Language + My Brain
Sometimes being an optimist is the hardest thing you can do. You don’t do well at sometimes, that’s okay, there’s always next time. The day goes from bad to worse; maybe that just means something amazing is about to happen. I get a bad grade, I’ll work harder and learn from it.
I knew I’d struggle with language before I even entered Italy; my streak of optimism faded in this area. I had already started doing Duolingo. I was completely oblivious to just how much of a deer in headlights I was. I had to arrive a week early, and that first week on campus, everyone would say, “Ciao! Buongiorno! Ciao, come stai? Ci vediamo, a dopo.”
At first, I would notice patterns: okay, so when someone says “Ciao, buongiorno,” you respond with “Ciao, buongiorno.” I can do that. But that was just the beginning. Quickly, people started speaking to me entirely in Italian. Within the first week, my trusty Knowt quiz app was filled with phrases I was trying to learn. I’d wake up, read the phrases, got to bed, read the phrase and ask people, “Mi dispiace. Repetere. Che cosa significa?” — I’m sorry. Repeat. What does that mean?
I started getting confident too. It felt like my brain was actually absorbing information, like I was beginning to comprehend. That is, until class began. On the first day of Italian, I felt semi-okay; I knew the professor was asking my name. But when they asked my age and where I was from, it completely went over my head.
A quarter of the way through the semester, the words just kept coming:
“Now we’re learning this today. Now add this to that. Remember this? Okay, now add this and this to make this.”
I wasn’t sure my brain could hold all of it.
The midterm came, and I made study guides, flashcards, and audio recordings of myself pronouncing words over and over. Today, I sat in class and realized that because I couldn’t comprehend one part, the rest of the class became complicated.
When I was younger, I got really sick and missed a chunk of school. I swear this is important. During that time, classes focused on grammar, prepositions, and the basics of how to structure a perfect sentence. By the time I returned, everyone was writing stories, talking about arcs and character development. The core of proper writing had just disappeared. It didn’t seem important anymore, and at the time, I wasn’t struggling.
Years later, in university, professors began pointing out my grammar. My sentence structure was unclear; I’d stop mid-sentence multiple times. Sometimes there’d be no subject, just an adjective. I’m not even sure now if how I’m describing sentence structure makes sense.
When I sit in these language classes and they start with prepositions or sentence structure, it feels like I’m learning three things at once: English grammar, Italian grammar, and Italian itself. Language is grammar — a series of lessons building toward a perfect sentence.
I wonder what it would be like to study a language without much structure. Is there such a thing?
Recently, a professor highlighted my use of diction, or rather, the lack of it. I’ve always been a writer, but that makes it sound like writing is the flaw. In part, yes. But in part, no. I thrive in stories and conversation. It’s when I try to sound smart, to feel like a fully formed, intellectual person, that’s when I start to feel hollow.
Maybe language just highlights that: this fear of people noticing the gap in me, the one I keep trying too hard to fill. Knowledge can feel so exclusive sometimes, like there’s a club you can’t join unless you already know it exists. To join, you must constantly take in information and adjust every second of every day.
Adjust.
But isn’t that just life?
Sometimes it really hits when you’re sitting in class and the knowledge that should be in your brain just isn’t. That’s when I feel the most stupid. Maybe someday I’ll learn so much that I’ll be the smartest person in the room. But then there’s another conundrum:
What’s the fun in being the smartest person in the room?
