Trying to Remember the “Why”

I’ve been taking Arabic at this place in San Francisco for almost two years now. For 8 of those months, I wasn’t working so I always had my homework done and vocabulary memorized for the one or two days a week I had class.

Yeah, I was *that* person.

Things were different once I started working again. As I yawned in class one evening after my first day back at work, the teacher laughed good-naturedly and said that now I knew what it felt like. It just got harder from there. I didn’t have as much as the vocabulary memorized. Sometimes I didn’t even finish my homework. I won’t even talk about the last term…

For a moment I thought about taking a break, collect myself and start back up in a couple of months. Then I thought back to why I’m doing this all on the first place. I want to learn Arabic to eventually gain a better understanding of the Qur’an, to jump start my mind in the way that learning a language can, and also to get a reprieve from the corporate life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for my job and I’m glad I have this opportunity to work and help out at home. It also pays for these classes! However, the 9 to 5 shouldn’t discourage me from pursuing outside interests but instead, enable me to do so.

This is something I want to do. It took me years to even start up classes. This isn’t the time to take a break, it’s time to start anew, the time to step it up. I’m going to make this work, InshAllah.

But man oh man is Arabic hard…