Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Thursday, June 27, 2019

What to Expect in the Climate Crisis in the Upper Midwest

The first module in the class after the introduction to anthropology and environmental anthropology in particular was to focus in on what we can expect in climate change, using the Fourth National Climate Change Assessment (the “Black Friday” report) and other supplementary science material. While these students are aware of the climate crisis and how specific ecosystems in our region have changed over the past decades, the 4th NCCA delineates specific risks and vulnerabilities for the region in which we now live, and where most of these students will continue to live.[1] This specificity allows us to pin down specific concerns and actions, counteract the sense of impending, impossible, inevitable disaster. 

The 4th NCAA is a masterful depiction of the specific conditions we can expect 20-40 years in the future.[2] It also allows us to start to consider issues of equity and adaptation. We read the Overview, the Midwest, and Key Messages.

In the Midwest, we’ll see the following effects in 20-40 years:

  •        Agriculture – Soil erosion, favorable conditions for pests and pathogens, degraded quality of stored grains, decreased yields due to problems with reproduction from rising extreme temperatures
  •        Forestry – Increased tree mortality in part due to invasive species and pests.  We’re losing (and will lose more) culturally important tree species. Our forest systems will change (conversion), or even convert to non-forested ecosystems by the end of this century.
  •        Biodiversity & ecosystems – our native species help with essential services such as water purification, flood control, resource provision, and crop pollination.  Our freshwater resources are at great risk given the combination of climate stressors along with land use change, habitat loss, pollution, nutrient inputs, invasive species.
  •        Human health – worsening health conditions due to poor air quality days, extreme high temps, heavy rainfalls and spread of waterborne illnesses through flooding, especially if our sewage systems are overloaded; extended pollen seasons; and, of course, modified distribution of pest and insects that carry disease. We’re expecting substantial loss of life and worsened health conditions by the mid-century.
  •        Transportation & infrastructure – difficulties in transportation of goods and people due to destruction of infrastructure in extreme weather events; this is made all the worse by the US’s continued refusal to invest in infrastructure
  •        Community vulnerability & adaptation – at-risk communities in the Midwest, especially due to flooding, drought, and urban heat islands. Tribal nations dependent on natural resources are deeply threatened. Given many tribal nations’ cultural emphasis on sustainability and local ecological knowledge, their capacity to build adaptive capacity and increase resilience would be a huge loss to ecosystems (NCA 4, p. 25).


The NCCA goes on to specify key points for adaptation or mitigation in each region. These became points of discussion in following classes.

These changes are in our near future. As residents in a wealthy country with a huge resource base (the entire globe), we have both contributed to more rapid deterioration in other parts of the world and been able to alleviate or mitigate our own experience of climate change. We simply don’t feel it, except in hot and cold days and occasional storms.  What can anthropology contribute to this?

Many of the peoples that anthropologists study have already experienced climate disaster. Regions of the US have already suffered climate crisis impacts, unlike most of the Upper Midwest. Anthropologists have worked with peoples who are experiencing climate disaster for over a decade – in Siberia, Alaska, Bangladesh, and the Pacific Islands, for instance. This is not the future, this is now. As Environmental Studies majors, too many of these students were unaware of the fact that around the world are already adapting to the climate crisis.

Climate crisis adaptation already an everyday occurrence. What can we learn about this through anthropology?

A key point I start to make here is that the effects of climate change will not be distributed equally. “People who are already vulnerable, including lower-income and other marginalized communities, have lower capacity to prepare for and cope with extreme weather and climate-related events …” (NCCA 2018, p. 25). Mitigation efforts will be unaffordable for the poor or actually place more burden on them than on other parts of the Earth’s population. There will be huge costs in attempting to maintain infrastructure such as roads and electrical transmission lines. The costs of disaster relief will skyrocket and (as we have already seen), some groups will not be allocated relief for political and cultural reasons (cf., the lack of timely or sufficient relief to Puerto Rico, Florida, lower Midwest).  People at greater risk from the effects of the climate crisis include those who cannot afford to move away from a disaster – the urban poor, the rural poor – but also those who depend directly production – farmers, fishers, hunters.
Discussing this allows me to introduce another key theme of this class – imagining a more equitable future.

We discussed the effect of cascading impacts, which make it hard to specifically plan for the future.  These effects will span across regional or national boundaries. As I’ve noted elsewhere, assessment of sustainable futures cannot be limited to the political boundaries of nation-states (Gillogly 2014). What we experience is local, but mitigation and adaptation must be global.

