If you feel like you are failing this class, or it's failing you, then call this  practice.   Some day you might feel that way about your job, your marriage, a health problem or the loss of a loved one.  During most periods of your life, you will be struggling with something.

    Success means learning how to emerge from the struggle stronger than you were going in.  Like an athlete enjoying a new challenge, or simply doing the necessary exercises.

     Here are some tips on how to approach this course, if the most helpful thing you can get out of German is learning how to approach something that's not going well.

     Break the subject up into little "success packets".  It doesn't matter how small the packet is -- perhaps merely enjoying the sound of a particular word.  Maybe it's learning all of the masculine words in an earlier chapter.  Draw a circle around something that's doable, and then do it.  Remember that feeling.

      If it starts to look like you drew too big a circle, try redrawing it smaller.  Or asking for help.  Do whatever it takes to experience success with some small body of material.  Then picture the boundaries of your "success circle" getting bigger until your required hours of German (and, indeed, UAH itself) fit inside the circle.

      Finish each study session with a "success packet".  Stop while you're doing something you can enjoy returning to.
 
 

     Learn how to ask for, and accept, help.  You're surrounded by potential tutors right in this class.  Most of the people who are doing well would enjoy helping you to do well too.  Approach a colleague, or ask me to help you find exactly the right in- class tutor to work with you outside of class.

    You're paying for tutoring anyway, so why not go to our official tutor on a regular basis?  Get what you paid for.

    Ask your in-class "tutor" to go with you to the official tutor.  Your in-class friend is paying for it too, and they'll get as much out of it as you do.

    Don't compare yourself to your in-class tutor.  Compare what you can now say  to what you were able to say on the first day of class.  You wouldn't feel lost if there was just "you then" and "you now".

     Make the connection between this material and something you ARE interested in.

    How have Germans contributed to your field?  Turn in an extra credit page telling me about it.

     How will your new familiarity with German make you even better at what you already do well?  Write it up.  For extra credit or -- truly extra -- for the fun of it.

    Be open to the possibility of changing your mind.  Maybe you do enjoy listening to funny sounds and making sense of them, and making such sounds yourself and finding you've been understood. 

     Give yourself a good example.  So the next time you're really frustrated, or scared, you can look back and say, "I didn't think I'd be able to get through that.  But I did."