As I passed through the numerous bodies within Dwinelle Hall and grabbed a seat in my advanced French language class, I anxiously awaited the tiny victories and losses that come with my relationship with the language. I was surrounded by students who I felt like preceded me as we tackled a ten page reading that took me three days to finish, let alone comprehend. At that moment, I cursed myself for enrolling in a class that I did not by any means need to be taking. I was ready after a week to drop it in an instant, and quite honestly would have if I was able to find replacement units. Weeks following the near breakdown I had over having to take a laborious class during my senior year, I began thinking about what I nearly thoughtlessly tossed away.
During the first semester of my sophomore year, I embarked on a language requirement for my major: the completion of the French learning courses here at Berkeley. At the beginning, I felt incredibly detached from the language. It was nothing more than low level requirements that I had to get finished. Two semesters passed and somehow I found myself on the UCEAP portal, buying a plane ticket to Paris for an immersive language learning experience.
I was forced to take a more serious approach to the language and, cliché I know, it truly was one of the most formative experiences of my life. I began to notice my demeanor change whenever I started speaking to people in French, in France. The way that fluent French sounds from a non-French speaker’s perspective, with the easiness and the romanticism, is how I genuinely felt while speaking, no matter how bad it actually sounded. Whether it was the people around me, knowing almost certainly that I will never be in a place in time like that ever again, or the constant wine I was drinking, French Devin is beyond different from American Devin. Make no mistake, I am not anywhere near fluent. I wouldn’t even give myself the advanced title that my current course otherwise states, however that had no effect on the sheer confidence I felt while speaking. While Devin in America is continuously thinking about how others perceive her, French Devin wouldn’t think twice about it, and I constantly long for her.
I suppose the question I ask for myself now is, why can’t I have some remnants of that carefree persona now? I attempted to replicate that feeling by spending three hours a week in Dwinelle speaking French, but staying up in my tiny room, grinding away at my desk attempting to understand Rousseau’s “The Social Contract” (in French) will likely never compare. Hopefully I can learn from experience in knowing that throwing all that away would be a shame. Hearing stories of people who dedicate years to a language, myself included (seven years of Spanish from middle school to high school with embarrassingly nothing to show for it), I refuse to be doomed to repeat the same mistakes of my past. Hopefully next time I go to France, those tedious hours in Dwinelle will serve me well.
