December 4th

Ever have one of those days where the world just doesn't like you? I think this is my fourteenth one in 2012. Crap. Well what went wrong you ask audience? A whole lot. This morning was another in-class essay, however it was an in-class essay that I had forgotten about. Oops. I had a feeling that I would need my dictionaries so I brought them to class, just in case, and they save my ass. I had to write in French a rhetorical analysis between two different excerpt of text. Crap, crap, crap! I am pretty sure I didn't do that well. I tried, I did that. I tried my best to write and convey the similarities and differences between the styles of writing, character behaviors, and purposes of the authors between Pride and Prejudice and Letters Written from Lausanne. My teacher did provide the original text for Pride and Prejudice, aka English, but Letters Written from Lausanne was 100% French. Again, I tried. And to be fair I am a foreign student whose biggest barrier is language. The ideas are there, the words just aren't quite present. In English, I would've be a-ok, seriously I'm decent at rhetoric and symbolism crap. I just don't care about them is all. The second wave of the world dumping crap into my lap was the language quiz. If you recall audience I was not going to see the kids today because I had a quiz at the same time. I think I lost all of my French when I walked into that room. Nervousness is unfortunately something that bites me quite often. I studied a decent amount too, I just wasn't prepared for two things; passé simple and song lyrics. The passé simple is a French tense that I haven't studied extensively. Why? Well I have no purpose for it unless I want to write novels in French. Literally, that's the only time they use it, according to all my French professors. So when I had to conjugate it for an excerpt from Les Misérables, well it wasn't the prettiest. The other part, the song lyrics. What kind of jackass of a professor puts song lyrics on a quiz and expects his students to be able to fill in the blank areas? M. Ardouin. Dude, you're an idiot. How is knowing the lyrics to a song which we've heard twice testing our level of French understanding? Here's the answer, it isn't. Ardouin, we have a French civilization class taught by M. Martel, who is totally awesome. We don't need you to try, and fail, at culturing us in French during a language course. Your job is to teach grammar, try to stick with it. So yeah, that was my tumbling day of French exams. I am going home for some carrots and applesauce. Possibly some South Park as well.