My experience with foreign languages...

[mapsedge]

Inspired by fantomas71

Late Edit: I should note that this post was the result of memories evoked by the writings of fantomas71. There's a bit of cruelty described in this story that I don't believe f71, in his heart of hearts, possesses; "inspired" is the wrong word. Onward...

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Iconoclasts that you all are, I imagine that you'll enjoy knowing that I passed French  because I threatened to take it again with the same professor, who wanted nothing more to do with me.  You see, I was working on a technical theatre degree, and the college thought it would make me a better lighting and costume designer if I could speak a foreign language.  Four semesters worth of the shit, actually.

Oh, it started well enough.  I was a "B" student in the first semester and that was with genuine hard work.  I have a good ear (perfect pitch and all that), and can pronounce just about anything you ask me to, but with my memory being what it is, if I can't do it with my hands or it doesn't grab my imagination, I have real difficulties retaining information. 

Second semester started to get rough, as I started in on core classes and got involved in a production or two.  Grade drops to a "C".  Third semester I miss maybe a quarter of my classes because I'm usually backstage or in the costume shop.  Down to a "D" now.  We're now in the fourth semester, and I'm right on track to fail the class.

The professor, Madame Hoffman (60-ish, from Union Star, a town smaller than the college's quad; a German lady teaching a French class who would never understand why that was funny) decided to involve me in the class "at my own level", whatever that was supposed to mean.  She tried the following tactics:

• Threaten my grade.  At a point in my life where I didn't care all that much about that sort of thing.
• Appeal to my sense of responsibility.  Ditto.
• Appeal to me as a mentor.  Strike three.
• Talk about the Grande Guignol.  Required a vocabulary beyond the class's four semesters, and nobody else is the class cared.  Plus, I knew more about it than she did, albeit in English.
• Involve me in the class by using me for illustrations.

That cut it, that right there.  We were dealing with the verb for "lead", as in "leading a dog on a leash" and how that was different from "leading an army."  She came to my desk, pantomimed putting a collar around my neck and attaching a leash, all the while encouraging me to "get up, come with me."  When I rose and walked silently, she said (in French, remember) "Come now, William (Guillaume), bark.  Bark like a dog."  "Le woof.  Le bow wow," I responded.  Lame, but I was pissed off and not thinking fast.

She stopped, hands on hips, frustration curling off her like the cheap old-lady perfume she wore.  In exasperated English, she burst out, "Oh come on, William, you're an actor!  You can do better."

"You're right, " I said.  And lifted my leg on her desk.

End of lesson.  Pretty much the end of class for that day.

Of course, when grades came out I wasn't surprised to see an "F" next to my name.  I took the paper down from the bulletin board, ignoring the "Hey!"s and "What the fuck, Bill?"s from my fellow students, and carried it into her office.  With great care, I laid it exactly in the center of her desk.  She looked at me, waiting; she was in firm possession of the high ground and she knew it.

Ah, Mme Hoffman, if only I gave a shit about the high ground.  I said, reasonably, a long lost friend asking for a cup of coffee, "I'd like a D-minus."

"I'm sorry Guillaume." ("'William', please.") "I'm sorry William, but you hardly attended class, and there's not enough homework for me to justify giving you any grade at all."

The low road beckoned.  "Here's the deal.  I don't want to know the language, I'm only taking the class because it's required for the major.  I haven't been in class because I've been working on my core studies."  An exaggerration, but we both let it go.

"I'm sorry," she said.  "There's nothing I can do."

The low road was waving frantically now.  I walked down it; at the time, this was a road I knew well.  "Ok, if that's how you want it.  Let me tell you what's going to happen.  You don't retire for another two years.  That's four semesters.  I will take the class again, starting with semester one.  Le premier semestre, oui?  And I will take it with you.  Every class, with y-o-u." 

I slid the grade sheet across the desk.  She stared at it, then conceded, "You do pronounce it well."

I got my D-minus, and never had to take another foreign language class.  In retrospect, I understand now (at nearly 40) that I was cruel to her that day, among others.  I've often thought that I'd go back to MWSC and look her up and apologize for all that; I imagine she's dead by now.  In a little office once, there was a clash of titans.  I won that battle, but she made her mark on me, too.

Comments

[eacole72.livejournal.com]

That sounds frighteningly like the dicussion I had with the Full Professor *cough* teaching the History of France since 1648 (or a date similar to that) that I took my final semester of college. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy the class, it was that I was desperate to Pass And Graduate, and he was standing in my way. He let me out with a D+, because I tried very hard to write a decent paper on the historical significance of the propaganda uses of Marie Antoinnette's question in response to the bread riots. "If they do not have bread, then why do they not eat cake?" (I still maintain that the poor women was little better than a pawn for her family of birth and the Roman Catholic Church. She really had no hope of being anything but.)

I'm a much better writer for having written that paper. I'd like to say that I remember something from the class other than the fact that civets smell like skunks, but I would be lying.