PGT- WTF?

Today was the day that I was to figure out some stuff about my actual classes. I am here to get an MA in TESOL after all. I have had no idea is teaching English as a second language would be a language, education, or humanity major, nor did anyone I spoke to. An American on the football team (I’ll say it again soccer) is studying TESOL as well, so we are lost together. Right back to today, we had a meeting at 9am in a hall in a building that houses goring language students, translation studies, anthropology, and English. We figured, hell it must be the right place if the email we go said so.

We sit down in the moderately sized lecture hall, and we get out our notebooks so we appear to be intelligent ready to learn students. Then in walks in a large group of Asian students. We thought it was weird that so many students were not native English speakers, and we thought it was even weirder that there were so many people in our major. We hear one girl nervously say ,”I hope I am in the right place for French language studies.” Another girl replies, “Well I am studying German, so you should be alright.” We make to gather our things and get the hell out of there when simultaneously four people sit in our row blocking us in and we see two or our friends, and American laxer and Spanish baskeballer. One is majoring in multicultural studies and the other is translational studies. We sit back down and wonder, “Maybe if everyone is a little different, that means we are in the right place.”

In walks a professor and the best was to describe this man is Really British. Really British Professor turns on a power point, and it says PGT. My friend and I start to panicky whisper to each other, “Is that acronym for us? Are we in the right place?” While we hopelessly ask each other, a girl in the front of the room asks the professor the same thing. He responds, “You should be alright” and leaves again. Unfortunately we did not hear what major she was in because we were too busy talking.

We then swallow some pride and ask a girl next to us. She seemed to think the same thing that we were all similar subjects until she heard we wanted to TEACH English as a second language. Then she had a “oh boy” look on her face. “Shit,” I say to my football friend, “what is we were supposed to be with education. They went yesterday.” We tried to plan an escape route for when the Really English Professor made an announcement that we were in the very wrong place; however, we had equipment for practice and could not easily pack it up and run without being assholes. Also the entire room was filled to the brim with students. The seats were filled, and everyone else was sitting on the floor; there was no floor space left.

The professor walks in again and begins talking. He does not define PGT, so my football friend and I give up. We figure that we’d just be trapped in the wrong meeting. Turns out, after a good solid 5 min of listening to the Really British Professor, we were in the RIGHT room. It was a meeting for all students getting MAs. Whew. We were so giddy from the relief that we drew pictures the whole time. Post to come featuring the pics.