My specialized-language-story

In Norway 3 years ago I started at a Norwegian business college, known for being one of the best in Europe. I had never taken a single economy-class before, and I had pretty much zero start-knowledge about “business and administration”. So my example is an example of totally failing in my use of specialized language. I rarely remember all the specialized words I used in my notes and was listening to in lectures, so I cant give you a detailed example of how complicated this language is. I guess that’s normal if you have no idea what the talk is about, or what the word means. But “direct salary” and “indirect salary” is words I will never forget. I have forgotten what the meaning of the words are, but I will never forget how many times our professor mentioned these words.

It happened in the middle of my first semester, in my business management class. I sat in the class with 200 other students. I seriously had no clew what the teacher was talking about; no clew what he ment with the graphs he drew on the board. It is extremely hot in this lecture hall, even though I can see the snow falling down outside. Everybody is coughing around me, and I just want to leave. The professor in answering questions that first of all I don’t understand, and secondly I could not even dream about answering the questions. I just couldn’t understand how it seemed like everybody around me understood him and stood up and answered him one correct answer after the other. I looked down at my notes, which made no sense to me, looked up at the blackboard which also seemed totally greek to me. Tears where pressing behind my eyes. I figured this moment that “business” is not my thing, at least not at this moment in life, and at least not at one of the most popular and difficult colleges in Europe.

Katrine Haarklau wrote:In Norway 3 years ago I started at a Norwegian business college, known for being one of the best in Europe. I had never taken a single economy-class before, and I had pretty much zero start-knowledge about “business and administration”. So my example is an example of totally failing in my use of specialized language. I rarely remember all the specialized words I used in my notes and was listening to in lectures, so I cant give you a detailed example of how complicated this language is. I guess that’s normal if you have no idea what the talk is about, or what the word means. But “direct salary” and “indirect salary” is words I will never forget. I have forgotten what the meaning of the words are, but I will never forget how many times our professor mentioned these words.

It happened in the middle of my first semester, in my business management class. I sat in the class with 200 other students. I seriously had no clew what the teacher was talking about; no clew what he ment with the graphs he drew on the board. It is extremely hot in this lecture hall, even though I can see the snow falling down outside. Everybody is coughing around me, and I just want to leave. The professor in answering questions that first of all I don’t understand, and secondly I could not even dream about answering the questions. I just couldn’t understand how it seemed like everybody around me understood him and stood up and answered him one correct answer after the other. I looked down at my notes, which made no sense to me, looked up at the blackboard which also seemed totally greek to me. Tears where pressing behind my eyes. I figured this moment that “business” is not my thing, at least not at this moment in life, and at least not at one of the most popular and difficult colleges in Europe.

I actually have an exact experience like you last semester. In my first year of college at Mizzou, I had to take Economics 1014 which is principle of microeconomics. I had to take it because it is one of business requirements in order to go upper level courses.
Since I did not have any knowledge about it, I actually got bad grade. Even if it is teaching basic principle of economics, there are some subtle things that interupt on fully understanding the contents.
I think writing about difficulty of understanding and using economic terms are really good for you to write literacy paper. I really like it.

From your story, I've learned that you are from Norway and you were majoring in business there. However, why did you come to Mizzou insteading of continuing your education there? what made you come to mizzou?

Also, what are you majoring now then?

Katrine Haarklau wrote:In Norway 3 years ago I started at a Norwegian business college, known for being one of the best in Europe. I had never taken a single economy-class before, and I had pretty much zero start-knowledge about “business and administration”. So my example is an example of totally failing in my use of specialized language. I rarely remember all the specialized words I used in my notes and was listening to in lectures, so I cant give you a detailed example of how complicated this language is. I guess that’s normal if you have no idea what the talk is about, or what the word means. But “direct salary” and “indirect salary” is words I will never forget. I have forgotten what the meaning of the words are, but I will never forget how many times our professor mentioned these words.

It happened in the middle of my first semester, in my business management class. I sat in the class with 200 other students. I seriously had no clew what the teacher was talking about; no clew what he ment with the graphs he drew on the board. It is extremely hot in this lecture hall, even though I can see the snow falling down outside. Everybody is coughing around me, and I just want to leave. The professor in answering questions that first of all I don’t understand, and secondly I could not even dream about answering the questions. I just couldn’t understand how it seemed like everybody around me understood him and stood up and answered him one correct answer after the other. I looked down at my notes, which made no sense to me, looked up at the blackboard which also seemed totally greek to me. Tears where pressing behind my eyes. I figured this moment that “business” is not my thing, at least not at this moment in life, and at least not at one of the most popular and difficult colleges in Europe.

It seems that we have similiar experience of learning some courses of business, they are not easy at all. Here, I took a management class before and I would say that the class was the most confusing one, I also can not understand the content the instructor said especially the examples. Business is hard learning sphere but I have continue it...

Ｗｅｌｌ，　Econ is good for me. But I　have the issue about the biology class. It had both lecture and lab. Too many biologist words to be used. At that time, I very crazy about that. Ｉwas thinking why I chose this course.