Wolof is hard man!

I must have a really bad memory or something, because no matter how hard I try I cannot retain all the vocab words we are supposed to be learning. Furthermore, we are constructing full sentences right now, and I have a lot of trouble creating one on the spot in class. I hope I’m not falling behind, because I feel like everyone else in the class (the other 3 people) understand things so much better. But I have to keep reminding myself that these other people have experience with learning a foreign language (some, even 2 or 3 others), and so they know how to go about learning a new language a little better than I do.
Also, Wolof is so much more a spoken language than a written one. On billboards, for example, words are always written in French. Or, when I ask my mom or sister how to spell a Wolof word, the spelling they give me is different from the one my professor gives me. I get the impression there is no one right way to spell any Wolof word, and that, a long as you get across the syllables and the pronunciations, you’ve spelt it correctly.
This fact, though, makes Wolof even harder. People here are so used to speaking Wolof that they speak sooooo fast, and they think it’s easy! Consequently, Senegalese people think I have learned nothing in my Wolof class. And it’s kind of true, because what we are learning is really not that useful in day to day conversation. I mean, we’ve learnt how to count, we’ve learned names of professions and items around the house. But how exactly is that supposed to help me when I’m talking to someone in the street? Ha!
I came to the conclusion yesterday, while I was in my Senegalese Society class, that the Senegalese have just as much trouble truly speaking English as we do speaking Wolof. See, I have two classes that are in English, and they are by far the most confusing classes! I can’t follow the lectures at all because they are so disjointed and random. I get the impression that if these classes were taught in French, they would be so much better because the teacher would actually be able to communicate his ideas properly. It’s really frustrating because I can’t contribute positively to the class because I don’t even know what the discussion is about, and so my mind automatically starts to tune out.