On BS and wrong choices*

*BS is British Studies, by the way :)

Today, I discovered this among other timehop reminders. I’ve been thinking on writing about this for quite a while, so I thought I’ll do it today. By the way, tweeting in English didn’t actually happen until 2016.

I’ve chosen British Studies to be my Beifach for one good reason: I couldn’t take Publizistik due to some stupid formal uni limitations. So I thought, ok, I’ll take something that won’t be difficult, because I am not a very smart person. Ok, maybe those are two reasons. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting much.

In my country, the English classes were more or less just us translating stuff from the textbook, reading stuff from the textbook, retelling stuff from the textbook. The pronunciation didn’t matter much, as long as the teacher understood us, and there was absolutely nothing we could learn from her about the English-speaking countries. I don’t want to say that she was a bad teacher. She just had no opportunity to travel and tell us about those countries. The textbooks were so old that we frequently read about how big Comrade Lenin’s home library was. I bet that guy had lots of time to read all the books! There were no native speakers at the uni, so the only possibility to talk to them was to meet the super friendly and charming peace corps volunteers, who (for reasons unknown) decided to spend a year in Ukraine. So for the most of the time, we were studying some abstract things about an abstract language in an abstract country that only existed in our imagination. But Ukrainian education is a topic for a different post, so concentrate on BS, kpal!

With all the experiences described above, I thought, British Studies would be pretty much the same. I prepared myself to learn lots of grammar, phonetics, all sorts of boring stuff. I must say that I couldn’t be more wrong. Of course, there was some grammar and phonetics involved, but surprisingly, there are people talented enough to make those things interesting so that you won’t hate every minute of the class. (Needless to say, there are other people as well, their courses are so dull you need to force yourself to only miss two classes.) There are also lots of native speakers at the uni, which I find really great: it makes you realise that there is an English-speaking world out there somewhere, and there are real people born with English as a default language setting. This makes learning the language not so useless: you’re not learning some artificial abstract concepts — there’s a real person who understands what you’re trying to say!

During my very first semester I realised that I’ve made a huge mistake choosing Linguistics to be my Kernfach. I am now in my 5th semester and have finished four of five BS modules and only three of eight linguistics modules. I tend to put the things I don’t enjoy to the bottom of my to-do-list.

Apart from just being interesting, British Studies made a revolution in my head. It made me rethink my views of this world and the modern society, and question lots of things I read, see or hear. Being able to realise that the world is not quite what I thought it is was definitely worth going to all the other lectures that are not necessarily that life-changing.

What I learned from my Linguistics courses? Would you like to hear a complete classification of Polish pronouns?^^

I am really happy to have chosen British Studies on that cold winter day two years ago. Even though I will now have to spend a couple semesters doing nothing but dull linguistics stuff.

My message for the general public today is: do something that you enjoy (even though it’s not very promising if the jobs are concerned). If you’re considering studying in Mainz, definitely take British Studies. And if you’re really interested in Polish pronouns, here’s a useful link: click.

Have a nice day!

Your pal kpal