Advanced Spanish Syntax

is the name of the class that I'm starting at Auburn tomorrow. Conveniently, this class starts at 3 p.m. tomorrow while my place of employment doesn't let out for the summer until next Thursday, and I usually don't get to leave for the day until 3 p.m. Auburn is a 45-minute drive away. Um, conflict?

My supervisor graciously allowed me to rearrange my schedule so that I could leave by 2. And most of the afternoons so near the end of school my usual classes will be busy having end-of-the-year parties and the like, so there wasn't much rearranging to do at all, thankfully.

But I'm nervous. I have no clue why. It's not like this is new to me. I've only been out of college 2 years. And I took a graduate course (a theology one at that) last summer, so it's not like I'm out of touch or whatever. I guess maybe I have this unnerving feeling that I'm going to be . . . behind or something. I have this fear the class is going to be chock full of advanced, serious native speakers who can quote lengthy sections of Pedro Calderón de la Barca and who can conjugate irregular verbs in every tense known to the inhabitants of Romance Languagedom and who can syllabify effortlessly (using all the correct linguistic symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet) and I'm going to be left, trembling and coughing, in their Spanish dust.

But I'm trying to take it easy. I'm trying to remind myself that God really does have a purpose in my staying in Alabama, commuting to this school, and spending a fortune on gas in the process. He must.