"Audrey"
Before I begin: In public education, when you take a foreign language course you pick a name that more suits the language you're studying, for example, if you were taking German and your real name was Jose, you might take a "German name" of Gunther. Since I took French, I chose the French name Audrey - pronounced "oh-dray."
French Sites
The French Experience Part I
The French Experience Part II
The French Experience Part III
The French Experience Part IV
My High School trip to France
My French story.
My freshman year at Kirkwood High School just plain sucked. My family had moved over the summer and I had to switch schools, so I didn’t know anybody. I was absent all the time, which was partially my fault and partially that of my parents, who forced me to be on medication that prevented me from being awake more than 6 hours a day. Needless to say, I did pretty badly in most of my classes. I tried to make up work from some of the supposedly more important "core" classes, but still managed to fail English and Physics. Something I didn't care at all about failing, though, was French.
I had taken French since 6th grade, and had never been particularly fond of it. I didn't hate the subject, but in middle school I spent class time passing notes or figuring out ways to sneak Hershey's kisses without the Madame Snelling noticing (the fake sneeze worked best). In 9th grade, I rarely went to school, and when I went, I was so drugged up that if even I was conscious, I didn’t remember a thing. It's a real testament to what "anti-psychotic" medications can do to you. Throughout the rest of high school, people often came up to me, saying "Hey Amanda, how's it going?" and I would respond "How do you know me? I've never seen you before in my life." A confusing reply would follow: "Oh, um, we had a class together freshman year." It's quite strange to think that all these people have an entire set of memories in which I was present, yet these memories no longer exist in my mind (if they were ever there at all).
Anyway, by the end of my freshman year I had failed French 2 and was informed that I would not be allowed to continue on to French 3. I think the only reason I took French to begin with was because a) my friends were doing it, b) it was required or c) it's supposed to help you get into college. I don't know if the idea of college held any importance to me at that point, but for whatever reason I registered to take French 2 again in sophomore year.
In freshman year, my French teacher was Madame Concannon, a sweet-but-sour older lady who was a stereotypical schoolmarm. She wasn't a bad teacher, but she didn't "inspire passion" in me. My second attempt at French 2, as a sophomore, I had Madame Kalfus. She was the opposite of Concannon. She was young, exuberant, friendly, and funny. She cared not only about my grade in French, but my mood and my home life. She was the sponsor of French Club, which she successfully encouraged me to join. I made a lot of friends there and soon took on a leadership role. I didn't get along with most of the kids in my French class at that point, though. Since I was a year behind they were all younger than me, and for some reason that year I was a real brat and really mean to everyone, so they were right to not like me. But I felt at home in that classroom. Every day I started coming in just to hang out during contact (the short free period students were given to get help from teachers or, more commonly, to hang out and get sodas) and more and more I started doing my French homework.
I can't say when or why I started actually liking French, but first semester I had a C, and second I managed an A. Madame Kalfus really inspired me. I think one of the reasons I tried harder to learn French was that I was actually noticing the results of my work. A year prior, if I watched a French movie with subtitles I might pick up a word here or there. Soon I noticed I was able to understand short phrases and sentences. In class, instead of staring dumbfounded whenever Madame Kalfus spoke in French, I understood most of what she said. I started trying to learn on my own, reading ahead in the textbook and buying my own French books at Borders. Books about grammar, but, also, books with stories in French on the left page and English on the right, or French translations of English books like Harry Potter and Charlotte's Web. I begged my mother to take me to France, as she had taken my sister Jessica and her friend to England two years ago without me. To my surprise, she consented. My sister and her friend joined us again, and Jessica was a pain the entire time. She'd been to France (with a different friend and her father, who, coincidentally, had dated my mother for few years) and even though she took French and was very good at it, she just didn't care. That really bothered me. I think if you have the ability to learn something, you should learn it and take pride in it. My mother was absolute evil on the trip as well, getting drunk every night and coming back to our hotel room to whine about what a terrible and ungrateful little brat I was. But that's a different story.
