Learning to say 'hello' before goodbye

This semester, College senior Rebecca Gerr could have been kicking back, enjoying her soon-to-be freedom from academic life.

Instead, she chose to enroll in Portuguese 114 - Portuguese for Spanish speakers - where she spends one hour four days a week with her fellow estudiantes learning a new language.

"I'm a language person, I love languages," said Gerr, who, in addition to Portuguese and Spanish, took a year of Modern Standard Arabic at Penn.

"I think someday I would really like to do something public policy [related] and it's just such an advantage."

A senior starting a new language isn't the norm, but as the job market outside Penn becomes more competitive with fewer opportunities, students are looking for that extra something they can bring to the table.

According to Tanya Jung, an advisor for the College, an extra language above the requirement can broaden students' horizons, increase their employability and produce a more well-rounded student.

Additionally certain majors, like Romance Languages, require students to have studied two languages to graduate.

"The only drawback," Jung cautioned, is students "not being able to finish the entire sequence."

Often, though, a senior will elect to start a new language for more eclectic reasons.

"I took [Portuguese] because my boyfriend, now my husband, is from Brazil and I wanted to learn it to be able to better understand him and his family and community," said recent graduate Shalhevet Roth of the class she took second semester of her senior year.

College senior Doug McPherson, meanwhile, began Arabic this semester as a way to spend time with a friend of his.

"I wanted to take Farsi. He wanted to take Arabic," McPherson wrote in an e-mail.

"We played rock-paper-scissors and he won."

McPherson won't be continuing with his studies, however, and one issue he found with the beginner's class was the lack of maturity his fellow - and often younger - students displayed.

"Taking a class with sophomores and freshman is like taking a time machine back to middle school," he wrote.

Like McPherson, Gerr found the class to be "silly," but it was to her liking.

"She really makes an effort to make it fun, but also very practical," Gerr said of her Portuguese teacher.

For example, the class recently pretended to be husbands who refused to do housework and had to convey their displeasure in Portuguese.

Of course, starting a new language senior year is not for everyone.

College senior Adam Teitcher is one such student. While he would like to start a new language, he finds he does not have the time as graduation day looms near.

"There are so many other classes I want to take, subjects I want to study," Teitcher said.

Gerr, however, emphasized how much she is enjoying her class this year as she prepares for the coming one.

"Basic language classes are fun and funny," she said. "You always say embarrassing things without knowing it."

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