Inconsistent Experience

Investing time into the learning process is important, but certain processes yield more knowledge and experience than others. To put it bluntly, not all experiences are created equal.

I lived in South Korea for two years as a missionary. Before flying to the country itself, I spent eleven weeks in Provo, Utah at the Missionary Training Center to study the Korean language. When I first arrived at the MTC, there were two other districts learning Korean. One district was five weeks ahead, and the other district was ten weeks ahead. In my district's first week of lessons, we practiced our personal introductions to the ten week district. Our Korean was choppy, slow, and all around bad. On top of that, they were memorized routines. The ten week district, on the other hand, spouted off whole paragraphs of detailed information without a moment's hesitation. At that moment, I wanted more than anything to reach the ten week level. One week into the training, the leading district flew out to their respective missions.

Ten weeks later, I became what I wanted to become at week #1. Not only did I speak comfortably and fluently, there were two districts under me, so suddenly I was the expert. I was the one being asked all the questions. It was an extremely exciting week. My district finally received its batch of flight itineraries, and the nights became sleepless ones. After a few days, we finally stepped into the plane and flew to the city of Incheon. From Incheon, we rode a bus to Seoul.

In Seoul, my district given the opportunity to interact with hundreds of native Koreans. We were excited for this opportunity, but excitement turned to horror as realized we could not understand a single word. We suffered blows to our ego as other missionaries who had been in the country for just a few weeks longer seemed to converse with little difficulty. It suddenly dawned upon us that we judged our own abilities based on each other.

In contrast to my district's disappointment, there was indeed a light at the end of the tunnel. We discovered that our Korean skills had more than doubled in the first few weeks in the country. The circumstances were substantially different. Rather than practicing the language with other ignorant non-Asians, we were in a place where the language really mattered. Our survival depended upon our ability to speak.

To be continued...