My students, whom I genuinely like, recently received the "how to learn a foreign language" chat. I should probably just schedule repeats of the chat in the class schedule because I have a feeling that they'll need to be reminded a couple more times that cramming is no way to learn just about anything and it's definitely no way to learn a foreign language. Oh the irony that this was said by someone who learned enough German to pass her reading exam the week before the exam. It was multiple choice... I feel bad enough pushing class attendance, even though it does usually help, because I've always hated attending classes. I especially hated them as a grad student. Back to the students, they were appropriately shocked and amazed that I knew how they were studying by their performance on the homework. One of the very few benefits, I suppose, of having spent all but seven years of my life in school. Yeah, all but seven. God, that's a depressing statistic.