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Greetings, fellow students :)

So, I know you are all wondering (note how I assume that my blog is read by hundreds, no, thousands of people!) what ILS is.

ILS is a new acronym that I have come up with to stand for 'Incomprehensive Lecture Syndrome'.  It means when you attend or listen to a lecture and you have no idea, I repeat, NO idea, what the lecturer was talking about. Even though he or she was speaking English (as far as you could tell, anyway).

I had decided to not go (a split infinitive! I'm so proud of myself! Sorry - the Latin nerd escaped there for a second) to my Linguistics lecture on Tuesday morning and instead, buy food and study in the afternoon. I used to do this all the time last year, so I figured, why not this year?

Come Tuesday afternoon, having stocked the kitchen with edibles and various items of need, I sat down, booted up, logged on, printed out and got ready to take notes.

I listened, I paid attention, I paused and I thought, I mulled over concepts, I paused some more and mulled some more, until, finally, the lecture was over.

And I realised, completely shocked, that I had not understood ONE single concept that came out of the lecturers mouth!! Yes, I did understand the words: they were all Englsh and made sense by themselves but as a whole I had no idea what I was supposed to have learnt. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Nihil.

So now I have decided that I must go in for these lectures. Even though it means a car trip of 45 minutes, the use of expensive petrol and the horrible clanking as the ticket machine takes my change. But I can't go through this unit by only understanding one lecture a week - I'm sure that won't work ... will it? No, it won't!

 I seem to understand more when I'm there - not sure why that is but so it is and so it will be. 

So, be warned: ILS is real, it is out there and it can happen any time! Be aware!