Take, for instance, water (one of my favorite topics). Rising air and water temperatures and changes in precipitation reduce snowpack, intensify droughts, increase heavy downpours, and declining surface water quality. Clearly, these events will have varying impacts across regions. Here in SE Wisconsin, we’re likely to flood. Rapid runoff is likely to pollute our drinking water sources (Lake Michigan). This is far different from what dry regions will experience. But all of this will add to the stress on water supplies – both quality and quantity. This will also have national economic effects, since so much industry (think of power plants!) rely on a steady supply of water for cooling – that’s why industry was often located in places such as SE Wisconsin and the Calumet Region of NE Illinois / NW Indiana.  Clean water won’t be reliable anymore, and we will be competing with large companies for access to that water.

All of this is exacerbated by our failure to maintain and upgrade water infrastructure – lead in pipes, leaking pipes. Do we have the funds or the political will to upgrade water infrastructure now? A poor city like Flint not only doesn’t have the funds, they were punished for being poor by giving the residents dangerous water when the city’s management was taken over by the State of Michigan.  Yes, a municipality can upgrade water infrastructure, but that’s often funded through bonds (and how often are those voted down by the people in new subdivisions or in semi-rural areas with their own private wells who don’t see why they should bear these expenses for ‘urban’ people they fled from?) or through surcharges to property taxes, which will adversely affect poor people.

With rising temperatures and uneven rainfall resulting in periods of drought interspersed with extreme rainstorms, we will see more soil erosion. The rise in average temperature will result in declines in crop yields. And since so much of our food comes from other parts of the world, we’re dependent both on conditions and adaptations in those places, as well as the reliability of transportation infrastructure. Clearly, rising costs of food would affect the poor more than the wealthy.

In this way, we make the social effects of the climate crisis tangible and immediate, while setting the stage for politically just responses to the new world in which my students will live. 



[1] Most of these students are working their way through college, living with parents, siblings, cousins, or grandparents to control costs. There is a very strong sense of attachment to place and to social networks in this region of Wisconsin. I doubt many will leave in the future, as they do not leave now.
[2] It is, to my mind, also a political act to read this, given the state’s attempt to bury the report. I encourage students to download the entire report, in case it is later removed from government web sites. The web site is also beautifully designed.

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

The fundamental principles of "Environmental Anthropology: Living in the Anthropocene"


Global climate change is an impending catastrophe. It is real, and it is right here, and it will profoundly shape the lives of all living within a mere 20 years. 

Many of us working in environmental activism have long wondered how humans have avoided recognizing this. For the past 15 years, this was what worried at me. What were the underlying generative principles of ignoring or denigrating the evidence of the coming catastrophe? In the end, there’s lots of answers (political bases, self-interest, corporate control, elite control of the government, and human psychology, among others) – and it doesn’t really matter why.  We might care about the ‘why’ in the future, but now is the time for action. Studies show that even people who don’t ‘believe’ there’s climate change recognize that they, themselves, are experiencing it. Given that shared worldview of massive, alarming, change we need to leverage that to bring about change.[1] But can we change this behemoth? Is climate change gone too far? In the Yale Program’s “Six Americas” quiz, I turn out as “Alarmed,” certain that the climate catastrophe is real, supportive of climate policies, “but often do not know what they or society can do.”

This was the “first,” the basic principle for the entire class. Change is coming (or here). It is inalterable and inevitable. Given that, what do we do next?  I can’t say that I like that principle. I’d like to be able to forestall climate catastrophe. But, like my students, the endless stories of extinction and wild storms and more hurricanes and devastating flooding and so on cannot be denied. It is irrefutable, as well, that in the face of this potential destruction, we all feel hopeless. We “do not know what they or society can do.”

I read a lot of (too much) dystopian science fiction – as do a lot of my students. Environmental dystopian science fiction has long resonated with me – think Bacigalupi’s “The Water Knife” or “The Windup Girl.” Are we facing a “Mad Max” world in which we are all reduced to “tribal” groups endless fighting one another over a scarce resource? Is “The Walking Dead” simply a metaphor for what our future lives will be like, each group against each other? Is it going to be the “Hunger Games”? It’s too horrible to contemplate, and we all shut down.

