The Usual Suspects

Tonight I had my second Japanese language lesson. It reminded me that attending a language class always comes with a sense of déjà-vu: there's always someone who should actually be in an much more advanced class and who likes to show off by adding 2 additional sentences when asked a basic one like "How are you?" or "What's your name?", just to let the mere mortals know that he or she knows so much more.

Then there's the exact opposite of that specimen, the person who stumbles over every single word and needs to see the sentence written on the blackboard in front of them in order to be able to say anything. That person can either be excruciatingly shy and attempt to slide under the desk in the hope of becoming invisible or be in fact extremely confident and completely blind to the fact that they are a hopeless case.

There also inevitably is "teacher's pet", the person who knows the teacher from their life outside the classroom, is on first name terms with them and shares insider jokes with them.

And there's lots of people like me who start with the best of intentions, fully intending to revise and to do all the assigned homework, but then start to slack halfway through the course. Ahem.