Big Test Today

I didn’t write over the weekend because I was very busy pouring French grammar into my head for my big test today.  I was laughing with my classmates on Friday (in French, of course) that the sentences we struggle so hard to create during class conversation are about the level of a first or second grade student.  Then I got to thinking that I learned to diagram sentences in 8th grade English and that maybe we’re communicating at an 8th grade level.  The real result of studying French grammar is that I appreciate my near complete mastery of the English language.  My friend, Seth Levine, has a grammar test on his blog that I loved my score on:  100% on the beginner, intermediate and advanced sections, and then a meager 77% on the expert section.  It’s nice and ego-boosting to remind myself that I do know some grammar after all — just not in the French language.  I usually like to take tests and find it funny how all my old gold-star seeking behavior came out this weekend.  I put the television on the National Assembly and had background sound of French politicians talking endlessly to keep me company while I tried to learn several weeks of material taught before I arrived in France that would be covered on this test.  Whee!

The test was hard and took the entire two hours of the class.  Lots and lots of pages of questions.  It’s one of those things where I try to go with my first response, and not go back and change a bunch of things later because I just get more confused.  I’m sure I followed rules consistently; but definitely might have been wrong about the rules.  “Consistent but wrong” is a common modality for me.  “Often in error, seldom in doubt.”  We’ll see tomorrow how well I remembered the rules.  I don’t feel like I had a disaster.  We shall see.  And as I said to my classmate Kathryn at lunch (in French, of course), it’s not as though this is going to go down on our permanent record.  I do actually have a college diploma, written in yet another language that I don’t understand.  And a dead language at that.