As a fifth year student I have been able to get a little insight into our university's and also the English Dept.'s life. This period is enough for every student to get to know the /black-/ rules and get along very well. Now I would like to tell about some of my experiences. I might be a bit ironical.
English major = a language major? This is one of the main questions that has been formulated in me during the past five years. In my opinion a language becomes a language only if it is used for communication. At the Dept. of English we slowly forget this fact. Our set idea about a language is being slowly replaced by an obscure something which is nicknamed language. English becomes rather a set of grammatical laws and structures than a means of communication.
As we get to the end of our education at the department we slowly forget English. At the entrance exam we were expected to use advanced level English. Our natural expectations when coming to the university were to be able to further improve our language knowledge. When you are majoring in history you learn history, when in biology you learn biology, when in English you learn something that you cannot outline. Instead of learning the language you are learning about language. It is something like just learning the philosophy of history at the Dept. of History. As I have told /and also have been told/ language becomes a language only if it is used. That is why if it is not used then it is forgotten. We are hardly ever able to speak in English. After five years I came to the point that I become embarrassed if I have to say something in English. There are a lot of lectures and not enough seminars. Moreover the seminars are usually like mini-lectures where the teacher talks and the students passively sit /maybe listen/. Some teachers are trying to involve students. This effort is, however, not successful in most cases. It has a double reason: everybody knows that if he doesn't say anything it cannot be wrong, and if he is not any more able to speak about general topics then how could he be expected to talk about, for example, abstract literary ideas that are hard to express even in Hungarian. I was very much surprised when I found out that we only have two language practices a week. In high school we had eight. /There we had a chance to speak and learn./ Later I had to find out that there are no language practices after second year at all. This means that there are no classes where we could speak.
Most of us had never been to any English speaking countries for longer periods. We only learn the pronunciation from our teachers /maybe also from TV or radio/. However, many of the teachers at the department are rather speaking Hunglish than English so we are acquiring a perfect Hunglish pronunciation.
The English department is also good for finding out about the laws of physics. Students, following the laws of nature, always move towards the smallest resistance. As we are able to decide what classes to take we usually choose those where we can get a five without doing anything. Passivity is the best way to survive. The most important rule is to escape work and find shortcuts. The university prepares us for life, after all. It is of course not always easy to get into the most popular classes. That's why everybody learns how to push oneself, step on others and be as impudent as possible. Some of us are also busily practicing our friends' signatures to be able to sign the sacred sheet of paper instead of each other. I'm sure we won't have any problems with success in life further on.
As we are used to not doing anything during the year /university life is not for studying/ we are usually in panic during the exam period and shocked by the finals. Of course one week is not enough to learn everything we missed during a four semester period so we have to draw up various ways of cheating.
Whoever has seen the list of compulsory readings for the literary final and even started to read some of it is sure to get to hate literature or even reading itself. It is impossible to read 6000 pages even in Hungarian. Especially when you are told what to read. Before the literary final we are busily looking for short editions /possibly written for children/ and Hungarian translations. As these books are fast disappearing from the faculty library we have to discover other libraries in Pécs, in our hometowns in Budapest and all around in the country.
The English department teaches us to rewrite chapters of books into essays. Plagiarism is, of course, not allowed, that's why the best way to avoid thinking is to find Hungarian books, articles of the given topic and translate them. Our rewriting and translating skills are highly developed.
As we have to hand in word processed essays we need to get familiar with computers.
Everybody knows that if he pushes F10 then the computer asks a question about saving the document. The other golden rule is to push reset if you are in trouble. In connection to handing in printed essays the department is also forming our personality. We patiently have to sit in lines and wait for computers for long hours.
The English department carefully watches out for our health and fitness. The elevator is often out of order, anyway it is very slow. So we have to climb five stories to get to the classes. /Of course this is one of the reasons for missing them./
Finally the main use of the department that is worth all sufferings is to get a paper, a diploma at last. Fortunately, in our country it is still the paper that counts and nobody cares about what is behind it. Of course a teachers' diploma is not the most spectacular in our days, still it is a diploma.
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