To kick it off, I'll quote my post on the SC discussion thread about my expectations and experience from the first Super Challenge, compared to the reality of how my progress feels to me now:
jeffers wrote:Serpent wrote:Not to make anyone feel bad, but the first challenge was in 2012-2013 and this one will be the 6th You always did an impressive amount of reading even if you didn't complete 100 "books" per language
I know it's been that long, but "wow, has it been that long?!?"
I have mixed feelings, because every Super Challenge I feel like I have made super progress. On the other hand, over five challenges I wonder if my overall progress has gone up? It's the old problem of the hill being much higher than expected. If you have ever done any hiking in hills or mountains then you know what I mean. At the bottom of a slope you see what looks like the top, but two things happen: 1. the point you are looking at is often further away than it appears, and 2. you get to that point and realize that it's only a small ridge on the way up a much higher hill.
I think it was during the first Super Challenge that I worked my way through my first grown up novel in French: Les orpailleurs by Thierry Jonquet. It was a struggle, but I really enjoyed it. I also felt like a few more experiences like that and I would be some sort of "pro". It's not been the case, and now I still struggle with grown up literature in French. There's an feeling of discouragement in that it seems just as difficult now as it did during the first Super Challenge. In fact, this is an illusion, and my comprehenion is many orders of magnitude better than back then. In those days, I was happy if I understood the majority of the plot elements of a chapter, which sometimes meant I was looking up dozens of words per page (happily, it was quick with the keyboard version of Kindle in those days). Now, I get frusrated when I have to look up 5 words on a page, or I don't understand why a sentence is phrased the way it is. It is a very different type of difficulty, but the illusion is that both experiences feel much the same.
The original challenge came from Cristina saying "I won't be fluent until I've read 100 books and watched 100 films". Now I think that won't happen until I've done that at least 10 times! But honestly, that's not really a bad thing. I have enjoyed the process, and I believe I will continue to enjoy the process.
And I am sure that THIS TIME I will complete all 100 books of my French reading challenge.