Wednesdays tend to be fun days because the only class on this day is a 3-hour French writing class in which we review random French grammar rules and argumentative structures. Or at least, this is what we do in theory. More often than not these days are lost to tangents that become lost to other tangents which transform themselves into a completely different subject to fill this 3 hour period.
Normally spending this many hours trying to follow tangent after tangent annoys me to no end. In Richmond I would not have stood for it - in fact I complained often about the tangents in one of my classes last semester almost every week. But now I have changed my opinion on tangents.
Now, instead of being little annoyances in my day, they are the places I find I learn the most - random words and sentence structures that may or may not ever be useful to me in actual conversation. Still, these tangents are interesting just the same. And they make the hours pass faster.
I guess it doesn't really matter that knowing the French verb effleurer, which literally means "to touch with a flower," is the word that infiltrated itself into the English language where it was gradually transformed until it came to mean "to flirt."
I doubt anyone will ever stop me in the street and ask me if I can trace the history of the word flirt, but I enjoy knowing it any way. Besides, I realize now my learning French will forever be a process and will never be finished. Like everyone else in my classes who has come here, I can only collect what I can while I'm here and return with that - and I would much prefer to have a head full of Annick's random stories and lessons than the knowledge of how the French structure their arguments any day!
Normally spending this many hours trying to follow tangent after tangent annoys me to no end. In Richmond I would not have stood for it - in fact I complained often about the tangents in one of my classes last semester almost every week. But now I have changed my opinion on tangents.
Now, instead of being little annoyances in my day, they are the places I find I learn the most - random words and sentence structures that may or may not ever be useful to me in actual conversation. Still, these tangents are interesting just the same. And they make the hours pass faster.
I guess it doesn't really matter that knowing the French verb effleurer, which literally means "to touch with a flower," is the word that infiltrated itself into the English language where it was gradually transformed until it came to mean "to flirt."
I doubt anyone will ever stop me in the street and ask me if I can trace the history of the word flirt, but I enjoy knowing it any way. Besides, I realize now my learning French will forever be a process and will never be finished. Like everyone else in my classes who has come here, I can only collect what I can while I'm here and return with that - and I would much prefer to have a head full of Annick's random stories and lessons than the knowledge of how the French structure their arguments any day!
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