You Only Get 8 Shots

It’s the last day of class, and what do I realize? There was a class I matriculated into, that I was never aware of, and that I never attended! It’s the day of the final, but am I really going to try to take it if I haven’t attended a single class? And there’s this paper that was due months ago, which I never turned in. There’s really nothing I can do at this point but accept the F. An F on my transcript. How will I ever explain it?

This is a constant nightmare I have, an anxiety dream of some sort that every so often I wake up to, just to let out an enormous sigh of relief because, of course, this could never actually happen in real life…

…In the States that is. At least not in Georgetown.  Without a doubt, after missing the first three classes or so, the professor would have noticed and immediately contacted either a Dean or the student. However, in a public university in Spain such as the Universidad de Salamanca, one could literally go the entire four or five years unnoticed. This nightmare could, in fact, come true. On the bright side, if it were the case, “no pasa nada” (nothing happens), as they say.

Seriously though, nothing happens. The world does not stop, your life is not ruined… unless it happens more than eight times. Students here do not have one, two, or three opportunities to pass a class, but EIGHT. There is a phrase that says students here have to “hacerse la vida,” or “make their life”.  Put simply, by the time you are in college, people see and treat you like an adult in every sense of the word, and if you so choose to not show up to class (ever), or to the final exam (ever), it does not keep anyone up at night.

I had heard from others who had studied abroad that classes are a “joke” in Europe, and truth be told, they are if you make them so.  This may explain the reason for which there are currently students in my classes taking the “assignatura” (class) for the eighth time in a row, or laughing about the fact that last semester they only passed one of seven classes, or claiming to be in their fifth year of college though they are still attending first and second year courses, and celebrating their 26th birthday that weekend (the average age in college must honestly be about 23 or so).

However, as I stressed before, it does not all have to be jokes and games, at least not in Spain, though there is plenty of time for it! If you attend class, takes some notes, maybe go to office hours on occasion, and do the “optional” (yes, optional) assignments from time to time, there’s actually a whole lot that can be taken from the educational experience here. The education system is completely new and different, and that in itself can be a learning opportunity. Just to begin with, the classes offered in a field are often radically dissimilar to those available in the States (take sex therapy as a psych elective, for instance!), as are the readings. For this reason and as a result, you gain a completely fresh perspective on issues that you may have thought you knew inside and out. If nothing else, it’s an opportunity to learn something new that you can either take or not. As a wise man once said, “opportunity only knocks once,” — or in the salmantino’s case, eight times.