Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Hint to those taking foreign language classes: When teachers want you…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Hint to those taking foreign language classes:
When teachers want you to converse but they haven't set up anything for you to talk about, they'll ask you to talk about yourselves and what's going on in your life.
LIE.
Don't tell your classmates your real plans or problems. First of all, they're usually not your friends, so why entrust them with your private life? Second, you don't know the language, so you won't be able to communicate the subtleties of your situation, so you'll get frustrated, as I did today. Today's discussion got both invasive and boring -- amazing! -- so I left. I wish I had left or spoken up earlier, to protest how invasive the questions and comments were getting. Don't make my mistake.
