My main motivation for learning Russian has always been related to my family. Since my mom was Romanian-Moldovan, her side of the family spoke Russian and Romanian, but not much English. While Romanian is more of my “heritage” language, Russian is taught at more colleges, and it’s actually spoken outside of two countries, so studying Russian instead made practical sense.
I have become more interested in involving Russian in my future career, whatever that may be, but at first my major in Russian was purely personal – I want(ed) to become fluent in Russian, and it made sense to commit myself to a major if I was interested in all the courses a major in Russian needs.
I have had a very positive experience learning Russian here. Don’t get me wrong, it was very intensive. Class meets five times a week, and in the first year there are weekly unit tests. In second-year Russian it was a little bit lighter: the unit tests took place about every other week, but there was still a lot of information to learn.
The interest in the Russian department is small, so the number of students in my classes dwindled throughout the two years of intensive grammar/vocabulary study. There were four people total in Russian 001, then three people (one of whom was a local high school student), two, and finally, in my fourth semester, I was the only person in the class. It was wonderful; I had so much practice speaking Russian, which definitely helped when I went to Armenia over the summer to keep studying Russian.
I have had several great professors from the Russian department, most of whom were only hired short-term and have since left, but every class with Professor Sibelan Forrester, in particular, has been a delight. Sometimes, for class, she would bring in her guitar and we would sing Russian folk songs for a couple minutes at the end of class – it was a good way to practice phonetics and reading Cyrillic quickly, but ultimately it was also fun and kept me looking forward to class despite the number of quizzes.
Even without getting into all the potential psychological/neurological benefits, I am in favor of the study of languages. It genuinely unlocks so much, from primary source archives, to novels and academic articles, to literature, to music, to the other people who speak it.
More specifically, I do think Swarthmore is a good place to study a language. While I imagine the level of individual attention I received is more characteristic of the less-popular language classes, being a student in a class with a maximum of four students gives you a lot of time to practice speaking and to ask questions. I feel Swarthmore lived up to its promise of small class sizes, as well as the benefits of it – with classes that small, you have to understand what is going on, and there is no way for your comprehension (or lack thereof) to slide under the professor’s radar.
I am not sure I would recommend majoring only in a language (unless the major is comparative literature – I have nothing but respect for the amount of learning needed for that), but I think that if you can get a major/minor in a foreign language, it is absolutely worth it. It is fun, the professors are great, and the content courses (once you get past the grammar courses) are fascinating. There is the revolving door of assistant professors, as there is only one tenured position professor, but that is the main complaint I can think of. And even that has its upsides – the seminar and higher level course offerings often change topics, making the chance of taking a class you are personally interested in much higher. The small class size also means that the department wants to make sure you are interested in what is being taught, so although the material is of course decided and guided by the professor, there is open discussion around it.
