This afternoon we got a phone call. An unknown number with a Houston area code. My wife picked up. Our home phone is pretty loud so I could make out that it wasn't a regular call. Most likely some telemarketer. She got suspicious when the woman on the other side started asking her about our vehicle so she handed me the phone.
There was some disturbance on the line and I couldn't figure out what the lady was trying to ask about our car, so I politely asked her to repeat herself to which I got a statement thrown at me in a southern drawl - "Sir, I don't understand what you are saying. Do you even speak English?"
In a split second, the memories came screaming back. I was walking up to Holzapfel Hall across the M circle on the University of Maryland campus. One of the many departments resident in that hall is the Maryland English Institute. The University offloads the task of conducting English speaking tests for prospective TAs to this department.
During the first semester of my Master's degree, when all of us were hunting for assistantships, getting a 1/2 TA was a very realistic option for ECE majors. One of the pre-reqs for being awarded the TA was to pass the MEI test.
I'd given my test that morning. All it consisted of, was a chat with two of their staff members. They basically asked me a bunch of casual questions related in no way to teaching. I needed the assistantship badly and my mind was engrossed trying to figure out what courses I could pick on the prospective TA form; never once thinking about the pre-requisite.
I went up to the MEI office and asked for my result so that I could attach it to the form before submitting it to the ECE Graduate Office. But the paper I got in my hand was nothing short of a hundred slaps on my face. I had been deemed ineligible by the MEI staff to teach based on my speaking skills! No explanations were offered but a recommendation was made to take a course with the MEI to "improve" my English speech.
Not only was this the first time in my entire life that I had technically failed a test but also a declaration that 16 years of formal education in the English medium had been deemed insufficient to talk about Rectifiers and Amplifiers in front of a bunch of disinterested undergrads!
I was beyond furious. I remember walking back to the student union in utter disbelief and taking the next bus home because I couldn't figure out what was happening. This was fairly early in the semester and I didn't really have many friends on campus apart from my room-mates who weren't home. Not that they could believe what had happened when they eventually got to know about it. It was a rude shock, perhaps the most brutal of the many I received as a first semester grad student.
During the course of the next two semesters I saw several other foreign TAs struggle with their language which just rubbed salt on my wounds, but I couldn't debase myself further to take the MEI course. A year later I was working with a professor who recommended me to the ECE Department for the TA and this time I magically passed! The irony or the politics aside, I never got over the fact that the MEI had failed me in an English speaking test.
And so when this lady asked me if I even spoke English, I gave her a piece of my mind (without using a single swear word ... the MEI would approve) before disconnecting the line ...
There was some disturbance on the line and I couldn't figure out what the lady was trying to ask about our car, so I politely asked her to repeat herself to which I got a statement thrown at me in a southern drawl - "Sir, I don't understand what you are saying. Do you even speak English?"
In a split second, the memories came screaming back. I was walking up to Holzapfel Hall across the M circle on the University of Maryland campus. One of the many departments resident in that hall is the Maryland English Institute. The University offloads the task of conducting English speaking tests for prospective TAs to this department.
During the first semester of my Master's degree, when all of us were hunting for assistantships, getting a 1/2 TA was a very realistic option for ECE majors. One of the pre-reqs for being awarded the TA was to pass the MEI test.
I'd given my test that morning. All it consisted of, was a chat with two of their staff members. They basically asked me a bunch of casual questions related in no way to teaching. I needed the assistantship badly and my mind was engrossed trying to figure out what courses I could pick on the prospective TA form; never once thinking about the pre-requisite.
I went up to the MEI office and asked for my result so that I could attach it to the form before submitting it to the ECE Graduate Office. But the paper I got in my hand was nothing short of a hundred slaps on my face. I had been deemed ineligible by the MEI staff to teach based on my speaking skills! No explanations were offered but a recommendation was made to take a course with the MEI to "improve" my English speech.
Not only was this the first time in my entire life that I had technically failed a test but also a declaration that 16 years of formal education in the English medium had been deemed insufficient to talk about Rectifiers and Amplifiers in front of a bunch of disinterested undergrads!
I was beyond furious. I remember walking back to the student union in utter disbelief and taking the next bus home because I couldn't figure out what was happening. This was fairly early in the semester and I didn't really have many friends on campus apart from my room-mates who weren't home. Not that they could believe what had happened when they eventually got to know about it. It was a rude shock, perhaps the most brutal of the many I received as a first semester grad student.
During the course of the next two semesters I saw several other foreign TAs struggle with their language which just rubbed salt on my wounds, but I couldn't debase myself further to take the MEI course. A year later I was working with a professor who recommended me to the ECE Department for the TA and this time I magically passed! The irony or the politics aside, I never got over the fact that the MEI had failed me in an English speaking test.
And so when this lady asked me if I even spoke English, I gave her a piece of my mind (without using a single swear word ... the MEI would approve) before disconnecting the line ...
