Chinese languages

Most of the time I have no idea what mandarin speakers (except for my teacher!) are saying. I think mandarin speakers talk really fast and kinda slur what they're saying or something... I have access to some TV shows, and I can usually follow more if I'm reading the subtitles, but I'm gonna try to not look at subtitles anymore, hopefully i'll pick up a lot more listening skills than i would by relying on the subtitles... Do you think this is a good idea?

I think part of the problem is the study of the written language in the classroom. The characters were the main emphasis, and though they're important, I'm disappointed in the fact that listening and speaking weren't stressed as much. 'Cause in the real world, chances are you're going to be dealing with oral communication more than written, right?

We had tapes in class, and what I noticed is that no one speaks like those people in the tapes. In the tapes they spoke very clearly, so much so it sounded artificial.

What is every other mandarin-learner's experience when it comes to this (the oral language)?

Well, it is true that native speakers do not pronounce very clearly, because they know the others can catch the meaning. By the way, the Mandarin you learn in school , or hear on TV is an artificial language. Nobody really talks that way.

Let me use Beijing dialect as an example, see the sentence below:
wo bu zhidao zhe shi shenme. (I do not know what it is.)
In real Beijing oral language, it is going to be
wo bur dao zhei (er) shem me.
At the same time, the tones would be somewhat modified.