Monday I took my Spanish placement exam. I am down to the last two semesters of my college career and I needed to take three Spanish courses to graduate. I've been putting off Spanish classes because they're one of the classes that are almost always offered in the evenings and being a part time student that's invaluable.

Resources

Anyways, I probably should have done this sooner, but I didn't. A few years ago I decided that i would try to place out of some Spanish but buying Rosetta Stone and studying my butt off over the summer. This past Winter I bought the Rosetta Stone for half price and spent this entire Summer studying 30 minutes to two hours a night four to five days a week.

I supplemented that with a free language learning website called Duolingo. The setup is pretty good and I got the hang of it really quickly. I typically used my lunch breaks to work through the site, but also used the site pretty extensively on my final day of studying. One of the great things is that once you've learned about 50% of the language you can work on real world examples, by helping the site translate them. You can do the translating yourself or review translations from other people and either up vote, down vote or edit a translation. It's a really good resource, especially for the price.

Two other resources I utilized in my studying was Spanish baseball broadcasts and Twitter. Spanish baseball broadcasts are good, because they use a lot of baseball terms I was able to understand and use as points of reference. Twitter also makes for a good reference point, as it gave me a gauge on how much I was learning.

Placement Exam

Of the three courses I needed to graduate, I was able to place out of two of them. I took German in high school, so I was starting from scratch with Spanish. The exam was certainly over my head, but I had learned enough that I was able to pick my way through the exam. There were more questions using excerpts from books and articles than there were questions about what does this word mean. From my understanding the exam apparently got harder as you answered more questions correctly.

If I had to do my studying all over again I would focus more on doing translations using real world examples from Duolingo. I thought Rosetta Stone did a good job of building a base with it's program and Duolingo did a good job of filling in the gaps. However, I think you could get by with just Duolingo.

Rosetta Stone does have an online resource to further help your learning. Unfortunately, it's only available for free for a month or two. After that it requires a subscription. I waited too long to try the online resources, so I can't really comment on how effective they are.

Final Thoughts

One thing I wish I had done was watch some movies in Spanish to see how effective that would have been on helping me learn the language. But I've really enjoyed my time studying a new language. It's very satisfying and something I would recommend everyone do. I plan to continue learning Spanish. I just won't be doing it as hot and heavy.

If anyone has a suggestions for resources or want to share their experience learning a new language I would love to read them in the comment section below.

I don’t have links for today, well I do, but not three I really want to put together for a post. I’m still catching up from my two days at the courthouse serving as juror. For the first time in my life and on the third summon I got picked for a 12-man jury as the 12th man. There were two alternates, so I was actually juror number 12 of 14. I wasn’t really all that upset when I got picked. It was certainly an inconvenience, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.

Monday I got to the courthouse with about 150-200 people. We went through roll call, which consisted of giving our name, place of work, job and spouses place of work. After that the process of eliminating those who couldn’t server for various reasons was conducted. After a good chunk of the jury candidates had been excused for various reasons, we went through a process of answering questions that might pertain to the case:

“Do you know this list of people?”
“Have you ever been the victim of this crime?”
“Do you have any legal training or education?”
“Do you know anyone working in the police force?”
“Have you served before on a jury?”

And so on. After that point, the real fun began. They took the list of remaining names and put them through a computerized process that randomized the names and spit them out on a sheet of paper. Each person that was called was to walk to the front of the courtroom turn around and face the back of the room. The prosecution would either present or excuse the person. If you were presented the defense would either excuse or swear the person into the jury. I was highly entertained at this process as people around me and throughout the courtroom shifted uncomfortably and prayed they wouldn’t be selected. It was like a game show!

I take life as it is, so I wasn’t going to be upset if my name was called, however, I didn’t necessarily want to spend what could potentially be a week at a courthouse listening to lawyers persuade me one way or the other. People were called up, some were selected others were excused. Those that were picked sulked to their seats in the jury box; those that were not picked gave a sigh of relief and grin as the contained their urge to skip back to their seat. I had a feeling I would be called, but we were on the potential 12th juror and my name wasn’t called.

Excused.

Another person.

Excused

Another person.

Excused

Another person.

Excused

Another…Timothy De Block. Shoot.

I walked to the front of the room trying to be as tall as I could, as imposing as I could. I got to the front and thought about doing a military about face, but decided to just turn around. I tried to do my best military stare, but ended up looking at the prosecution table.

“Present”

Stare straight ahead. Stare straight ahead. I hear whispers and look at the defense table and their looking at a notepad with four columns that contained various ‘X’s. I might get out of this afterall! The male defense lawyer looks at me then goes back to whispering with his female associate. I try to look ahead but I’m drawn to what they’re answer is going to be. A shrug, then:

“Swear in the juror”

Those that hadn’t had their name called, yet, gave out a sigh of relief. I felt like things slowed down a little bit as I turned towards the jury box instead of back to my seat. I had to grin a little as I made my way to the 12th seat and a juror button. Two more still needed to be selected, but those were alternates with less responsibilities and I imagine many felt like they had a good shot of getting out of the courtroom without being picked.

A cheer went up when the judge said that no one else would be needed for the rest of the week, which was typically not the case. If you weren’t picked you had to call in the evening to see if you needed to show up at the courthouse the next day for a different trial that would require a jury. Lucky for them there was only one case for this week and the jury had been picked for that case. They were free to go about their business. The rest really isn’t all that interesting, nor is the day of the trail, though I may still write on it. We were informed of the process and what we should expect the next couple days. It was believed that this would be a relatively short trial and it ended up being just that.

I know most people think of jury duty as an annoyance and an inconvenience, but after having gone through the experience it was anything but that. Of course the trial I served was only one day and the judge was absolutely fantastic. He tried to keep things light, which I think helped with the whole process. And my boss was extremely thankful that I was returning to work Wednesday, after finding out I wouldn’t be gone all week. It was certainly an experience and a good one, I think. The judge said that serving on the jury was the second highest honor next to serving your country. I believe that, and I’m glad I’ve gotten to do both.