Our first class of the new semester ended at 9:33 p.m. on what would be one of the coldest nights of the year, and in Minnesota, that’s a cold night—and a black one, the black of deep space, though around the stars, point sources of light, and the moon, were tiny nimbi of gun-metal blue. Anyway, it was cold. Up north they recorded temperatures in the -30s, even before figuring in the wind chills. Here in the Twin Cities, it got down to the -20s, but as I mounted my rime-crusted bike, moj rower, for the ride home, it was probably only in the -10s. The moon though, bright and cold as a blade, was cutting through my layers and somewhat into my will to live, and by extension, my will to study Polish. We had just churned through a number of exercises in the last half hour of class, leaving my mind benumbed, and the good professor assigned what seemed to be double the homework of any week from the first semester. This was Polish II after all. In our second week, the class earned a sharp and uncharacteristic reprimand for not executing these very homework drills with any due speed or competence. We simply weren’t prepared. Still, I can’t say we were any less prepared than in previous weeks, but, again, this was Polish II. When I left my second class, it was still winter and will be for a long time.
A fellow friend of learning recently observed that the second semester of language study was always the hardest. She spoke from her experience in Latin and German. I never made it to second semester Latin and cannot recall second semester German from thirty years ago. But I concede a case can be made and will take her word. Her travail reminds me that learning can hurt, an ancient conclusion, as Aristotle noted in his Politics, “Learning is not a matter of amusement. It is attended by effort and pain”; and Qoheleth, “much study is a weariness of the flesh.”
But the company is really good. The best.
