A little more than a year ago I switched schools from a program that worked with Latin for Americans (heavily grammar based) to a school that used the Cambridge series, and was horrified to find, as I looked in the back of my new Latin textbook, that several tenses I knew and loved were not there, including about 75% of the subjunctive. I attempted to “keep up” outside of school, trudging through the rest of Fabulae Gracae and telling myself I’d start on some of the stuff I would be reading if I were at my old school (Cicero, etc) but failed miserably, as I have little willpower, and the English and mathematics programs proved to be, unlike Latin, much more challenging than those at my old school. So I sat there and “learned” passive voice and indirect statements for perhaps the third time. After attending the Junior Classical League convention and, for the first time in my life, not placing in the top 10 in any of the academic contests, I felt like I had forgotten everything.

This year, I was thrown head-first into the Aeneid. Basically, Latin IV consists of listening to a tape of my teacher translate lines from the Aeneid while I copy it down underneath the corresponding lines. Ninety percent of the time I don’t really understand the syntax at all, nor do I understand some of the more advanced poetic devices.

I went to the bookstore the other day and bought myself some flash cards. I then asked the woman if they had any books geared specifically toward the AP test or Vergil/the Aeneid. (I tend to shy away from these things because I like to think that I’m learning for the sake of knowledge and not so that I can take a test, but it was getting ridiculous). She chirpily told me that yes, they did, and it would be available as early as February if I wanted to order it. Since the AP test is in May, I was kind of hoping I could find some help before that.

I was also kind of hoping I’d eventually learn Latin.

My school counselor keeps telling me, “Well, you don’t have to take the AP test, don’t worry about it,” but the truth is, I really do want to take the exam. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I started this whole mess, back in 8th grade. It’s not just so it will look nice on my transcript – it’s because I actually want to learn this language, because it’s beautiful, it really is, and it frustrates me more than anything when I don’t understand it.

Is there anything I can do? I know that at this rate I won’t even score a 3, much less score a 4 or a 5. My teacher is too busy to assist me during class, much less outside of it (she has multiple classes during periods, which is the main reason I’m being taught by this strange audio-tape-method).