So, this summer I tried to learn Greek. (Stop laughing). I brought my Greek textbook to the beach and flipped though flashcards in the doctor’s office. I sacrificed many an evening in an attempt to pass the proficiency exam and jump right into Greek exegesis. Well… given that it was summer and I had to move and say goodbye to friends, I got as far as I could. Which was nouns. Yeah… when I hit verbs, I quit. BUT I had determination! I studied what I knew really hard, and with much trepidation, set out to take the Greek proficiency exam at Trinity. At 8 am (that’s 45 minutes from my parents house). I waltzed in, thinking at least I could ace the vocab and the parts with the nouns.
As we stood waiting to enter the testing room, I began talking to the woman I was standing next to. She was elderly and quite entertaining. After awhile I began to look around… there were a lot of guys… and by a lot I mean no.other.girls. I whispered my discovery to my fellow female friend “I think we’re the only two women here!” and she chuckled, “Get used to it, honey!”
Enter female number 3: the proctor. She gives instructions, commences the test and pops open her laptop. Midway through the exam, the chorus of “girls just wanna have fun” begins blaring from said laptop, which she couldn’t figure out how to silence for the life of her. The irony of the whole situation just killed me.
SO… the test is like the the male/female ratio, and men=verbs. There was no section for just nouns or vocab or anything I actually knew. Oh no. ALL VERBS. So, I answered the few questions I could and since that was about one third of them, I was the first person done. Lovely. All these males would think that the one girl in the crowd was smart. Or, even worse, they would be on to me and figure out that I was, in fact, NOT. I bravely brought up my test and brushed the dust of the matter off my feet as I left.
Let’s just say… I’m in Beginning Greek this semester…