Willkommen im Schlaraffenland [DE, FR, JA, NO]

[Systematiker]

I hope someday I can add some Dialekte to my list like you!

I'll just leave these here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZYhzyC ... owlga08xY2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5gmGVA ... HqUvOxJ5uV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEQ58RD ... 96ixaMk0bT

[blaurebell]

As for what the universities will require, it's somewhat hard to say. Basically, I am competing with Abituriente who have probably studied French since their early teens. When the universities do refer to necessary skills, they speak vaguely of B2/C1 competence. Some of the programs I'm looking at don't care whether I submit proof of proficiency in languages at all, since they claim they will look at one's school transcript or Abitur for the evidence. In my case, though, I have no Abitur, and that transcript is two decades old. :X So I realized early this year that I'm not a strong candidate without some external proof of my ability. In addition, some of the programs will only admit 6 to 10 foreign students per year. I figure that I need to build as strong a case as possible for my entry, so I should take the highest-level exam for which I'm ready at the latest possible date. I plan to improve my French well after the date of any exam and eventually settle around C1+. But I hope I can show concrete proof of at least B2 readiness in the coming months. Then I can worry about all the political bureaucracy that surrounds attempting to secure a residence visa abroad...

Am I guessing right that you're applying for some kind of Romanistik course at a German university? If you indeed prove C1 you'll be way ahead of your cohort and even a weak pass will be way ahead of what's expected from the average Abiturient. Normally one starts studying French in year 7 and you'll be competing with folks who studied it until the last year - either 5 or 6 years depending on the Bundesland -, usually with no more than 2h a week - none of the schools I ever attended had a high level French course. I ended up with B2, C1 writing in English after 8 years, 2h per week until year 11, 5h per week in the last year in the high level course, so the outcome of school French - 2 years less, consistently 2h per week, will be lower, more like B1. I actually attended quite a lot of Romanistik courses and as far as I could tell no more than B2 comprehension, B1 production is expected in the first year. They then tend to expect you to improve your first romance language a lot over the next three years with a stay abroad in a TL country getting you to C1+. They also expect you to reach B2 in a second Romance language over the first 2 years. I attended an Italian course which was modelled after the one Romanistik students took for their second language requirement and it was A2 in the first year, B2 in the second year, which is infuriatingly slow! And they actually expect you to sit in those classes, which I found a huge waste of time. In our case it was all just traditional grammar translation and I worked through the accompanying book on my own in 3 months, memorising all the vocabulary. One also has an awful lot of free time at German universities, so I don't know why they make it so slow. In any case, this means that any university offering Romanistik will have internal B2 exams, usually in July with results released within a week or two.

But then the requirements really depend on which exact program you have in mind. Romanistik in Düsseldorf for example is zulassungsfrei, so anyone can simply enrol who fulfils the requirements - Abitur or equivalent and B1 in one Romance language apparently -, so all you would need there is to prove your language requirement and it's only B1. They usually let you enrol until early October when the course starts and the internal B2 language exams tend to be in July with results released within a week or two. I'm pretty sure that they would make an exception for a case like yours and let you sit one of their internal exams, if you ask nicely - in person preferably. The person you will have to ask would be in charge of Studienberatung. Normally Studienberatung is meant for students already studying in the program, but they are usually very understanding and patient people willing to help. They have to be, German university degrees are a bureaucratic nightmare, so hardly anyone really knows how half these programs work in detail - module combinations, requirements, exam applications. It was a very kafkaesque experience for me to get all the paperwork together for the 2 programs I studied at the same time - you can do that, it's called Doppelstudium and a trick hardly anyone knows about. You pay your fees once, but get two degrees out of it. And with the right combination of courses you only need to take the courses for 1 1/2 degrees to get 2 degrees out of it in the end. There are also different ways of bypassing almost any sort of requirement for enrolment if you do it sneakily enough. With programs restricted with an NC one strategy would be to enrol with a major that is zulassungsfrei - Philosophy for example, start studying the program as a minor and usually they let you switch your major after a year if you're a really good student. This only works for programs that are in the major minor system though. Combined programs usually don't let you take enough courses if you're not enrolled to allow you to switch. It's one strategy of getting into the NC restricted Modernes Japan course in Düsseldorf though, one of my friends did it this way. Which reminds me, Düsseldorf actually has a bilingual Bachelor Germanistik Romanistik as a combined program with Tolouse. I'd totally study that if I had the choice, looks ace!

