Beautiful sunset over downtown San José |
I
tried to smile and look relaxed as I stood in front of my small Spanish class
at the Costa Rican Language Academy in San José. My face was red and my palms
were starting to sweat. My hands and voice were shaky and I felt like each
sentence was coming out slower and slower. “No, that’s not the right word; that
conjugation definitely wasn’t right,” I thought to myself. It was only a small
presentation, but I hadn’t been that uncomfortable and my Spanish hadn’t been
that jumbled since middle school.
Before
this portion of the trip I knew my knowledge of Spanish was limited, but I kept
saying how I was excited to learn a lot and practice during our time in the
city. However, when the time came to give a small presentation in front of my
class or start speaking Spanish to my host family I was actually incredibly
nervous, timid and frustrated that my Spanish wasn’t better. I constantly beat
myself up for sounding ridiculous or not being able to express exactly what I
wanted to say; then I would become even more frustrated that I was so
uncomfortable and afraid to talk. One step forward, two steps back.
During
the first few days I wasn’t looking forward to going to class because I was
constantly anxious that I was going to mess up. But as the days progressed I
realized that was one of my professor’s main goals: not to make us feel
anxious, but to push us outside of our comfort zones. We would be put on the
spot and asked to improvise in Spanish, but it wasn’t about constructing the
most eloquent sentence possible from vocabulary and grammar we already knew, it
was about making mistakes, sounding silly and learning in real time.
Although
this first round of classes only lasted two weeks I saw a huge improvement in
my comprehension, grammar, vocabulary and confidence while speaking in Spanish.
Most importantly, however, I realized that learning is often about making
mistakes yet having grace with myself to learn from them and move on. Just
because I “got over” my fear of public speaking when I was younger doesn’t mean
I should get frustrated at myself when I become nervous again while speaking in
front of others; it’s all part of the process. In life, learning doesn’t follow
a perfectly linear trajectory, and these classes have shown me that trading my
perfectionistic tendencies for mistakes and grace is what real learning is all
about.