Conformity vs. Rigidity

Featured image: Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

I study German at Goethe Institut. I attended the morning batch there for over a month and a half and recently, shifted to the evening batch after having applied for a transfer (the transfer was unavoidable because of my college timings).

New batch, ergo, new teachers, and of course, new classmates. These people were different as compared to my old class buddies; they weren’t mean or anything (quite nice, on the contrary), but they didn’t seem to be willing to embrace the language as much. I was used to classmates participating a lot, boldly, albeit inaccurately speaking in German, explaining words with the help of examples instead of translating them directly, et cetera. These new people didn’t seem to be trying, they spoke in English/Hindi/Marathi for the most part. Rudi, my teacher in the morning batch had a rule- no language apart from German in the class; this rule was so stringent in fact, that he made every defaulter pay Rs. 10, which were then stored in our class’ account. My new teachers, who had already told their students the benefits of living the language, were of the opinion that their charges were old enough to decide whether or not they wanted to follow the study tips given to them. Valid point.

After getting to know everyone superficially (not sure if that’s the right word) and observing them for two lectures, I formed the following opinion about them: they weren’t into the language as much as I was.

Now I had two options:
1. Gel in by losing my language streak
2. Appear pretentious/facetious by stubbornly continuing to speak in German
After a few days of mulling over this and simultaneously switching back and forth between options 1 and 2, I realized that I had unknowingly chosen a 3^rd option, which was thus…
3. Continue speaking in German while at the same time subtly, yet consistently encouraging my peers to do the same by kinda fitting in with them

This method seemed to work. I won’t say I convinced all of them, but I definitely got some of them to try… and consequently, succeed. Pretty cool, right?

My German course is over now (if you carefully read how this post begins, I’m sure you’ll be able to tell that I had started writing it when the course hadn’t ended as yet). Till the very last day, I didn’t vibe with my new batchmates the way I used to with the old ones, but that isn’t surprising as I had joined them towards the end of the course. I’ll meet them directly on the day of the exam and after that, I probably won’t see most of them ever again.

Despite the seemingly insignificant role they played in my life (and I in theirs), I learned one thing from them- When you find yourself out of your comfort zone, you can either fit in or you can stick to your old ways (not that any of these are wrong, by the way). Or, or, or, you can take the path in between… Change yourself to suit your surroundings and change your surroundings to suit you.

It’s not Conformity vs. Rigidity… It’s Conformity and Rigidity.