As a rebellious teenager with too much free time, I was desperate to find a way out of my house for the summer. In my searches for a place to escape to, I stumbled upon a a small college program in rural Vermont. Aptly named Middlebury, (probably short for middle of nowhere-bury), this college seemed like a good fit for a summer away from home. Offering seven- to eight-week programs where you can sleep, eat, and work at the college, I was stoked to leave my parents right away. The catch, that I didn’t realize at the time, was that the program was difficult. Almost too difficult for my oblivious high schooler self—four hours of classes starting at 8 a.m. sharp and six to eight hours of homework was way more work than I had expected. However, that was not even the worst part. What came
as a slap in the face more than anything else was not the difficulty of the program or the environment, or even being surrounded by nearly all undergraduate or graduate students, it was The Language Pledge. The trademarked promise of all the Middlebury Language Schools was to vow to not use any language for communication other than the language of the school you are attending. Basically: NO ENGLISH.
Choosing to study Japanese, I came to the program expecting an extremely fun summer and a lot of new friends. Looking back, you could say I achieved both but if your idea of a fun summer is not writing essays until midnight and drawing Kanji characters a thousand times over you might want to hesitate before signing your name on the pledge board. Although I had made it through the application process and arrived at the program, my haphazard study habits and waning attention in class were beginning to fail me. On the first day of class, after procrastinating on my homework, goofing off with friends, and waiting until 8 p.m. to start, I found myself up until 1:30 a.m. practicing reading and writing. Getting a measly five hours of sleep that night, I vowed to never let myself get into that situation again, but nevertheless continued to struggle against my procrastination habits and short attention span in the coming days. As surfing through high school on common sense (despite lacking proper homework habits) wasn’t an applicable skill here I strived to become a responsible person in the shortest time possible. I was working hard, and making steady progress too when the first exam came around. Confident of my imminent success I forwent studying and took it easy, but I was disappointed and embarrassed when I saw that I scored a sixty- eight. People in the class were receiving 85s and 90s and I felt like the odd one out. I started working harder but when the second exam rolled around…I got a sixty-eight again. Not much of a redemption arc I suppose, I was quite discouraged. Despite studying more than the last time, I felt more motivated than ever to score highly. Being one of just a handful of high school students in the program, I was constantly reassured that it was okay, and that “of course college courses are harder” but I wanted to challenge myself. I couldn’t leave Middlebury without some major sense of accomplishment. To my surprise, this came not from test scores, but from the final essay and presentation. My final presentation was on trains and I wrote 2,500 characters on the differences between Japanese and American passenger rail. This was a much longer essay than anything I have written even in English, and the ten minute long final presentation was leaps and bounds better executed than the sub-five minute self introduction I scrambled together at the beginning of the program.
Some of my best memories from the program were studying until late with friends, eating good food everyday at the dining hall, and singing 踊り⼦ “Odoriko” by Vaundy with two of my closest friends on stage at the Karaoke party. You might think that a program about studying was possibly not fun because you have work to do but getting to do homework in the library every day
was one of my favorite parts of the program. Having a library that was open until midnight every day was quite possibly the coolest thing ever—I got to go there every day to study. I also got to study every day with one of my best friends from the program because the program had such a narrow focus: because we had all devoted our summer to learning Japanese, everyone you knew was completely dedicated. This made hanging out really easy because you always knew where your friends were. Before 8 a.m. people would be eating at the dining hall; between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. we all attended classes; and after 12 p.m. we would eat lunch and then study or do activities. This gave every day a repeatable rhythm, a lot of time to do homework, and plenty of time to hang out with friends; you could always find them because nobody was going anywhere until the summer was over.
As the kind of person to say “Fuck it, we ball,” I had no problem upending my entire life for this summer program. What was not balling, however, was leaving the program, which came sooner than I could have ever expected and left my emotions in disarray. During the program, I had made countless friends, discovered a love for tennis and basketball (which I hadn’t known prior), and had a summer that didn’t suck on any metric measured on the It Sucks™ scale. Leaving the program actually sucked due to some quite obvious reasons. The primary and most obvious reason that leaving the program sucked was because I didn’t want to. Other reasons included that school was objectively less fun than the summer program and I didn’t want to return, that I loved the friends that I made and didn’t want to leave, that I actually loved dormitory life (apart from a bug that was in my room that still haunts me), and that the teachers were very cool and fun to be around. As a certified baller, I balled (cried) my way through the closing ceremony in a respectable but nonetheless distressed fashion because I was having a not so great time coming to terms with the fact that I was leaving soon. Although distressed, I realized that I was only sad because I cared a lot about the experience and friendships I made. This helped me realize that since I will keep those things with me forever, it’s not too bad to leave and I have all of my friends’ contact information—all of whom I have diligently been keeping in touch with after the program. My summer of language learning wasn’t all fun and games, and it certainly wasn’t easy, but I might dare to say that I have not only grown as a person from my experience at the summer program; I have also gained an appreciation and love for learning languages that will last a lifetime.
Notes from the program: Our brilliant professors for our intermediate 1 class were as follows:
Ishii-sensei was our respectful and kind head professor-thanks for always being concerned with how the students were doing and taking care of us.
Fujinaga-sensei was our sweetest and most loving professor. Thanks for crying with me—I wouldn’t have made it through the program without you.
Sakaue-sensei was our most sporty professor. Thanks for always playing sports with me. I learned to actually have fun in sports and our basketball game against the Chinese School was a real highlight of my summer.
Morita-sensei was our most energetic professor. Thanks for spending so much time editing my final essay—I couldn’t have done it without you. And thanks for playing tennis with me; those tennis nights were some of the best.
Kawano-sensei was our coolest professor. Thanks for being an excellent DJ and thanks for telling me your life stories at 1:00 a.m.. Those last few days of the program were so fun and exciting. I’ll never forget them.
During the duration of the program, I had temporarily forgotten the words principal, essay, efficient, and many others due to my prolonged hiatus from English.
My first word after the pledge was lifted (the day of the closing ceremony) was “what” because my friend decided a good first thing to say was profanity which I was wildly unaccustomed to hearing after the long 8 weeks.
Overall, I made unforgettable memories at the Middlebury Language Schools and had such a blast that I am seriously considering going back to work there as a bilingual student. (If I can manage to get better at Japanese in the meantime.) To me it was such a rewarding experience because although it was a short period of time, I made closer bonds with the friends I made there than I could have ever imagined. Although I am still sad that the summer program is over, I’ve come to cherish the Japanese proverb “⼀期⼀会” (ichi-go ichi-e) which translates to “one time, one meeting.” The beauty of this proverb is in the significance of a once in a lifetime meeting with people that will come to an end, but you both cherish the small time you spent together. Who knows, you may very well see them again—the world is smaller than you think.