Inadequacy.

Yesterday while waiting for a speaking appointment, I listened to a few boys from my class teasing each other in rapid-fire Arabic. Sure, one is a graduate student, one spent his high school years in the Middle East, and for the other Arabic is the fourth of four acquired languages, but listening to them made me feel inadequate. I can't speak that quickly with that kind of accuracy, and admitting to myself that I don't feel up to par despite all the work I pour into the subject is frustrating.

• Should I be doing more?
• Can I be doing more?
• Arabic is my first acquired language.
• I'm still me-as-a-speaker in Arabic, and I don't know why I'm surprised.

It has taken me twenty years of English to feel like I'm an adequate speaker. Despite my propensity for precision in writing, in speech my sentences often trail all over the place. I can be hard to follow, and I know that. And if you know me, you know that much of the time (in English) I simply don't say anything. What I do say in public is always carefully calculated, with vocabulary and syntax predetermined and often noted in shorthand so conversational pressure does not make me forget. My plans are time-consuming and meticulous and absolutely unknown to those who call me articulate (an adjective I've worked incredibly long and hard to win). In Arabic, too, my speech is followed only by intense planning. In my way I can get everything right, so in the past I've passed the speech components of my midterms and finals with flying colors. But I don't sound like some people I know--I don't sound fluid and at-speed and comfortable, and because I've spent so many focused years working on those qualities in my native tongue, I don't know why I expect them to follow so easily in my acquired one. People who can sit down next to you and babble about life, the universe, and everything in English seem to be able to do so in Arabic, but I'm not one of those people in either language.

Furthermore, the cognitive dissonance that results from telling my pre-med colleagues that I care more for Arabic than organic chemistry (true) and then turning around and telling my Arabic colleagues that I feel okay with my proficiency because it's not my major and I'm going to med school anyway (...true?) is almost more than I can handle.

I don't know what I am, and I don't know what I want to be.

Am I sacrificing a valuable degree in the hard sciences for mediocrity in a language others will always know better than I? The fact remains that I'm not a native speaker and therefore am not as valuable a linguist. Language, though, does not have to be put to external use. If I want I can spend time throughout my whole life learning to read contemporary Arabic literature or studying grammar and usage for my very own fulfillment. Academia is suffocating and I don't want to spend my life convincing myself that documenting the nuances of allophonic variation in Dialect X OR the subtle antigenic variation in Obscure Disease X actually matters.

I

DON'T

KNOW

WHAT

I

WANT.

But right now, as a serious premedical student and a serious language learner, I need to remember that:

1) I will consistently try to do my best for myself and for no one else

2) My best is good enough for me

3) It's okay if my best does not equal the best

4) I can be proud of what I can do and do not have to preoccupy myself with what I can't do
5) A 4.0 GPA can't last forever (and according to admissions statistics, nor should it)

6) Everything will work out in the end

D&C 90:24: "Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things will work together for thy good, if ye walk uprightly and remember the covenant wherewith ye have covenanted one with another."

Now that I think (I hope) I can do.