The hardest day so far

I knew this day would come. It always does. When you focus all your attention on and dedicate all your energy to one thing this day is inevitable. You know it will come so you anticipate it, but you are never too sure when it will happen.

And when it happens it still comes as a bit of a shock.

I call this day the "I feel so stupid" day.

I had it today.

Just when I thought I was making progress, that my Dutch was improving, that I was able to have a conversation and understand quite a bit, I got the "I feel so stupid day". It usually happens when you pick up a new, a bit more complex subject. In my case it was the irregular verbs in past tens. It's not that I didn't know they existed and got surprised. I knew about them and knew they were coming, but they still broke me. I don't even know why, because it's not like it's the hardest part of the Dutch grammar. Yes, there are many of them and I need to learn them by heart, but I have known about it for a while. I guess what broke me is that for the first time during this course I wasn't able to fully prepare for the lesson (how can you learn tens of verbs in one afternoon?). As a result, I didn't feel comfortable in today's class. I simply felt stupid. I wasn't able to put together one sentence before thinking about it for a long time, I stammered, I made the simplest mistakes, I couldn't find the right words. I felt so stupid...

I mentioned this to Kirsten and she assured me it was quite normal and that everyone had to have a day like that. My classmates confirmed that they all had the "I feel stupid day" at least once in this course and that it was a temporary thing. It didn't really make me feel any better about myself. So I decided to take the afternoon off and not spend even a minute learning Dutch. I deserve a break. I need to give my brain a few hours off.

Tomorrow is another day. Hopefully I won't feel so stupid anymore.