I make no claims to be particularly academically able. I'm not. I've trundled along for many, many years, never setting the world on fire, never being particularly impressive, but never being utterly shit either. I've only ever failed one thing: having wanted to go to Oxford since about the age of 4, I took the entrance exam in 1994, passed that, and then failed the interviews quite spectacularly. There was a voice in my head during the politics and economics interview at Christ Church telling me that if I shut up, I might be able to salvage something; but I blundered on anyway. My interview at Somerville the following day went better, but the damage was done by then.
I did not get admitted.
The letter telling me to sod off arrived on the 17th December. I forced out a laugh for the sake of appearances - Mum was looking over my shoulder - though really I wanted to throw myself out of the nearest window. There was then a bit of phoning to be done, to the other people who'd been interviewed at the same college for the same degree: I think there was about a dozen of us, though most of their names escape me, and most of us had shared the same train back to our various hometowns in a coach where there were the lights and heating had packed up. Only one had been offered a place, and she'd not even been on that cold and darkling train home; everyone else - except me - was resolved to go on to Bristol or Durham or impressive places like that. For my part: it'd never occurred to me to apply to Bristol or Durham or impressive places like that. I think I had a 2-Cs fallback offer from an ex-Poly in Dundee to study business law, but I had no intention of taking that up. (Odd, isn't it, that had I passed the interview, my Oxford offer would have been two Es? My fallback for a shit course was, on paper, going to be harder to achieve than Christ Church. As it happened, I got 5 As. Something else that never occurred to me was to take a year out and have another pop. Good lord, I was stupid back then.)Anyway: I thought it important to memorialise that failure, so framed the letter as a testament to my own fundamental rubbishness: it's on the wall just in the line of sight of my desk in the study at home, to serve as a constant reminder that I'm not all that able. I've got a photocopy that I sometimes put on my office door at work, too, so that passers-by know that they're being taught by someone who didn't even get into university.
Why mention all that now? Because we've a Persian exam in a couple of weeks, and I think I'm about to fail - possibly quite badly. It'll be the second proper failure of my academic career, and it's terrifying me.
The basic problem is that the vocabulary is killing me. Not so much that it's complicated - I wouldn't know. The problem is that I've simply not got time to learn it. I'm still not au fait with the stuff we were supposed to learn after week 1, and we're now in week 7. Every week there's more, so I'm just getting further and further behind.
I'm gutted, because I'm really enjoying the language; but I'm really considering giving up. OK, so it's £300 down the drain... except it's not down the drain, because I'd happily spend £300 to avoid the utter humiliation that's coming my way in 28 days' time.
So there we go. I don't think there'll be any more Persian updates. I've all but failed already, so there's no point taking the exam; and if I'm not going to take the exam, there's no point turning up to class.
It's been fun, but I think I'm at the end of the line.
But what about this week's lesson? What did we learn in class?
Buggered if I know. I can't speak for others, but I learned nothing.
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