Exams ended for me last Monday. After that the rest of the week was passed by the jury in deliberation as to which of us should receive our diplômes universitaires, little pieces of papers saying that we successfully completed niveau 5 of the IRFFLE program.
The sad truth is that these diplomas hold no real merit or value outside the Université of Nantes. And yet even knowing that fact, I still couldn't stop a part of myself from wanting one. Even if it was meaningless, I still have a habit of collecting papers and skills useless in the "real world" of business and marketing.
So today the results were supposed to be posted at 8h00, which really translated to 17h30. I went with Darryl after dinner and searched for my name on the impossibly tiny spreadsheet and followed the line with my finger to the word "passed" which was followed by a note of "très bien". Looking at all the other people's final scores I realized that mine was the 4th highest of my level and, of those, I was the only to have been in France for only a semester, the rest having been here a year. So maybe I can speak and write French better than I thought and maybe I don't always give myself enough credit.
So even though my diplôme universitaire might be just a meaningless paper in the United States, to me it is now a mark, a badge of something more.
The sad truth is that these diplomas hold no real merit or value outside the Université of Nantes. And yet even knowing that fact, I still couldn't stop a part of myself from wanting one. Even if it was meaningless, I still have a habit of collecting papers and skills useless in the "real world" of business and marketing.
So today the results were supposed to be posted at 8h00, which really translated to 17h30. I went with Darryl after dinner and searched for my name on the impossibly tiny spreadsheet and followed the line with my finger to the word "passed" which was followed by a note of "très bien". Looking at all the other people's final scores I realized that mine was the 4th highest of my level and, of those, I was the only to have been in France for only a semester, the rest having been here a year. So maybe I can speak and write French better than I thought and maybe I don't always give myself enough credit.
So even though my diplôme universitaire might be just a meaningless paper in the United States, to me it is now a mark, a badge of something more.
No comments:
Post a Comment