Adjusting To College Life at the Universidad Nacional De Cordoba

When I started attending La Universidad Nacional de Cordoba’s language school, I thought I had picked the worst college to go to, but I’ve had a week to immerse myself in the college life in Argentina, and I think I may have had a change of heart... maybe.

The Language Building at UNC

I’ve enjoyed getting to know my fellow classmates mainly because I've barely had any interaction with the locals in the past couple of months. Since my arrival, I’d been virtually isolated at home. Now, I think I may have made some potential friends. We’ll see. I’m also glad to be getting back on a daily routine. Since I haven't had any luck finding a job yet, the very least I can do is go to school. 

Don’t get me wrong. I still think that the English courses should be taught by native English speakers, but at least some of the professors are open to suggestions and corrections when necessary. Actually, I'm not sure about that. They might be tolerating me or being polite. Who knows? It's been my observation that Argentines are very polite to your face but they're not always genuine.

The picture on the wall is of Che Guevara - a famous Argentinian resistance fighter

My biggest struggle right now is with the Castilian course. I feel completely lost in that class. The professor is wonderful, but I don’t understand Spanish grammar. I have a terrible time keeping up with the lessons. We did a dictation this week. I added an "h" to words that didn’t need them, and I failed to add them in words that needed them. I couldn’t figure out where the accents were supposed to go either. It's these lines on top of letters, similar to an apostrophe that tells the person where the emphasis of the pronunciation goes, so I just added random lines on top of any syllable I thought could use an accent. I also called a female horse a “caballa” instead of “yegua”. I always assumed that the word “yegua” meant a whore. I guess there are two meanings for the word. The official meaning for a female horse is “yegua,” according to the professor.

During the Castilian/Spanish test, I left about 80 percent of the questions blank. I think I would have had a better chance if the test had been multiple choice instead of fill in the blanks, but nothing at the university seems to be multiple choice. 

Outdoors lunch area for students. It's extremely well lit at night



Overall, there's still room for improvement at the UNC. For instance, the university could use a career/major advisor department to advise their students on the best way to map out their college curriculum. Unfortunately, I’ve been told that students have to figure things out on their own at the UNC. I’m not sure if this is because the university is free or not, but that kind of sucks.

They could also add native English speakers to their language school, or at the very least, educate their professors better before hiring them. Their attempt to enunciate English words with a British accent is unintelligible, unacceptable and in most instances, laughable. I know it sounds awfully harsh, but it's also the painful truth. 

I realize some of the students think I’m full of crap, and I can’t blame them for feeling this way. They don’t have the knowledge, the discipline, or the experience that I have from the States. I can only hope that there is some way that I can influence some change at the university so that it can benefit me as well as other students in the future.