Second-to-last-exam of my Sorbonne career

I had an oral exam today. The teacher told us the topic (which varied from person to person) and then we had fifteen minutes to prepare.

When he told me my topic, I asked if I could have a different one. I realize that's not kosher, but JESUS, I had no idea what to say on the topic he gave me. He politely said no, and I slunk back to my desk in confusion. I later related the question to having been as difficult for me as "Discuss American presidents from 1880-1890 and their political achievements." I didn't even know where to begin.

So um... yeah. I had the whole range of emotions: fear, discourage, indifference. When he called me to his desk, I began by saying two grammatically incorrect sentences in French. Stellar start, that quickly transformed into a randomly selected string of terminology without any logical or coherent structure to the madness. The professor is a nice man, and at least he nodded as if I were making sense.

Things got really bad when I mentioned a certain linguistic phenomenon and he asked me for an example of a language where said phenomenon occurs. I blanked, and came up with the witty, "I'm going through all the languages we discussed in class and I don't see an example of it..." leaving the door open for him to say, "Well, how about in (fill in language here)?" and then I would nod and say, "Oh yeah!"

Instead, he got a mischevious look and said, "Hah! That's because it's a trick question!! We didn't study any languages like that!"

It was a sub variety of Slavic languages, just so you know.

Really though, I think that got me on his side, because after that, he pretty much did the rest of the oral exam for me. The topic is one that he loves, and has written two books on, so it was a little embarrassing that I couldn't exactly talk about it, but now my theory is that he just wanted to talk about it himself anyway.

In the end, I spat out some more shit and tried to come up with more to say, but I mainly just garbled out a few more pieces of terminology and then finished up the exam by saying, "And I can't think of anything else to say..."

That's always a real great finishing thought. I winced as I heard myself saying it.

Oddly, he said, "Well, my. That was VERY good. You obviously know exactly what the subject is about and you were able to present a clear and rational argument on the topic. Well done. I can't even ask you any questions to clarify things because you presented it all so clearly."

At first, I thought he was kidding, but when he moved on to asking me about my other classes (just conversationally), I started feeling the welling of giddiness of having done well on something I thought I had bombed. I'm still really, really confused as to how I got a positive response out of such a botched presentation, but I'll take it. Sometimes I feel like the less prepared for things I am in France, the better they go. What a weird, weird day.