Can’t hear Nuthin’

I’m old.

I can’t hear for crap. What happens is that if there is someone talking, and at the same time someone around me is having a side conversation, I can’t concentrate on either. This happens in Church, when the old biddies behind me start yammering to each other. Can’t hear a word the priest is saying.

It’s especially tough when the priest is Indian or African.

I can tune in OK, but if there are distractions, my attention becomes unmoored and I never get it back.

It’s really bad when I’m on Teams calls and the speaker is Indian. My ears have trouble decoding the sing-song tenor and the cadence. Their inflection is off, and it loses me.

Turns out, it’s not just me. College students have his as well. They can’t understand the professor.

There’s another problem with foreign-born professors, though, on an even more basic level: Students often struggle to understand them in class. If students literally can’t grasp what the professor is saying, due to a language barrier, how can they learn the material? Often, they resort to essentially teaching themselves, using textbooks, study groups, and online aids.

According to her, not a single one of her medical school professors, so far, has been American-born. All speak with thick accents, although some are clearer than others. Asking questions in class doesn’t help much, because she often can’t understand the answers. And she isn’t alone. Her classmates all have the same problem.

So how are they supposed to learn this information that is presumably so important for doctors to know—information they will be tested over, repeatedly, throughout their years in medical school, culminating in board examinations?

This bright young woman, along with her classmates and many other medical students all over the country, has simply taken matters into her own hands, purchasing expensive software that covers the same material. She attends class religiously each day, then goes home and spends eight or ten more hours watching videos. Despite shelling out tens of thousands of dollars on an “elite” medical school education, she is essentially having to teach herself—all because her professors don’t speak clear English.

I had this happen back in College. I had a middle eastern (Pakistani? I can remember) Physics professor. Hard to understand, and what’s worse, he would talk to the chalkboard. I didn’t struggle though. I simply dropped the class.

I’m paying for it, after all.

If anything it’s worse today. Just try and find a YouTube if you need to understand a piece of software. It’s very rare that you’ll find one where the speaker is Anglo. If they are, it’ll be a woman, and it’ll be in that insufferable, chirpy style with ukulele music in the background.

This leads me to do what the students are doing above – I simply gut through and learn it myself.

When I drive up to a pharmacy, it’s a crap-shoot whether I’ll be able to understand the clerk at the window. Some of the help there are horrifically bad at communication. Hell I even had it at a restaurant the other day.

My burger showed up in the hands of a vibrant dude, who slid it onto my table from my right flank, I had to turn to look at him. I told him thanks. He said something on the order of “No prollum…”

No problem? I see you have marbles in your mouth.

Maybe “Your welcome” would be easier to say. Dude wasn’t even foreign.

That’s two problems – one is basic diction. The other is custom. That isn’t a phrase that one would use in that situation.

It’ll get worse, as we don’t expect immigrants to become proficient in English.