Please note that as of July 2019, I'm transferring this blog to waywardanthro.org.

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 4^th 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 4^th 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. 

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[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.

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

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[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.

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

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[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.

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.

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.