The second principle, therefore, was hope. This is fueled by my years of anthropological fieldwork in which I see that humans adapt, imagine different worlds and innovate, struggle against the odds, and strategize. I was also inspired by works that imagine a recreated post-apocalyptic future, such as Robinson’s “New York 2140” and Mandel’s “Station Eleven.” I constructed the class to imagine a radically transformed but not completely and inherently disastrous future. It would be different – but how? What knowledge do we need to survive in this future?

As an older anthropologist, I have lived in many different worlds. I have a tremendous mental archive of knowledge about ways that humans have lived and could live in this world. We are all, as humans, embedded within an all-encompassing worldview. This is our culture, and we are poorly equipped to see beyond the boundaries of our ‘known’ (imagined, really) universe. All of my anthropology classes ask students to recognize that the way we live in this time and place is not a given, is not the norm for all of humanity. The constant pedagogical struggle is how to shock people out of their sense of normalcy. This class started from there and sought to show students the diversity of human adaptations. It’s planting a seed of knowledge that might be useful to them in the future. Because it’s their world, they will have to live in it, to adapt or not. 

The intellectual basis of this was Lund’s concept of “rupture,” introduced to me by the New Mandala page on “Rupture: Structural Reconfigurations of Nature & Society in the Mekong Region & Beyond” (https://www.newmandala.org/rupture/). In addition, I made use of Sing Chew’s book “Ecological Futures.”

I asked students not to envision collapse, but rupture. All are familiar with the concept of ‘lost’ civilizations, which loom large in popular culture. A corollary of ‘lost civilizations’ is the idea of ‘dark ages’ ensuing upon collapse – the loss of civilization as the loss of culture. To cultural anthropologists, this has long seemed silly. Yes, the Mayan empire collapsed but there’s still Mayans! Yes, the Kingdom of Angkor collapsed, but there’s still Khmer people who still carry out rituals at the site of Angkor Wat! Angkor Wat was certainly not lost to the Khmer people. It’s not loss or collapse, it’s transformation. We must understand the terms of that transformation – what changed, and how.[2]

This is long enough for a blog post. I'll start again with a more careful discussion of concepts of rupture. 

And, heavens, I really need to move off of this platform, it's too ugly and hard to read. That will be a project for later this week. 

Kate, 5 June 2019



[1] See, for instance, Gustafsen et al. 2019, “Americans are increasingly ‘alarmed’ about global warming.” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 12 February.
[2] I could go on at great length about how and why concepts of ‘loss’ and ‘civilization’ dominate and what they tell us about the cultures that are obsessed with them. It’s colonialism, it’s “Europe and the people without history,” it’s Orientalism, and it’s also an underlying fear of our own culture that our civilization is an ephemeral thing that must be constantly protected from weakness – and that we would all be the worse for it because our nation, our culture, our time and place, is the epitome of what is great and wonderful. How often have students in my Introduction to Anthropology class written about “how far we have progressed and aren’t we grateful we get to live in wonderful America today?” despite consistent evidence that others live well as well.

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Teaching Environmental Anthropology

What follows is a very rough draft of what I'm thinking about. I will rewrite, polish, and expand throughout the summer.


Environmental anthropology is a depressing class to teach. We’ve destroyed so much on this planet, and nothing is left unchanged. I actually had at least on student descend into full-blown depression and commit himself to the VA rehab center after this class. This is, of course, an extreme example, but it is difficult to teach this class without becoming consumed by the radical and fundamental transformations taking place in our environment and the clear evidence that we’re reaching the end of a way of life that is all that we know. Discussions of the separation (or not) between culture/nature, review of different modes of adaptation, consideration of carbon footprints, and watersheds – all fade before the awareness that we’re part of an all-encompassing system over which we seem to have very little individual control. The vastness of it engenders profound pessimism. And they’re not wrong …
I’ve tried various forms of teaching Environmental Anthropology. Part of me likes the tried-and-true “oh, look at all of the different ways that humans have lived!” and this what students like. We do not have an anthropology major here (we’re now part of a combined Geography/Anthropology department); at least 50% of my students in this class are Environmental Studies majors. They’re hoping for a fun traipse through the different and exotic. Of course, in the end, final exams are always written of people in the past tense. They see today’s foragers, horticulturalists, pastoralists as remnants of a charming past. It becomes romantic nostalgia. They don’t see how to apply this information to their own world.

