Failing. It's a new experience for me, and I hate it.

I've had issues with math before, but I've always been able to escape out of that. With Arabic class, there is no escape. And that's a big part of the problem: I just hate feeling like an idiot four days a week. And in between I try to catch up on my homework, which means I feel stupid then too. I don't fail. Not like this - where I can work my butt off, actually learn a lot, and then look at the syllabus and know that I'll be lucky to get a D. Yes, a D. And the midterm is next week. You know how pleased I am to know I have the next half of the semester to feel progressively dumber?

I've talked to my teacher. She's said nice things about how everyone struggles and it gets easier. I've been in school long enough to know there is no such magic breakthrough. With the workload of this class, everything I don't learn solid becomes a trap for later down the line.

I'm not sure what bothers me worse. I'm sleep-deprived and depressed; I don't spend enough time on my other six credits of classwork; I'm not freelancing for magazines like I wanted; my grade point average will drop (an F for six credits will make a difference) which means depending on where I'd want to go, grad school may be out of the question; I'm not learning any street language; and I won't see anything of Egypt except during school vacations.

I have excuses, sure. I've been sick, had other school assignments desperately due. The teacher hasn't ever taught an intensive course like this before. The only people doing well in the class (I think) are the linguistics major and the Japanese French-major with perfect English.

In the end, this is hands-down my most counterproductive academic exercise. The sad thing is, I'll go home with an F, and I'll have actually learned some solid Arabic. But it will still feel like I wasted my time.