penmanship

So I enrolled today in a course on "Immigration and Militarization in Israeli Society" or something like that. This is despite the fact that we're now in the third week of class.

So anyway, the class is really interesting and blah blah blah. But perhaps the one defining moment of the class was when the professor (who is Israeli) left her lecture notes and turned to the board to write something. In English.

Now, this is not to make fun of the professor, who is a very interesting, intelligent and nice lady. I'm only pointing this out because it absolutely fascinated me. Buuuut:

I swear, it was the most interesting way of forming English letters I've ever seen. I've really only seen two people who didn't grow up with the English (Roman?) alphabet write in English letters, and they always made it look so friggin easy. It really didn't occur to me that an Israeli could not know how to write letters in the proper way. I mean, sure English speakers probably look like shit when they write in Hebrew, but I figured that EVERYONE could do English. Which I realize sounds idiotic, but when you consider what else I think in the back of my head...it's relatively speaking not so ridiculous. Consider that in the back of my head, though I'd probably never admit it out loud, I think that all Jews speak English and are American. Okay, and I also think that EVERYONE on the planet speaks English (try telling that to my Chilean roommate), but that only all JEWS are both English speakers and Americans. I know it sounds ridiculous, but fuck off about it.



You know, the reason I'm pointing this out as "interesting" (to me at least), rather than making fun, is that.....it's probably exactly what my letters look like when I write in Hebrew. You know, starting from the wrong place, everything is disproportionate, crooked, etc etc. I probably write like some hideously stunted woman-child, and my apparent lack of any intelligence whatsoever will frighten people away.

This is actually making me panic a bit.....what if my Hebrew writing never improves?