The Retest

The French re-test was on Saturday, and it was pretty much a 180 experience from the last time. It makes me think about this comic:

Naturally, the first time I was the freshman, and this time, I was the senior. These were some of the differences:

For the first time...

• I spent weeks preparing in nonstop French reading and writing
• Watched only French shows, movies, podcasts, YouTube videos
• Planned my outfit the night before, laid out breakfast and snacks and clothes
• Spent the night before cramming until about 10 or 11pm
• Woke up like two hours early to get ready, listen to music, prepare and be awake for the test
• Listened to French music the whole way there

For this time...

•  I NEVER got The Fear to start studying. No motivation, ever. Studied a little a few days before
• Listened to a podcast or two, watched Populaire on Netflix aaaand... that was about it
• Couldn't be bothered to prepare clothes, food or an outfit
• Spent the night before trying to emulate Ja'mie King's dance with Shannon
• Missed my alarm and woke up 15 minutes before I planned to leave
• Put Cherub's Doses and Mimosas on repeat, where it continued to loop in my head throughout the test itself

 My Mandarin-speaking friend from the first time wasn't there, so hopefully he was able to pass all three. There was again one other person taking the Mandarin test, and a third person, who never showed. I only had the one test this time, and felt considerably less stressed. So much so that even when the administrator started our time and told us "Good luck!" what I thought in my head was "a real man makes his own luck" a la Dwight, a la Billy Zane.



The test was easy peasy pumpkin breezy!! I was actually bored. The listening was way too simple, again. The essays, however, I did fabulous on. Like, A-list fabulous. I was in no rush at all, I felt confident and it went wonderfully. I was even able to write the long-form essay on Joan of Arc, who is arguably my absolute favorite historical figure, let alone francophone-affiliated. I felt so proud. I felt like I set the curve.

Then came the oral test.

I told the proctor I was done with the written portion and ready to move on to the oral test. She collected everything from me except my admission ticket. She went out, and came back to say there wasn't a proctor available right now, so I would need to wait a few minutes. I doodled on the back on my admission ticket, just simple French phrases I wanted to remember. (This will come up in a big way later, hang onto it).

The proctor is ready, I get escorted to my next room, we set up the tape recorder. She takes my admission ticket, has it face-up, we go through everything. I sucked. As soon as they hit record, I just couldn't do it!!!!! I was so nervous I was shaking, I couldn't think straight, my tongue wouldn't work, my pronunciation was sub-par, I was stuttering - the works! It is so not like me to get test anxiety, so that was very frustrating.

I keep reminding myself that last time I only missed this test by 4 points, BUT - this test is weighted 50/50 between constructed responses and multiple choice, etc, and last time, I felt that one of my oral responses was good, and the other a disaster, and this time I feel like both of them were not good, so I don't think that I necessarily made up for the 4 points.

Then came the highlight. Everything was done. We were packing up, the proctor (who had my admission ticket with her the entire time, face up) folded up my ticket to give back to me but saw the French doodle writing from before, so she started studying it and told me to stay there, she had to see what needed to be done about this. I couldn't believe it was happening. She had to bring in like 3 different people, and never once did I get a chance to explain the circumstances or what was happening or my side of it. They were trying to decide if it was ground to invalidate my test. I was never really allowed to speak, which was frustrating, but I was waiting until there was real cause to talk before I played that card. I didn't have to, thankfully. They ended up deciding it was okay (my original proctor explained that I had completely finished and had nothing in front of me at the time of writing) but yeesh!

So we'll see how this one goes. More than anything it will just be annoying to have to sit through the entire test again and listen to all that slow, boring audio portion. Not long after though, I was on the road to San Diego for another great weekend.