Another form was to do this class as “Community-Based Learning,” which is highly supported and valued on our campus. I am proud of the work we did the last time (for the Root-Pike Watershed Initiative Network[1]) and I think we helped to point out problems with the kinds of social surveys they’ve been doing and pointed them to a new direction for thinking about how to explain the importance of watersheds in their public education work.  Students were less pleased, however. They did not leave the class with a sense of confidence. On our campus, Environmental Studies is housed with Biology and students get a firm grounding in biology and chemistry, but only a smattering of classes in the social sciences.  That meant that we had to start from the basics of what anthropology is and how we know what we know; ethics; methods and practice in methods; and anthropological analyses. That left too little time for learning about the diversity of human adaptations. It also left the few anthropology students in the class feeling like they’d just experienced a semester-long review of things they’d already been studying.
How, then, to find the balance between learning anthropological ways of thinking and being able to apply it? Between learning about diversity and seeing its relevance to our own lived world? Between book/theoretical learning and praxis?

I want to give student tools to live in the world as it is and will be. Anthropology is crucial to that, given that we study the wide range of ways that humans live and have lived. By implication, this gives us the possibility to think about how we could live. I, in fact, think about this all of the time in my daily life. And students in intro classes often ask me about whether it would be possible for us, today, to have a truly egalitarian society or … I think about this in my own life – what will work for my garden(s), my native plant restoration, for how I share information with people, how we can engage with each other, whether it’s possible to create ground-up networks that are truly powerful (more on power later) and, most of all, is sustainability even possible in capitalism?

I sought, therefore, to apply all of that in my most recent iteration of Environmental Anthropology. It’s subtitle was “Living in the Anthropocene.” The goal was to pass on the wide range of knowledge and experience I have to a new generation, to make of it what they will. I wanted to give them hope for a future that they could create themselves. It’s their world. They will have to live in what all of the previous generations have wrought. It’s all up to them, but that’s a heavy burden. What can I do to help them feel that they have the knowledge and skills to adapt to the coming rupture?

More soon!

May 28, 2019


[1] The Root-Pike WIN funded and carried out watershed rehabilitation plans for the major rivers of Southeast Wisconsin – the Root River and the Pike River. See http://www.rootpikewin.org/ for more information.

Monday, June 29, 2015

It's time to come back

I have so little time to write - workload increases, etc.

Perhaps this will allow those little bitty creative juices to flow.

See you again, soon.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Secrets of Language Learning (2)



In my first fieldwork, right after graduating college, I was faced with learning two languages. Fortunately, Peace Corps taught us Pijin, but we had to learn Kwaio on our own. There were no textbooks, it was not a written language (although missionaries had devised a phonetic writing system), and the dictionary was by an anthropologist, so not all that useful for everyday usage.

Fortunately those missionary linguists who develop writing systems for languages around the world so that they could have potential converts read the Bible are darned good linguists. One of them gave us lovely little book about how to learn an unwritten language. We followed that book like, well, the bible.  And we learned Kwaio. We not only learned Kwaio, I developed a literacy program for the Kwaio-initiated schools. (As far as I can recall the book was Alan Healey, editor. 1975. Language Learner’s Field Guide. Ukarumpa, EHD, Papua New Guinea: Summer Institute of Linguistics Printing Department.)   

Your basic problem with language is increasing your vocabulary and that requires memorization. Obviously, you should use flashcards, but those do not work. Why? Because you are not moving your vocabulary from short-term to long-term memory. If you memorize a hundred words for the weekly quiz, great, but do you remember those in 2 weeks? Maybe, maybe not.  It’s very frustrating. It is not sticking in your long-term memory.  How do you get it there?

The Secret is to stagger your flashcards. 

The technical term, it turns out, is called spaced repetition

This is what I do (I have used it for every single language I have learned since I learned Kwaio, btw).

Each day, select a set of 10 (not more!) vocabularies words to memorize. That’s Set 1.

When you make up Set 1, make a cover card with dates. The dates will be Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 5, Day 10, Day 17, Day 41, Day 71, Day 131 … and that’s it.  If there are any words in that set that you do not remember at the end of that time, you can cycle them back into a new set at the end of that time. [nb, you can add in a day after Day 17, on Day 28, in which case your schedule will be 17, 28, 58, 128, 218.]

Only 10 cards?  What?  You have way more to memorize than that, don’t you? Yup.

So, on Day 2, you make up another set and you label that Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 6, Day 11, Day 18, Day 42, Day 72, Day 132.

On Day 3, you make up yet another set and you label that Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 7, Day 12, Day 19, Day 43, Day 73, Day 133.

