Has anyone learned a new language in college? Specifically, Mandarin?

And you can now speak it fluently?  Was it really hard to learn and retain the langauage?  I am Chinese but born here in the U.S.  A lot of Asian Americans forget how to speak their languages or they just never learned in the first place.  But now I wanna learn how to speak Mandarin which my college offer courses for.  If they had Cantonese I would take that instead but I guess I gotta settle with Mandarin. 

No but you should take spanish

I took Mandarin. It's easy.

No but coincidentally I am trying to learn Chinese on my own. So far I know greetings like 'ni hao' or 'hi hao', how to make simple comparisons like 'nage bi zhege da,' and numbers. It's quite challenging since you have to get the tones right and the characters are a pain to write unless it's something simple like writing down the numbrs or some of the greetings.

If you want fluency, it'll take awhile. You really have to be involved in your coursework, as well as study on your own but by the sounds of it, you don't seem thrilled to take it.