Quite the Turn-Around!

While I don't want to jump the gun here, things seem to have taken a turn-around in my Greek-course now! It has really been up-and-down, but going on about a week and a half now, I feel really GREAT about it!! The exam results helps, of course - *LOL* - but there's so much more than that! I somehow feel a lot more at ease now, than I did some 3-4 weeks ago, and I just LOVE it!! I'm so much more relaxed, and even though I have to say the social interaction has worked surprisingly well the entire semester, it has been even better (if that's even possible!) the last week!! Amazing!!

I'm reading like four or five sentences every lecture, and while I'm not at ease doing it, it's really working out, and at times I don't even feel anxious about it (just nervous, but there really is a difference to it!)!
The fact that this feels so real just now, has to do with an incident at the lecture today ... And I guess now has come the time to explain something that I haven't felt comfortable talking about here.

Some time back (can't really remember, but I'd say the beginning of October or something like that), and I real set-back in Greek ... an incident happened that made me more or less loose it, and - as always - it takes time to recover from something like that, especially in such an intense course. What happened was this:
I wasn't fully prepared, but I wasn't too concerned about it, because I knew I could ask to skip the whole read-translate thing, it wasn't the first time I would be doing it, and I knew other students had done so as well on occasion. Once I got there, and it was my turn, I did as planned - I said I wasn't prepared, and could I please be excused. The teacher looked at the sentence and said that I could probably do it anyway! There are students who can, on a whim, get through a sentence they haven't prepared before - let's just say I'm not one of them. I get really stressed out when I'm 'in the spotlight', and I can't think fast enough then, I mix everything up, and my anxiety levels keep rising.
I tried to get out of it, but the teacher was kind of pushy (but of course, he doesn't know about my problems, so I certainly don't blame him) ... and he kind of "forced me" - in my eyes - to get through the sentence and analysis on the spot. And I kind of broke down after that ...

Moving on ...
I had prepared the text for today, I had done the analysis, but I still find the syntactic part of it difficult - even though I know and have analysed the words, I still can't work out a translated Swedish sentence. Right toward the end of the lecture, I was asked to read such a sentence - I had the analysis but couldn't make heads or tails of the sentence. Once again, I "wasn't allowed" to pass it on to the next student, and I made at least half of it, spontaneously in front of the class. While it didn't feel great in any way, and I had anxiety throughout, it didn't affect me nearly as bad as it did only a month ago!! I'm not going to say it just simply worked out - because it didn't, and there are a lot of little things that I don't feel very comfortable with, but just the fact that I did it and could walk out of there with a smile on my face is quite extraordinary!
I can't really tell what has promted this turn-around, when the turn-arounds go this way, I'm not complaining! :)

I haven't been super-efficient today, as I am usually very tired these days, but at least I have prepared all 35 verses for tomorrows lecture and that feels good.
What I will most certainly bring from today is that I need to at least prepare the analysis. Apparently, I'm not going to get off the hook on this Mark-course, with the translations, and I have noticed that most of the students (all of them??) tend to go through with it even though they are unprepared. And after today, I think I can as well, as long as I at least have the analysis to fall back on. I don't think I could have coped at all, if I hadn't had the analysis and the actual meaning of the words - but as long as I have that, I might just make it work! :)

Well, I'm really tired now, and while we don't have lectures until 12 tomorrow (WEIRD!), I plan to spend the morning in the library, working on my essay - so I still need to get some sleep ...


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My Life At The Moment!
Currently reading: The Gospel of Mark, R.T. France
Currently watching: The Simpsons
Currently listening to: Nothing
My Plans for tomorrow: Library, mentor meeting (?), lectures - celebrating my exam by taking the afternoon off!