So, I had to find myself a job and jobs for highschool graduates were not too great. Luckily, my mother knew somebody who had a husband in a high enough place to find me a job as a key-punch operator in a large manufacturing plant. I worked there for almost a year. I had to work shifts and the morning shift would start at 6:30 am. I didn’t particularly like it.
We had a quota every day. I worked with 5-6 other girls. We did not have a direct supervisor all the time. The other girls chatted, drank coffees, smoked, even took showers in the plant’s shower rooms. They did not do their work until very late and therefore they had to rush and struggle. In the meantime, I came to work, did my keypunching and then took out a book to read. I mentioned that reading was by favorite pastime.
At the end of the shift, when the supervisor came to check how we were doing, the others were working feverishly and I was reading. It did not appear too good for me. I tried to explain that my work had been done sooner and that’s why I was relaxing. My explanations fell onto deaf ears. In the end, I had to pick up and help the lazybones finish their work. So I ended up working more than others, without any recognition. That unfairness certainly upset me.
Sometimes, when we worked the afternoon shift, everyone was motivated to finish his or her work soon and then leave. The supervisors or most of them were gone for the day when we finished. So, we felt entitled that since our work was done, we could leave and go home. I, for one, did not believe in sticking around and wasting my time doing nothing. There was nothing else to do if I were done. Our quota for the day was given to us day by day.
One day, when we were just leaving, the big boss, the director of the plant caught us in the act and after reading us the riot act, announced that the following day we would be demoted and our work would be standing up all day at the assembly line. I protested forcefully but I did not convince him that he shouldn’t do it. I told him that it was common practice to do it and it was unfair for him to do that only to our shift. In the end, I quit. I did not work on the assembly line for a single day.
That convinced me that I should start studying for college again. In the meantime, I had lost a year when I could have applied for college. I studied, but leisurely, not hard, and on my own, without any tutor. I worked as an interpreter for a few international exhibitions and that opened my eyes to what life was like for people beyond the Iron Curtain.
Then, I went to take the exams again. There was no emotion in my heart and soul, no trepidation whatsoever. I didn’t care one way or the other. I felt that I knew everything, much better than everybody else did. Later on, some friends that I made in college told me that they envied my calmness during those times. This time, I got great scores, even in the oral exams. I even volunteered to answer questions that students before me couldn’t answer. I had an air of supreme confidence. Naturally, I was among the people admitted. When I had failed, my score had been 7.87. When I got in, my score was 9.06. But later on, before the start of classes, there was a supplementation (for reasons unknown?!? and a few others got in.
In college we had some great professors, some good ones and some that were not too great. We learned a lot about the English language and literature. During the 4 years of college, we learned about English drama, poetry, novels, essays, and about phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and a lot of other stuff that I have long forgotten. I remember a class that taught Old English vs. Middle English vs. Modern English. It was rather difficult to remember all forms of words that had evolved so much that they had no resemblance to what they looked or sounded like hundreds of years ago.
There were 2 semesters each year and we had courses and seminars. At the courses, everybody was busy taking notes. There were manuals but most of the time there would be material from the courses, not covered by the manuals on the exams. There were 3-6 exams each semester. They would have written and oral components. On the oral components, you could choose to pick another face down paper with different subjects on it hoping that it would be something that you knew better. That is if you thought you did not know too much on the subjects that you had picked initially. But that lowered your grade a couple of notches from the start. I never did this. One time, I loaned my class notes (one semester worth of notes) to a friend who had not taken good notes. Two days before the exam she told me she had lost my notes. I was hysterical. I managed to do well on that exam though, because I rapidly switched my exam paper for another one. The one I had picked contained material from the class notes, which I no longer had and had not studied. The teacher either did not see me do it or closed her eyes to it. She knew what had happened to my class notes.
Of course, we still had classes of Marxist Philosophy, Scientific Socialism and other similar studies. And we had exams in those. The teachers were very strict and often flunked half of each class. I managed to navigate these courses without incident.
As usual, I was confrontational with the teachers when I felt justified. There was one lady who was supposed to teach us but she herself needed to learn a few things. I, having read a great number of books from the American library, was pretty well versed in the language, even some idiomatic phrases. I remember hotly contradicting her when she marked me down on a test for having used the term “How come?” in a translation. She said that phrase did not exist.
I had some confrontations with the dean of the college too. He was also a professor and I took some exams with him. At some point I managed, through heated arguments, to convince him to change my grade into a higher one in an exam.
Classes would be held in the morning or in the afternoon. Space was scarce so we used every little nook and cranny of the old building. We would also have gym classes in another building.
Starting with the 3rd year, we could take some electives. There was one very interesting class dealing with translations of poetry. The professor was an old man, probably the best in the college. We managed to get some amazing translations done under his direction. I also took some class, I don’t remember what it was on, but the fun thing was that it was taught by a visiting professor from England.
During that time, I had studied and taken an exam and license to become a tour guide-interpreter. So, during vacations, on weekends, in any spare time, I would work for the National Travel Office shepherding groups of English speaking tourists on tours. It was a great opportunity to visit all regions of my own country (quite expensive to do on my own) and be paid for it. At the same time, my English skills were further improved.
I also took an exam to get a translator’s license. And of course, passed it.
(to be continued)
Simona Georgescu