Anyway, my trip to France only exacerbated my obsession. It felt so incredible to be told by a French person in French that I spoke French well. That is the exciting thing about languages. You can think "A year ago I wouldn't have known what to say, nor would I be able to understand any of this, but now I can." Learning a new language is neat because you can very easily see the fruits of your labor, and these results are practical as well. I think my English grammar has declined (especially the range of my vocabulary), since at this point I know French almost as well as I know English. If you think about it, the number of words I know is probably way more than the average English speaker, because for nearly every English word there is a French equivalent as well.
Also in the summer of 2002, my father, sister and I took road trips around Colorado and New Mexico, as well as Seattle and parts of Canada. I would have found all that car time to be boring, but I since I had brought bags of French books with me, I read those instead of peering out the window like my father or sleeping like my sister. Yes, I'm aware I'm a dork. I spent a lot of the summer studying and improving my French, teaching myself things that were far beyond my level.
Fall came and brought school, my junior year, which was my best year. I started being nice and dressing better, and I was making more and more friends, and I was happier. I advanced to French 3 Honors knowing more than anyone in the class. Evidently I showed this, not by trying to be a show off or bragging about studying over the summer, rather, using skills in class that Madame Kalfus knew she hadn't taught. A few weeks after school had started, Madame Kalfus approached me and asked if I wanted to try going across the hall to French 4 Honors instead of staying in French 3, which was she thought was below me at that point. In French 3 I felt kind of lame, as I was in a room full of people a year younger than me who hadn't failed French 2. In French 4, I would have caught up with people my own age. Mostly for pride, I switched.
At first I was quiet. I didn't know any of these people, and for them, this was their third year in a row with the same group of classmates. Basically, the class was an enormous inside joke that my peers were not keen on letting me join. It didn't bother me at first, because I was oblivious, but then later I learned that the "sharks" and "jets" weren't just meant to be nicknames for the east and west sides of the class, but code for who was cool and who was not. As the year went on I grew to hate the class, who were stupid and rude, and to hate the teacher, Madame Koehler, who cared more about being popular with the students than actually teaching or making sure the they learned anything. The students did not care about anything related to what we were supposed to learn; instead they chose to talk about how funny it was that two students took Madame Koehler to the mall to buy "hip" clothes. No one knew any French, and soon everyone agreed that I was the best in the class at French. They thought I was some kind of genius, but this was not the case: I seemed amazing simply because they were all completely ignorant and didn't pay any attention on the rare occasions that teaching actually occurred.
I finished French 4 hating it, but with an A for the year. Unfortunately, the teacher graded on completion, not ability, so a fair share of people got A's regardless of skill. That summer, I didn't spend much time studying French. I watched movies with French captions when available and made a few online French chat friends, but not much more than that. I returned for my senior year with AP French with Madame Koehler and her gang of dopes, and I was set to cadet teach for Madame Kalfus in the afternoons. "Cadet Teaching" was when a high school student the same age as or older than the students in a specific class helped out the teacher with basic tasks (taking attendance, grading assignments, washing transparencies, and other "dirty work"). Sometimes I got to give lessons, but mostly I helped the students with their writing. I had a lot of fun and made friends with pretty much everyone in the class, some of who were the same kids who had hated me two years earlier in French 2. I had a blast, and originally I had only planned on cadet teaching during first semester, but I decided to continue for the rest of the year.
My French class with Madame Koehler, however, was going terribly. Koehler seemed to hate me for getting off topic, even if the "topic" was what so-and-so did this weekend and I wanted to ask a serious curriculum related question. It was fine for whoever to talk about going to the movies with whoever else, but when I tried to debate French rap with Madame during class, I was told off. "Audrey, il faut savoir quand d'arreter." You need to know when to stop. It was quite difficult to hide my tears under the blazing fluorescent lights of that public school classroom.
Senior year was when I started skipping class. At first, I just skipped Drama one day to go to the grocery store and pick up a cake for Scrabble Club. I figured, this is something I really have to do, if I get detention for it, so be it. However, my drama teacher never confronted me about it. Neither did my grade level principal, who usually dealt with truancy (he had even made visits to my home during my freshman year string of absences). I never received acknowledgement that anyone was aware that I had cut class, so I did it more and more. I started skipping AP French often, and when I did go to class I often would walk out, cross the hall, and hang out in Madame Kalfus’ class. When I did stick around for AP French, I got perfect scores on in-class work (due to my skills and my ability to bullshit well), but I never did the homework. My grade dropped to an F, but I pulled it up to a D before the end of the first semester. Shortly after the second semester started following winter break, I dropped the class. It was completely worthless to me; last year I was learning very little but this year I was learning nothing except for how much anger I had towards everyone in the class, especially Madame Koehler.