[schlaraffenland]

Am I guessing right that you're applying for some kind of Romanistik course at a German university? If you indeed prove C1 you'll be way ahead of your cohort and even a weak pass will be way ahead of what's expected from the average Abiturient. Normally one starts studying French in year 7 and you'll be competing with folks who studied it until the last year - either 5 or 6 years depending on the Bundesland -, usually with no more than 2h a week - none of the schools I ever attended had a high level French course. I ended up with B2, C1 writing in English after 8 years, 2h per week until year 11, 5h per week in the last year in the high level course, so the outcome of school French - 2 years less, consistently 2h per week, will be lower, more like B1. I actually attended quite a lot of Romanistik courses and as far as I could tell no more than B2 comprehension, B1 production is expected in the first year. They then tend to expect you to improve your first romance language a lot over the next three years with a stay abroad in a TL country getting you to C1+. They also expect you to reach B2 in a second Romance language over the first 2 years. I attended an Italian course which was modelled after the one Romanistik students took for their second language requirement and it was A2 in the first year, B2 in the second year, which is infuriatingly slow! And they actually expect you to sit in those classes, which I found a huge waste of time. In our case it was all just traditional grammar translation and I worked through the accompanying book on my own in 3 months, memorising all the vocabulary. One also has an awful lot of free time at German universities, so I don't know why they make it so slow. In any case, this means that any university offering Romanistik will have internal B2 exams, usually in July with results released within a week or two.

But then the requirements really depend on which exact program you have in mind. Romanistik in Düsseldorf for example is zulassungsfrei, so anyone can simply enrol who fulfils the requirements - Abitur or equivalent and B1 in one Romance language apparently -, so all you would need there is to prove your language requirement and it's only B1. They usually let you enrol until early October when the course starts and the internal B2 language exams tend to be in July with results released within a week or two. I'm pretty sure that they would make an exception for a case like yours and let you sit one of their internal exams, if you ask nicely - in person preferably. The person you will have to ask would be in charge of Studienberatung. Normally Studienberatung is meant for students already studying in the program, but they are usually very understanding and patient people willing to help. They have to be, German university degrees are a bureaucratic nightmare, so hardly anyone really knows how half these programs work in detail - module combinations, requirements, exam applications. It was a very kafkaesque experience for me to get all the paperwork together for the 2 programs I studied at the same time - you can do that, it's called Doppelstudium and a trick hardly anyone knows about. You pay your fees once, but get two degrees out of it. And with the right combination of courses you only need to take the courses for 1 1/2 degrees to get 2 degrees out of it in the end. There are also different ways of bypassing almost any sort of requirement for enrolment if you do it sneakily enough. With programs restricted with an NC one strategy would be to enrol with a major that is zulassungsfrei - Philosophy for example, start studying the program as a minor and usually they let you switch your major after a year if you're a really good student. This only works for programs that are in the major minor system though. Combined programs usually don't let you take enough courses if you're not enrolled to allow you to switch. It's one strategy of getting into the NC restricted Modernes Japan course in Düsseldorf though, one of my friends did it this way. Which reminds me, Düsseldorf actually has a bilingual Bachelor Germanistik Romanistik as a combined program with Tolouse. I'd totally study that if I had the choice, looks ace!

Thank you so much! This is so comprehensive and incredibly reassuring. I mean, I know I wouldn't be going up against 18-year-olds who are at C2 level in ten languages or anything, but it's a relief to know that German students in their third language are roughly comparable to American ones in their second by the end of high school.

In fact, it's Übersetzen I've been thinking about studying. I'd like to work principally translating from German to English, but the programs in Germany and Austria want to see ~B2 qualifications for the entrant's C-Sprache. The programs I've seen are not zulassungsbeschränkt unless one wants to use English as one's B-Sprache, so I hope I will have some advantage there as a native speaker. I still have a lot of fine print to read, but it seems that most of the programs don't necessarily provide a framework for remedial language improvement after entering the university, strangely enough, nor do they necessarily expect that one will bring one's C-Sprache up past C1+. I would think that the nuances one learns at C1+ are particularly important for anybody who wants to work as a translator, so I find that a bit weird. But perhaps the C-Sprache is just meant to give the student a taste of how to take it further on her own down the road. There also seems to be no room in the schedule to begin learning another language. We'll see about that... maybe I won't be able to translate in it for some time, but I intend to plunk myself down at the local VHS and commit to something on the side