On Day 4, the set is Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 8, Day 13, Day 20, Day 44, Day 74, Day 134.

Day 5, the set is Day 5, 6, 7, 9, 14, 21, 45, 75, 135.
Day 6, the set is Day 6, 7, 8, 10, 15, 22, 46, 76, 136.

Obviously, you need to figure this out with a calendar – I put the actual dates on the covers for the flashcard, otherwise it’s confusing.

It will look like this (sort of – in fact, doing it this way is a bit confusing, I am sure I missed some dates. The point is to let you see what your flashcard exercises will look like from week to week).  

March 1
Set 1
March 2
Set 1
Set 2
March 3
Set 1
Set 2
Set 3
March 4
Set 2
Set 3
Set 4
March 5
Set 1
Set 3
Set 4
Set 5
March 6
Set 2
Set 4
Set 5
Set 6
March 7
Set 3
Set 5
Set 6
Set 7
March 8
Set 4
Set 6
Set 7
Set 8

March 9
Set 5
Set 7
Set 8
Set 9

March 10
Set 1
Set 6
Set 8
Set 9
Set 10
March 11
Set 2
Set 7
Set 9
Set 10
Set 11
March 12
Set 3
Set 8
Set 10
Set 11
Set 12
March 13
Set 4
Set 9
Set 11
Set 12
Set 13
March 14
Set 5
Set 10
Set 12
Set 13
Set 14
March 15
Set 6
Set 11
Set 13
Set 14
Set 15

March 16
Set 7
Set 12
Set 14
Set 15
Set 16

March 17
Set 1
Set 8
Set 13
Set 15
Set 16
Set 17
March 18
Set 2
Set 14
Set 17
Set 18

March 19
Set 3
Set 15
Set 17
Set 18
Set 19
March 20
Set 4
Set 11
Set 16
Set 18
Set 19
Set 20
March 21
Set 5
Set 12
Set 17
Set 19
Set 20
Set 21
March 22
Set 6
Set 13
Set 18
Set 20
Set 21
Set 22
March 23
Set 7
Set 14
Set 19
Set 21
Set 22
Set 23
March 24
Set 8
Set 15
Set 20
Set 22
Set 23
Set 24
March 25
Set 9
Set 16
Set 21
Set 23
Set 24
Set 25
March 26
Set 10
Set 17
Set 22
Set 24
Set 25
Set 26
March 27
Set 11
Set 18
Set 23
Set 25
Set 26
Set 27
March 28
Set 12
Set 19
Set 24
Set 26
Set 27
Set 28
March 30
Set 13
Set 20
Set 25
Set 27
Set 28
Set 29
March 31
Set 14
Set 21
Set 26
Set 28
Set 29
Set 30
April 1
Set 15
Set 22
Set 27
Set 29
Set 30
Set 31
April 2
Set 16
Set 23
Set 28
Set 30
Set 31
Set 32
April 3
Set 17
Set 24
Set 29
Set 31
Set 32
Set 33
April 4
Set 18
Set 25
Set 30
Set 32
Set 33
Set 34
April 5
Set 19
Set 26
Set 31
Set 33
Set 34
Set 35
April 6
Set 20
Set 27
Set 32
Set 34
Set 35
Set 36
April 7
Set 21
Set 28
Set 33
Set 35
Set 36
Set 37
April 8
Set 22
Set 29
Set 34
Set 36
Set 37
Set 38
April 9
Set 23
Set 30
Set 35
Set 37
Set 38
Set 39
April 10
Set 1
Set 24
Set 31
Set 36
Set 38
Set 39
Set 40
April 11
Set 2
Set 25
Set 32
Set 37
Set 39
Set 40
Set 41
April 12
Set 3
Set 26
Set 33
Set 38
Set 40
Set 41
Set 42
April 13
Set 4
Set 27
Set 34
Set 39
Set 41
Set 42
Set 43
April 14
Set 5
Set 28
Set 35
Set 40
Set 42
Set 43
Set 44
April 15
Set 6
Set 29
Set 36
Set 41
Set 43
Set 44
Set 45
April 16
Set 7
Set 30
Set 37
Set 42
Set 44
Set 45
Set 46
April 17
Set 8
Set 31
Set 38
Set 43
Set 45
Set 46
Set 47
April 18
Set 9
Set 32
Set 39
Set 44
Set 46
Set 47
Set 48
April 19
Set 10
Set 33
Set 40
Set 45
Set 47
Set 48
Set 49
April 20
Set 11
Set 34
Set 41
Set 46
Set 48
Set 49
Set 50
… and so on
April 21
Set 12
Set 35
Set 42
Set 47
Set 49
Set 50
April 22
Set 13
Set 36
Set 43
Set 48
Set 50
April 23
Set 14
Set 37
Set 44
Set 49
April 24
Set 15
Set 38
Set 45
Set 50

