The Daily Trojan – Nayanika Kapoor 
For seven years, throughout middle school and high school, I learned Mandarin Chinese. “Learned” is a strong word — rather, I struggled through it. And when I say struggled, I mean it. Chinese was consistently my hardest subject. Even after practicing a character 30 times, I still would forget a little stroke in the corner. After repeating the pinyin — or pronunciation of the Chinese word using English phonetics — to myself in my head repeatedly, I would still mix up the second and third tones. There were countless moments when I wanted to quit, and every year, before I had to make my course selection to move onto the next level of Chinese, I said to myself, “Am I really doing this for another year?” I questioned my ability to learn new languages, and I constantly wondered and wondered if I was just bad at learning languages, or if I was bad at learning Chinese. (more)