Day School

Have you ever felt like people know you better than you know yourself?

I was talked into one of the best experiences of my life recently!

My uni does something called cross-level day schools. Students and staff from all levels of a particular subject (in this case, German) gather to discuss the subject for a day.

At first, I was not going to attend this event due to a few factors, the most prominent of which was shyness. However, over time, and with some encouragement from the two influential women in my life, I eventually realised that this would be an excellent way to immerse myself in the German language while I can’t go to Germany yet. So, after a month of considering it, I applied.

On Monday, the staff reached out to me to discuss my needs. I thought it would be great to attach the link to the article on the Edinburgh College website about me to my reply so that they could understand how unique and skilled I was. About 5 minutes after I had sent that email, I had another brilliant idea! I realised that these people were German speakers, and I had the bilingual leaflet about my needs from my encounter with SZENE 2WEI last week, so  I also sent them that!

They were very impressed with both the leaflet and my backstory! I could tell that they were excited to meet me and work with me!

Yesterday came. My mum suggested that I wear my favourite T-shirt, which says EAT SLEEP DEUTSCH REPEAT. At first, I thought it was a bit cheesy to wear that to a German event, but I soon came around to it, and it turned out to be my first point of popularity!

Uni has a weird system. Even though the language courses have two entry levels, beginners and intermediate, both are classed as level 1. Because of this, when I began to speak German, there was a ripple of shocked remarks about how good my grammar and vocabulary were! These comments came from the staff as well as the other students! I couldn’t stop smiling because I had never been a talking point in a classroom for a good reason before! One of the tutors who was teaching level 2, a lovely young woman from Inverness, even leaned over to me at one point and said, “ok, you have to do Level 2 next year!” which I found bittersweet because I am not allowed to do level 2 German next year because of complicated rules!

After lunch, I did my second 1-1 speaking session (my first was about a certain cat) with the same woman on the German book Der Vorleser, which you might remember I studied for my Advanced Higher German. Here, I earned the nickname Wörterbuch (dictionary) because the woman forgot the word for judge, and I typed out “Richter” for her!

The last exercise of the day made me a bit self-conscious. I was paired with a beginner gentleman who was a little behind on the course, and we had to write about our best or worst holiday. I think that seeing someone so young write a detailed paragraph about getting sunburned in the south of France because her suncream was not waterproof and then get asked to read it out to the class possibly made him feel bad because I definitely got a look.

In conclusion, I’m exceedingly grateful that I didn’t miss this opportunity. I want to thank my mum and Isobel for getting on my case about it. My mum was talking to one of the staff at the event, and supposedly, there is another German school over the summer, but this time abroad! If I had a passport and if I didn’t have to spend the summer learning French, then I would totally sign up for it because, quite frankly, if it was this fun in Scotland, it would be amazing abroad!