verb, and asked me to demonstrate my knowledge of the passive voice by using them in a sentence. I stared at the paper. I went back to my previous answer and added an ‘ish’ to my overconfident ‘yes.’ Then I wrote “I’ll be needing some review for this, sorry!” and sheepishly handed the worksheet back.
When I left the class, I called my mom. What better to do in a panic? “I don’t think I belong in that class,” I lamented, feeling hopeless and dumb. Always the voice of reason, my mom pointed out that others had probably doubted themselves that day too. As I assured her that everyone else was able to answer the professor’s questions without hesitation (or at least it had seemed that way at the time), I felt like I was being transported back in time to my first year of university, before I had built any confidence in my learning ability. I remembered how frequently I had voiced these same feelings back then - that I didn’t feel like I was smart enough, that it didn’t matter how hard I worked or how many hours I spent trying, I just wasn’t cut out for this. I thought I had rid myself of that feeling years ago.
I felt frustrated and angry that I had gotten myself into this position. This was a challenge I had taken on to prove to myself that I was capable, and instead it had me doubting whether or not I was.
In fewer words, I soon explained how I was feeling to my professor after class. He was sympathetic to my plight, recognizing that online schooling the past couple years fostered a different learning environment, and it was making for a challenging transition for a lot of students besides myself. Oh, the relief. Then came the bad news. “But you really must have the basics committed to memory in order to move onto the more complicated concepts. I’m afraid that’s unavoidable.”
Again, I felt panicked. I thought about my massive binder of notes that I couldn’t possibly go back to memorize in time to keep up with the pace of this class. I didn’t know where to start - I didn’t even know what it was that I didn’t know. I needed help. For the first time in 5 years of university, after being accepted to an honors program and an aftergrad degree, I needed to hire a tutor.
How it's going
We went back to the basics. We reviewed concepts that I was familiar with, but hadn’t fully understood until working through them one on one with someone who was able to present the material to me in ways that made things make sense. My tutor taught me the study methods she had used when setting out to memorize the foundational content - sometimes it really is as simple as needing to tape it to your kitchen cabinets so it’s looking you in the face each day - and I started practicing them on my own. I have begun to depend less on my resources, and I am beginning to genuinely enjoy the challenge of what I am learning.
I’ve realized that is the difference between how I felt back then, and how I feel now - this time, I used the feeling as motivation to reinforce my commitment to learning, and to find help, rather than shying away from the challenge because it shook my confidence. But it wasn’t until I heard it from my professor that I was not alone in feeling overwhelmed that I was able to recognize just how hard I was being on myself. If there is anything to be learned from my experience (and it is not that Latin is too difficult to be worth it, I promise), it is that no challenge is worth doubting yourself over! It’s only a matter of finding another way to approach the problem.