Last week, as we passed the one-third mark of the course, I was reminded of the roller coaster ride that is FSI language learning. One day, it feels as though you can’t comprehend a single word being said. The next, you’re gradually piecing together structures and vocabulary to craft complex, sequential sentences you couldn’t have managed just a week or two earlier. But just as you start to feel a sense of accomplishment, you open your mouth to speak, only to have your mind go completely blank—like a computer freezing on the dreaded blue screen of death.
You sit there, mind racing, while your teacher watches expectantly. But the words elude you; searching your blank mind proves futile. Your vocabulary, syntax, and imagination have simultaneously failed. You want to say something, but it’s suddenly like you’ve never heard or spoken a word of Burmese in your life. Or, as is often the case for me, I know most of the words but can’t puzzle out the word order. It’s time to reboot.
Sometimes such situations are amusing; other times, probably cringeworthy. How you handle them largely depends on you—your confidence, resilience, attitude, sense of humor, and ability to cope with being put on the spot, potentially in front of your future boss or supervisees. I’ve become more and more impervious to the cringe factor because, whatever. Bring it. I show up everyday and work hard, but I’m not a machine where you can run a code and I will predictably and consistently launch the desired program.
That the learning process is uneven is predictable. Production of speech is uneven. The abilities to read, listen, and understand are uneven. There are good days, and there are bad days.
When it’s a good day, you feel encouraged. You may even feel cheerful, like the language itself is trying to help you out. Things are clicking. You get it. You can do it!
When it’s a bad day, you may find it difficult to imagine completing the course at all, let alone going to Post and trying to use the language. Other people’s successes start to feel like your failures, only because they personify what you can’t seem to figure out.
In these moments when it feels like you broke your brain, the easiest response would be to retreat. To shield your ego from the sting of failure. To avoid being the one who doesn’t know what’s going on, again, and the label becoming “a thing.”
Withdraw, say nothing, don’t engage. Blame it on being tired, on being in a bad mood, even on not caring. But being stupid? No.
You’re just human. In an imperfect, temporary situation not designed with you in mind. And only you can decide to ride the roller coaster up and down and do the best you can in any given moment. That’s the power move — not getting mad and shutting down.
I’m trying not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Do you know that phrase? I asked my instructor one day where things weren’t coming out right and I had to circumlocute. He didn’t, but he wrote it down, eyes gleaming. He totally got it.
Language learning is a humbling experience, and not one that happens in a vacuum; we all live full lives outside of work. Our lives take up our energy and focus, sometimes leading to blue screens when learning something new. You can decide, I’ve remembered, not to let it bother you.
In week 15, I experienced all of these things and more. I felt elated that I did something right. I felt dread at the thought of walking into the classroom. I got sick one day with vertigo and had to leave early, and was disappointed because I actually liked and understood what we were doing.
And I made a decision to try and have a good day, independently of how I think class is handled or progressing. I feel like even if I’m slow, as long as I can still measure improvement in myself from week to week, there’s hope.
We also received important news: starting in 2025, FSI will cancel reading evaluations across the board for all languages. It’s part of a larger shift in the Department’s language curriculum away from longform reading and towards speaking and discussion. So FSI will still evaluate the 3 I need in Burmese but not the 2 I needed in reading.
I have mixed feelings about the announcement. In Burmese, we still need to read to learn new vocabulary essential for speaking. We’re still expected to read and discuss headline news. So, it’s not that we no longer need to read, but rather that our reading skills won’t be formally assessed.
As an introvert, reading—whether in class or during evaluations—was a key way for me to recharge my energy. Speaking, especially extemporaneous speaking or delivering thematic presentations, feels draining. Reading, on the other hand, provided counterbalance. While reading aloud in Burmese is challenging due to the complexity of the characters, it offered an opportunity to focus on decoding and sounding out the text without the added pressure of generating syntax on my own. But we aren’t going to be trained and tested to measure achievement in anything that’s no longer a funding priority, so there you go.
Our second progress evaluation comes in a couple of days, at the end of week 16… with the holidays upon us and all the attendant cooking, baking, gift-wrapping and company they bring. We’ll see what happens.
Collecting Postcards 
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