(dis)advantage

This semester has already been more work than the past semester. Most of my classmates have expressed a similar sentiment, but they have real reason to say so- they're taking five classes and I'm taking four! Everyone has to take five classes at some point in the academic year, and I decided to wait until the end- when supposedly my Spanish reading and writing will be at their peaks- to take the plunge. I think this was a good decision- I definitely think (hope) that my academic Spanish improves a bit every semester, and this semester has included enormous amounts of reading and mandatory summaries of the readings, making the readings even more obligatory. I make a schedule on Monday, dividing my readings and writing assignments throughout the week, mostly because I have four classes on Friday and one class every other day so I need to start thinking about the end of the week early. I would be really suffering if I had five classes! All this work has made me wonder how my classmates are managing, and the answer seems to be: I'm the only one who does all the reading. Most of them have already read some key texts, or know how to find summaries online better than I do.

Earlier this week I started to feel really disavantaged- everyone else at least has a better idea of the authors, grew up with history classes of at least THEIR Latin American country, and is just better equipped to get by with a cursory reading. Imagine a foreign exchange student in a class in the US talking about Huck Finn- even if the US students haven't read the book, they know the basics: the historical context, the history and culture racism in the south at the time, that Mark Twain is one of the most important North American authors, etc. Here, I'm definitely (literally) the exchange student.

Still, accepting my disadvantage as a student who doesn't hail from a Latin American country, I'm lucky to come from a country that has played an important role in Latin American history, especially in my classes that deal with the evolution of the capitalist world system, globalization, world economies, etc. I've been thinking lately about how much this benefits me in a little bit over my classmates- when a professor talks about Manifest Destiny or Roosevelt or the New Deal or the Mexican-American war, I have a mini advantage. I know about the US's influence in the Carribean, about Keynesian economics, and who Henry Ford is, all of which we've talked about in my Latin America in the Global Economy class, and those things might not be as clear to others. I know when the American Civil War was (and that there was one!), and who Henry Kissinger is. Basically, although I'm at a disadvantage, it could be worse: I could come from pretty much anywhere else (think: Fiji, Chad, even New Zealand) and be at a major disadvantage. Outside of Latin American countries, the only few that might put me at an advantage would be Spain and Portugal (for obvious colonial reasons) or maybe England (for post-colonial trade dominance/hegemon reasons). And really, while most of my classes have a historical element, lots of it is much more contemporary so at least in that sense I have a leg up.