Costa Rica, 2011
One summer, I was applying for an internship. The hiring manager took me for an extended interview over burgers and beers.
“I know your type,” he said after a long pause. Then, “What’s your grade point anyway? Three-something?”
“Uh…Three seven, actually.”
“Yeah.” He said between bites. “Doesn’t matter. My son’s like
you. Too smart for his own good too—never fights for his grades, just shows up and gets them. Know what I mean?”
I felt my face go warm.
“What I’m saying is … look. Thanks for coming out, I’ll buy you another beer, but we’re done here.”
I think about that conversation sometimes, but not in the way he meant it.
~
In Costa Rica the year before, I’d registered to complete four years of high school-level Spanish in sixteen weeks. A year of Spanish, compressed into less than a month at a time—quizzes, homework, midterms, finals—repeating on a loop for four months.
The first week of class hit me hard. We were just learning to say our names and ages. Simple things to most of my classmates, but new to me. I’d never thought about it before, but I had no baseline—embarrassing, having grown up in California. Within the first week we were learning conjugations, their rules and exceptions, and that Friday, my first set of vocabulary cards. By Monday’s quiz, I already felt behind.
Over the next months, my textbook became my best friend. The stack of flash cards, a growing list of words from its indices, became my worst enemy. And still I struggled.
~
I stood at the front of the class, my teacher’s kind face looking at me, dark against the sun in the windows.
“Conjugate tener,” she said.
I did.
“Good. Now—what did you do this weekend?”
I paused. The answer was there somewhere—in rules, in charts, in the margins of my notebook—but not in my mouth. I started once, stopped, then tried again with something smaller, safer.
She waited.
“I went to the beach,” I said in Spanish. It wasn’t true, but it was simple enough to finish.
“Okay…let’s try something different. Do what I tell you,” she said. And she gestured toward the door.
I didn’t move.
The class shifted in their chairs. Someone behind me stood and closed it. I watched, started to the door myself, then slumped back to my seat.
That afternoon, I found a desk in the library, my flashcards strewn across the table, as the daily afternoon tropical storms pummeled the library windows.
“You coming?” Claudia asked, pulling me from my work.
“What?” I said.
“When the storms let up, a bunch of us are going to that coffee shop downtown then maybe play pool. Are you coming?”
I looked at my stack of unfinished homework, the writing assignment I’d hardly started, and then her smiling face.
“No,” I said at last. “I just don’t think I can.”
“Your loss.” She said. Then she got up and left.
I stayed in the library that evening. The storms passed, the room emptied, and I struggled through my cards alone.
~
I stood at the front of the class, my teacher’s kind face looking at me, dark against the sun in the windows.
“Conjugate tener,” she said.
I did.
“Good. Now—what did you do this weekend?”
I paused. The answer was there somewhere—in rules, in charts, in the margins of my notebook—but not in my mouth. I started once, stopped, then tried again with something smaller, safer.
She waited.
“I went to the beach,” I said in Spanish. It wasn’t true, but it was simple enough to finish.
“Okay…let’s try something different. Do what I tell you,” she said. And she gestured toward the door.
I didn’t move.
The class shifted in their chairs. Someone behind me stood and closed it. I watched, started to the door, then slumped back to my seat.
~
That afternoon, I found a desk in the library, my flashcards strewn across the table, as the daily afternoon tropical storms pummeled the library windows.
“You coming?” Claudia asked, pulling me from my work.
“What?”
“When the storms let up, a bunch of us are going to that coffee shop downtown then maybe play pool. Are you coming?”
I looked at my stack of unfinished homework, the writing assignment I’d hardly started, and then her smiling face.
“No,” I said at last. “I just don’t think I can.”
“Your loss.” She’s said. Then she got up and left.
I stayed, as the storms passed, and the room emptied, working through my cards one by one.