When the pandemic restrictions had lifted, and we were allowed to resume in-person learning, I was sad but excited to see my friends again. The first day went well, until I got to my elective class of the year, Spanish.  Now, I’ve taken Spanish before, but it was mostly online and through Zoom, so it was pretty low stakes. Plus, my first teacher, Ms.Ochoa, was easygoing and very lenient. But now in person, there was more pressure, as the teacher was pretty strict, made us do presentations, and now 30 eyes were watching you mess up the pronunciation of “dulce de leche.” The first day just consisted of us getting back into the groove with the teacher introducing herself and explaining what we would be learning for the next 8 months. 

Over the next couple of weeks, we spent time learning the basics of the language, and mostly how to write in Spanish. While in class, the teacher would randomly call on us to conjugate or translate verbs, which I absolutely hated, since I’d get confused with certain verbs or wouldn’t conjugate them correctly. My teacher wasn’t very forgiving whenever someone might’ve mispronounced a word or made small mistakes when answering her questions. In this class, there were many Spanish speakers or multilingual students who quickly picked up the proper pronunciation and content without any difficulties. Every time I stepped into this class, I was fighting an inner battle, like, girl, you might as well give up.

Fast forward to later in the year, in May, when we had to create presentations that gave a mini introduction about ourselves and our interests, and more. We had to do this in complete Spanish and would get points taken off if we used any English in our presentation. Naturally, I hated this assignment since my Spanish still wasn’t that good and I’ve struggled with other speaking assignments given in class already. But after all the preparation in class, doomsday finally came. Presentation day.

It was May 19th, 2022, 12:20, right after lunch. I walked into class with a friend, and the teacher was setting up. Other students were already at their seats, chatting away. Then, class finally started. The air was warm and a bit muggy, but the AC was turned on to help remedy that. Our teacher looked at each of us and asked the awful question, “So! Who would like to go first?” Everyone looked at each other, and then someone finally volunteered. More followed afterwards and did very well on their presentations. Then my teacher switched it up, allowing the person who had previously gone to pick the next presenter to go up. My heart dropped at that moment. And when my friend had gone up, and I had a terrible feeling that she was going to pick me. And she did. 

My heart raced as I stood up and shot her a quick look of “why me?” as I made my way to the front and pulled up my presentation. I looked at everyone’s face before starting, and some were indifferent, others weren’t even paying attention. I started well, pronouncing all the words correctly, and I felt a small sense of confidence that I would do well on this presentation. But as I moved towards the middle, with some complex words or sentences, my flow broke, and so did my confidence. My heart pounded as I continued, and I noticed some people were snickering or slightly judging me.  I kept referencing my slides, and I was panicking internally. When I finished the presentation, I sat down and thought I did badly since I mispronounced some words and didn’t finish as well as I hoped I would.

As I went on to college and once again had to take Spanish, I had the same assignment at the end of the semester. I knew I had to practice and take time out of my day to learn how to properly pronounce words and select words that I would be able to say while presenting. I was still nervous, but I ended up doing much better than I did in high school.

From this moment, I thought more about what those who are non-English speakers or those who may speak “limited” English. I know my experience doesn’t compare to theirs, but from this, people shouldn’t judge others based on their fluency in any kind of language. People should be accepting and willing to help each other out when it comes to communicating in different languages.