I took German and Spanish at the same time while in high school.  I cannot advise that unless you plan to be a national level interpreter.  I cried through German assignments, and a friend of mine would help me with translation lessons from time to time.

I went to college, a big ten university.  For a silly moment, I signed up to take a placement test in German to enable me to take German II. in my freshman year.  There were at least three hundred people waiting in a holding tank to take this test.  Many spoke German as their native language.  It was an easy “A”.  Those of us who did not speak German as their native language got worked up.  I was sweating from my neck to my butt.  I saw several students put money into a cigarette machine there.  Yes, it was that long ago.  They pulled a knob and a pack of cigarettes dropped into the bin below the display.

I did the same thing.  I pulled a knob and a pack of cigarettes dropped into the bin.  I forgot that I needed something to set the end on fire, and I had nothing.  A fellow saw me and gave me a half used pack of matches.  I trembled and lit the cigarette and took a puff.  I got dizzy.

This led to a habit that is as hard to quit as heroin.

We assembled in the room to take the test.  We had to sit with seats on both sides of us vacant.  I kept smoking:  it was allowed back then when dinosaurs roamed the earth.  I assumed I would fail.  Hell, I had just passed German by the skin of my teeth the year before.  I took the test and that test was HARD.

A week later, as I was still smoking, I found out that I had passed.  What a fluke!  I was signed up to take German II. as a freshman in college. The class was more German literature than language class.  We studied selections of literature and had to translate them, or worse yet, English literature passages that we needed to translate into German.

We also had sessions, mandatory, in the large Language Lab.  I sat in a small booth and slipped earphones on my head.  I waited.  There were many professors in the middle of the room in a glass enclosure.  I heard a voice in my earphones.  I was asked to translate and speak a German passage of literature line by line.  My eyes darted to the professors in the center of the lab.  I directed my gaze at a person who looked German.  I did my best.

It was ridiculous.  My best was not the best in college.  I smoked, cried, and spent an absurd amount of time reading depressing German fiction.  I was a writing major, which required lessons and one short story a week!  My nerves were shot.

In the end, I barely passed German.  In my last Language Lab I discovered that the person speaking to me on my earphones was a large Chinese man.

I quit college German.  That was easy.  Now, about that pack of cigarettes…is a whole other story.