As a first-year, it’s common to have to take the general education classes to get them out of the way. That’s exactly what I’m doing right now. One of my classes that I’m required to take is Spanish. In high school, I was never a huge fan of Spanish; having to learn a whole new language as well as their grammar and vocabulary set isn’t easy. However, Spanish here at Ohio State is something that I look forward to most days. In addition to the grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure, my professor also teaches the culture of the Spanish-speaking regions. In my high school Spanish classes, the teacher would only touch on cultural ideas, but the class was mostly the nitty-gritty stuff of Spanish. Here, my professor makes culture something that you need to learn and we are even tested on it. Some thing that we learn about are the types of food, the clothing, the traditions that are practiced there, and the things that make that certain place unique. For example, I am learning about how the origin of the salsa dancing is in Cuba, and certain dishes from the Dominican Republic and how they’re made. I think that this stuff is important to learn because it teaches me about the country in which Spanish is spoken and about the country as a whole. Having a Spanish class where the entrirety of Spanish is taught and not just how to form a sentence is a valuable experience that I .
