Today was my first day back in grammar class. I haven't taken French grammar for two years. Sure, I've taken classes such as French lit, French writing, French argumentation, French civ, world history (in French), French-English translation, etc, etc. Those I've taken in the last two years. But no grammar.
To be honest, my grammar's pretty good. Or at least that's what people tell me. I follow the rules most of the time, even remembering the little wacko rules that Frenchies sometimes forget. Sure, I fuck up the gender of a word more often than I would like (sometimes it's just far too arbitrary. And who really cares, anyway? Shouldn't the noun be more important than its article?). But overall, I think it's as good as a Frenchie's. Of course, the accent gives me away as soon as I open my mouth. But that's a topic for another day.
So I don't know if you non Francophiles reading this know about French - and maybe this extends to European but I wouldn't know - teaching styles. In the US, the idea is to give your student a warm, cozy environment in which the student can learn and, eventually, grow. Come into his own, if you will. Develop new, creative ideas. American schools are like wombs, nurturing and caring, a place to allow a person to develop before going out into the cold, lonely world. However, in the French system, the classroom is that cold, lonely world, and the metaphor is far less comforting. In France, students are in need of no more nurturing than a wireless remote-controlled metal robot. Grown in the mad professor's home laboratory, the robots sit in hard, uncomfortable chairs consuming facts that the mad professor has deemed important. A robot's worth is in his ability to repeat these facts in six months time. The mad professor believes that his robots are merely a miserable reflection of his own underappreciated genius. For this reason, he is frustrated and harried at each mistake the robots innocently and unknowingly make, and he therefore takes to insulting them in hopes that they will learn more efficiently out of fear alone. When a robot answers correctly, the mad professor simply makes a checkmark in his records, but when a robot answers incorrectly, he is greeted by a showering of insults and incredulous stares from the mad professor's cold, uncaring eyes.
Today I was a robot in my uncomfortable chair. And I answered incorrectly. My response was dramatically received by my professor's exclamations: But no! You're SOOOO wrong! Do you have any idea how wrong you are? This is very, very bad. A serious problem. What were you thinking?
True. What was I thinking? I should have been able to identify that word as the third person plural subjunctive of the verb "to retract," shouldn't I have? Yes, yes I should have. I do know the third person plural subjonctive of the verb retract. I do. Give me half a second and I've got it - bam! Right there.
The problem was that Ms. French Grammarian Expert had been terrorizing the students before me to such a degree that by the time it came my turn, I had sweaty palms and I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. Looking down at my paper, I knew the answer to my question immediately. But the words sat jumbling and turning on my tongue, all there but spinning in an unintelligable order.
I spat out something like, "It's the subjonctive of the verb third person retract plural." A sentence I would never say. A sentence that seemed to have gone through the syntax blender. A sentence that resulted in that look of sheer and utter horror now crossing Ms. Stick Up Her Ass's face. But I had been zapped into some terror zone ruled only by my teacher's exclamations of "No! But no!! But you couldn't have possibly said something so wrong!" and the accompanying pounding of her fists on the table.
And so I did it. I fucked up. Bad. I said a really stupid thing in class. Something I never, ever do. I cannot come up with a more viscious form of personal torture or embarrassment.
Honestly, I don't talk in classes. It's my fear of being "the stupid one." So I only talk when I am totally sure of myself. Or totally forced.
So now Ms. French Grammarian Bitch Ass Ho has already decided I'm the stupid one. She has. It was like our own little personal war in there today. Nothing I said for the rest of the class (two hours!) was right, no matter how right it was. She still found something wrong with my rightness.
And grammar's my favorite topic!