By: Shezad Khan
Over summer term I took the first year of Latin courses. It was my first experience with summer term, so I wasn’t used to being in school during the three months I’d usually be at home doing nothing. PSU’s campus was sunny and quiet, void of the bustle seen during fall through spring, and it seemed so much more relaxed. I learned quickly, however, that summer term isn’t to be taken lightly.
One year of Latin was compacted and smashed into a rigorous and intense nine weeks. That’s right, Latin 101 through 103 in just nine weeks, that’s less than a third of the normal school year. We covered a week’s worth of material per day, and class was held Monday through Thursday – each class was three hours and fifteen minutes long. The baristas at Starbucks started knowing me by name. I devoted hours to studying every day. I had well over 200 notecards, three filled up notebooks, more than a few dead pens, and my quivering sanity that I was struggling to keep together – it didn’t help that I was working almost forty hours a week at that time.
That being said, if you’re considering taking summer courses, you should do it. Yeah, it’s probably going to be tough and you might want to cry sometimes – especially if it’s a foreign language – but you’ll pull through and you’ll feel very good about yourself, I promise. Plus you get to meet awesome people who are just as crazy as you for taking such an intense course!