April 25
Set 16
Set 39
Set 46
April 26
Set 17
Set 40
Set 47
April 27
Set 18
Set 41
Set 48
April 28
Set 19
Set 42
Set 49
April 29
Set 20
Set 43
Set 50
April 30
Set 21
Set 44
May 1
Set 22
Set 45
May 2
Set 23
Set 46
May 3
Set 24
Set 47
May 4
Set 25
Set 48
May 5
Set 26
Set 49
May 6
Set 27
Set 50
May 7
Set 28
May 8
Set 29
May 9
Set 30
May 10
Set 31
May 11
Set 1
Set 32
May 12
Set 2
Set 33
May 13
Set 3
Set 34
May 14
Set 4
Set 35
May 15
Set 5
Set 36
May 16
Set 6
Set 37
May 17
Set 7
Set 38
May 18
Set 8
Set 39
May 19
Set 9
Set 40
May 20
Set 10
Set 41
May 21
Set 11
Set 42
May 22
Set 12
Set 43
May 23
Set 13
Set 44
May 24
Set 14
Set 45
May 25
Set 15
Set 46
May 26
Set 16
Set 47
May 27
Set 17
Set 48
May 28
Set 18
Set 49
May 29
Set 19
Set 50
May 31
Set 20
May 31
Set 21
June 1
Set 22
June 2
Set 23
June 3
Set 24
June 4
Set 25
June 5
Set 26
June 6
Set 27
June 7
Set 28
June 8
Set 29
June 9
Set 30
June 10
Set 31
June 11
Set 32
June 12
Set 33
June 13
Set 34
June 14
Set 35
June 15
Set 36
June 16
Set 37
June 17
Set 38
June 18
Set 39
June 19
Set 40
June 20
Set 41
June 21
Set 42
June 22
Set 43
June 23
Set 44
June 24
Set 45
June 25
Set 46
June 26
Set 47
June 27
Set 48
June 28
Set 49
June 29
Set 50
June 30
July 1
July 2
July 4
July 5
July 6
July 7
July 8
July 9
July 10
July 11
Set 1

July 12
Set 2

July 13
Set 3
… and so on

I laid this out so that you can see why you only have 10 flashcards in a group – they add up. On some days, you will be doing 70 words a night! But note that on some of those days, such as April 20, two of those sets are older sets and you will likely go through those pretty quickly. They might be words that you use fairly regularly in class, or just often enough for you to recognize them quite quickly.  You will likely have to work hardest at the newest flashcards on days 1-5. Still, you need to be aware of this scheduling so as not to overload yourself.

Another advantage of this system is that instead of memorizing a big batch of cards all together, these are split up. When you use a language, the words are not conveniently grouped according to your flashcard organization. You need to mix it up, learn the words in different contexts. This system helps with that. You will variously do Set 4 with Sets 2, 3, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20, 27, 34, 39, 41, 42, 43, 35, 134 … This improves your ability to remember vocabulary in new contexts.  

Obviously this system is not in concordance with the semester schedule. For one thing, you probably focus on vocabulary memorization leading up to a quiz or test, whereas this is an everyday activity.  Every. Single. Day. This is regardless of how much new vocabulary is assigned in any given week.  Finally, the schedule goes beyond the semester. And who wants to study after the semester is over?

You do. The only way to learn a language (or at least pass your classes) is to memorize. Use a system and just plain memorize.  Keep going after the semester is over (even if you do not add new flashcard groups) so that you will start the second semester strong. 
A final hint: memorize as your last activity at night before going to sleep. That vastly improves your retention. 

This is my ‘secret.’ Devote a lot of time to memorization, especially in the first semester or two of language learning – schedule that time in – so that you will build up the vocabulary to comprehend the language.  There is no short-cut around this. You simply haven’t got the vocabulary to enjoy conversations or reading short stories, so build the vocabulary. But know that it’s just time, like a game. Get your vocabulary from short-term to long-term memory, and you will do better.

And, btw, you also need to be willing to make fool of yourself as you try to speak. But the language-learner as village idiot is a topic for another blog.