Meanwhile, I was having a great time with Madame Kalfus. I was organizing and taking charge of French Club, which once had had maybe one or two events a year and now was up to at least one event (fun and well-attended) each month. We prospered, and had a great time. Over spring break, I went on a school-sponsored trip to France with 29 female students, 3 male students, and 5 (I think) female teacher sponsors. It was incredible fun and I have a plethora of happy moments to remember. Madame Koehler was even civil to me during the trip, which was a nice break. I made a lot of new friends and strengthened a many previous friendships. I was popular and people I didn't even know were saying "Oh Audrey!" whenever I passed. I felt so good. I loved France, as I had before, and had a killer time. I was sad to come back, but I did, and I survived.
To continue my French story, for those of you who don't know how AP (advanced placement) works, you take an AP class in order to prepare for an AP test in that subject, and your results on the AP test can often give you college credit. The AP tests are standardized by the College Board, and in 2004 cost around $82. What an AP test does for you is shows your skills. You could have straight A's in a subject throughout high school and still suck at it, so for colleges to find out how you really are at anything, the AP test gauges your skill in a subject on a scale from 1-5, 5 being the best and 1 being… were you even in the class? Now, I had signed up for the AP French test before I dropped the class. I correctly assumed that since it was technically unrelated to the class, I would still be able to take the test. And I still wanted to. So, on May 3rd, I went to the lecture hall and took the test. I avoided at all costs looking at the other kids from the class. I remember having a little bit of difficulty during the listening section of the test as well as the speaking. I thought I would do well, I kept imagining opening the envelope they would send in July and seeing a huge 5, however, I figured this was just a fantasy, and hoped I could wrangle a 4.
When, in fact the test score came, my dream had come true: I got a 5. I was so elated, I told everyone I could. I tried to find out other peoples' scores, but I was only semi-friends with one other person who took the test. But, through the grapevine, I heard what most people got. I had heard of threes, twos, and a one. During the summer after graduation, I ran into the valedictorian from my class, who had ended up with a four. Someone I didn't even know came into my work and said "Hey, congratulations on your 5!" They had heard from someone else who I didn't even tell. A month later I got a call from Madame Kalfus. She told me that she and Madame Koehler were so happy for me when they found out I got a 5. Not only did no one else in the class get a 5, but Madame Kalfus told me that no students had gotten a 5 since she or any of the French teachers had worked there, which meant at least 8 years. It was something I feel very good about.
Basically, the main point of my story is, French is great, I am great, and don't let anything hold you down. You can think to yourself "I hate French class!" but don’t let that make you hate the subject. See Amelie, a great French movie and one of my favorites of all time. Understand that learning French is not about school. It takes work, but it is an accomplishment that not many people achieve. All over the world many people speak at least two languages, but here in America, bilingualism is rare. So, learn a foreign language, any foreign language, and love it. Be proud of it. I had a great time with French, and you can too!
Looking back four years later, a secondary point I want to make is that school is an institution. Think about that: institution. It’s a pre-programmed way for you to live your life, and as a young adult it has a lot of influence on you. My history with school is erratic at best. Sometimes I did very well, other times I was on the verge of being kicked out, and I only graduated high school by a hair. I think education is very important, but not necessarily school. True, I learned a lot from school, and I’m glad I attended, but I am more pleased that I was able to find my own interests (and I’m not talking about French so much here, more like cloning and forensics or whatever) and branch out by myself. On that note, I think that the social aspect is really the most important part of a school education, which is why I’m glad I went. You can’t make it through life without social skills, and you definitely can’t learn them from a book.
If you’ve made it through this whole essay, I’m glad, and I hope it has inspired you in some way, or at least made you think. Anyway, keep learning!