German Drama

Yeah, I never thought I'd have to title a blog post that, but under the circumstances I guess that's the best name for it.

I had a scheduling conflict this semester between a film class I needed and a German class I needed that were at the exact same time, obviously. I registered for the film class, which also meant I had to get special permission to take another class in the English department that I needed that overlapped the separate film viewing time of the film class. Confused yet?

People in the modern languages department have been aware of this issue since the summer. I have talked with our advisor (who happens to teach Spanish). She told me that they did not want German Professor's absence to be a problem for their German majors.

Wednesday I sat down to have a conversation with the department head (who also teaches Spanish). During this conversation, she informed me that there was nothing the modern language department could do about my last three hours of German credit, and that I was just going to have to take a 33 hour minor as opposed to getting the 36 hours for the major.

The second time I was in her office that day, she decided to tell me, "Well, if you were going to go to grad school in German, and you needed to have a major, then we might be able to work something out." This was perhaps the comment that set some ticking time bomb inside of me to explode -- and who knew I had one of those?

What this ultimately led to was my ending up seeing Film Professor before my other classes that day and breaking down in the doorway of his office (if managing to stifle it after about thirty seconds -- but still, I showed weakness). This most likely scared the living daylights out of him. I managed to explain to him what had happened, to which he sympathetically groaned, "You have got to be kidding me."

Oh I wish I had been. But I am lucky to have professors like him around that have known me long enough that he volunteered to get back into contact with German Professor and help me figure out what it was I could do.

I'm supposed to be applying for a Fulbright scholarship for next year, which would entail going to (hopefully) Germany for a year to help teach English to middle or high schoolers. I would also be in charge of completing some other kind of project while I'm there. But the Fulbright pays for the travel and gives a monthly stipend for the living expenses. Basically it pays for everything, if one can be economical about it. But it is no easy feat to receive one such scholarship. My German and English background gives me a leg up perhaps, but it would have so much more emphasis to say that I have a German major as opposed to a German minor. I know there's only three hours difference between what I am going to have now without any changes and what I need, which really isn't anything. But they won't see that or know the story that, oh, she got screwed over for one class and that's why she only has a minor.

And the truth is that I don't really know which direction I might go. I am probably headed for some sort of academic career. The problem is that now I feel like I could go either way. The German route would be more difficult. Mainly, I'd like to keep doing film work in some capacity. That has been the bridge between my majors, and I could continue that really either way I went.

And there's really no wrong choice. I just feel a certain amount of loyalty now to both. Either way though, I'd probably end up teaching grammar part of the time.

It was somewhat comforting when, talking to Film Professor about this very dilemma the day after the Big Breakdown, he told me he still wakes up some mornings and thinks to himself, "I should have done Art History." But he's also happy with the variety of classes he gets to teach, from the general writing and grammar courses to American Studies to his smattering of film classes.

So yeah. Welcome to the new semester.