I can’t quite believe my eyes.
It seems that – after a not insubstantial amount of anxiety – I blitzed my first language exam in ten years.
Sounds arrogant, right? But what else do you call 39/40? If 97.5 percent doesn’t deserve a superlative, then I’m giving up all studiousness now.
It all began at the turn of 2015, when I embarked on a guilt-inspired mission to learn French at Alliance Française.
Then, after just six weeks of tuition, they threw an end of module test at me. Reading, writing, listening and speaking – it was all in there.
Not having sat down to an exam since journalism school, I felt a flutter in my stomach opening the test paper. The familiar sight of a teachers’ scrawled red pen brought out submerged anxieties. I was genuinely scared I’d flunked.
Okay, it was flagrantly basic beginners’ stuff, and after several years of high school tuition way back when, I probably should have been able to blitz the test without 18 hours classroom tuition.
But, whatever, allow me to bask in my minor glory. Ma professeure even wrote "excellent" at the top of my paper in that emotive stylo rouge. Although it was written in English, so perhaps she's not so convinced in my abilities after all...
And yet, looking at my test paper, I can’t help but punch myself at the two half-marks I gave away – silly little grammar mishaps which I really should have gotten right.
C'est Maria, ma amie, I wrote. Because amie is the female form of ami (friend), and Marie is, I imagine, a girl. But I knew mon amie always sounded better.
The other slip up – je ne habite pas à moscou (I don't live in Moscow).
N’habite. Bien sur.
Okay, so a little fine-tuning is required, but I’m feeling quietly smug having earned a place on French Unit 102.
Rob Garratt is studying beginners's French at Alliance Française Dubai, a non-profit language and cultural institution established in 1982, which teaches French to more than 2,500 students every year. Find out more at www.afdubai.org.