What I Wish I’d Known Before…

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… enrolling in a European Literature and Languages University.

1. I wish I had known that watching films in the original language actually helps you only if you already know the language. Because after you have spent more or less two hours of your really precious (given that you are a University student) time watching a film of which you have not understood a single word, the only possible outcome is depression. Depression, and an empty ice cream jar.
2. I wish I had known that reading is always involved, and that you will probably go from reading one or two books per year, to one or two books per week. So you better love reading.
3. I wish I had known that if you hang out with stupid friends, you have to deal with their making fun of you, only because you are able to pronounce foreign words correctly, throwing their ignorance directly into their face. Case of jealousy.
4. I wish I had known that knowing more than two languages can actually be problematic: sometimes your brain doesn’t even know in which language formulate the thoughts. As a result, you usually end up speaking very slowly and sounding like an Italian with German ancestors who just came back from a vacation in France where you attended an English course.
5. I wish I had known that you’ll eventually start to plan your holidays trips according to the books you read during the year, so that when you’ll come back you’ll be able to show off with your University colleagues about all the beautiful and cited-in-books places you have seen.
6. I wish I had known that the excuse of using films to study will cover you only for the first year. After that your parents and everyone in general will eventually find out that you are only procrastinating and being lazy.
7. I wish I had known that the English you learn listening to music and learning songs’ lyrics by heart is not sufficient to pass a language exam.
8. I wish I had known that after the second year of University, your mind becomes so used to look for translation and adaptation mistakes or subliminal references and messages, that it actually becomes impossible to genuinely enjoy a good film or a good book without analysing it.
9. I wish I had known that you’ll eventually end up frustrated because you can’t plan holidays trip to fictitious and unreal cited-in-books places.
10. I wish I had known that writing an e-mail to a mother tongue teacher is actually a trauma: you’ll check the mail a thousand times trying to be really accurate, respecting the grammar and the structure, you’ll search for very specific words being careful not to use too simple or too difficult words. Then you’ll gather every single drop of courage you have in your body and you’ll press ‘send’. Then you will wait for a whole week. Then the answer will come, and it will be ‘ok’.
11. I wish I had known how many ways of pronouncing the letter ‘r’ there are, and I wish I had realised sooner that the only way in which I can actually pronounce it is in the vibrant Italian way.
12. Bonus. A thing I am happy I didn’t know: how staying away from home (for example being part of the Erasmus program) makes you appreciate and become conscious about your origins; but also how many new things you can learn about other cultures, and how sometimes you can feel like you belong in another country.

With thanks to Suzie Patterson