I have some superficial misgivings about studying translation for a degree, I have to admit, but for purely aesthetic reasons. If it were up to me, university curricula would still look like they did at Oxford in Jowett's day, for example. (Plus the addition of gender studies.) On that note, studying something like philosophy or Germanistik would be a dream, but I fear it could land me back in the same boat where I am now, in case I found myself unable to get into the Übersetzen program after having come in under different auspices. I actually did do a double major in the States in similar subjects, plus a minor, and I would be very much up for the opportunity to do so again in the German-speaking world. But I've also noticed that most of the Übersetzen programs have a Fächeranteil of 100%, so I wouldn't have much room to maneuver.

In good bureaucratic news on this front, I received word this week -- only two months late, heh -- that the Kultusministerkonferenz has completed its appraisal of my U.S. bachelor's degrees and will send me a nice certificate with a stamp on it. With that in hand, and some sort of DELF/DALF certificate after December, I should be good to go to apply to programs a year from now...

[schlaraffenland]

German
Vocabulary and reading are going well. I wish I could do more! I had mentioned going back to workbooks, and I still really want to do that. I just don't see it happening right now with my other time commitments.
I was delighted to hear a couple of Germans in line the other day at a local cafe, and I worked up the courage to ask them where they were from (near Berlin, they said). Then it was my turn at the counter, and I got all flustered and socially awkward, so things pretty much stopped there. They went to sit outside, while I took a spot indoors. I was already feeling weird, but the adrenaline and the nerves compounded that, and I caught myself asking someone else at the communal table, "Is here free?" before I realized that I was still thinking in German! My table-neighbor-to-be didn't seem to find anything wrong with my unidiomatic phrasing, though.
If I'd been more brave, I would've liked to ask the young women what on earth brought them to our suburb. It's not a place anybody would stop on their way to or from another place, I think. Perhaps they are living in the area for the time being. Then again, I think of all the random villages where I've been in Germany for this reason or that, and I bet there's been a person who wondered what on earth brought an American to their neck of the woods.

French
I have been up to my ears in French hell for the past couple of weeks. Well, that's a bit dramatic... but I have upped the pace considerably, and fatigue is setting in. I also feel that I'm at that frustrating plateau where I grasp most everything going on but cannot produce the equivalent. And I know from experience that the only way to get past this state is to keep pushing. I just wish I could reintroduce something that would add a little spice to what I'm doing. My interest flags. I don't want to push too hard, either, because that increases the chances that I'll burn out.
Is it more mental or physical? I haven't felt all that great physically for some weeks, it's true, and it isn't a wonderful feeling to slog through something for hours each day when one is not naturally motivated or interested in it anyway, when one hasn't got enough sleep, when one has migraines, etc.
I will say, at least, that I see the difference between what I'm capable of in French now and what I was capable of in, say, February. I know that progress is there, even if it feels slow to come. And the most shocking thing of which I shouldn't fail to take note: I haven't quit yet! Normally, amid flagging interest and feeling blah, I would've long since skipped days or weeks of learning. But I haven't missed a day since I made an earnest commitment in late February. I've occasionally restructured the scope of my goals based upon changing circumstances, or I've abandoned resources that were not fruitful. But I'd like to think that that is a sort of intelligently informed pruning. I hope.
In terms of C1-specific preparation, this month's goal had been to work through Expression et style B2-C1 : Français de perfectionnement in its entirety. It became clear within a few days of the start of July that this short book is far too dense for that. If I could devote several hours per day just to the book, then I could finish it within perhaps three weeks, but I think that I'd be unwisely taking time away from other aspects of learning the language. I'm trying to figure out how to accommodate absorbing the important lessons in this book within the time frame that I have available to me.
I have not been resoundingly successful with writing regularly in French. Due to some bureaucratic circumstances, I actually ended up having to write two business letters in French in the last couple of weeks. I spent hours ensuring that the format and the formulations were correct, and I learned a lot in the process. I didn't write more than about 600 words in total, so I can't speak of quantity, but I feel the quality of what I wrote was as good as what I could've hoped for at my level.
What else? I've been force-feeding myself films and TV. I have graduated to not needing French subtitles any longer with most media. Sometimes I have to rewind a bit, and a couple of times, I've watched shows dubbed in French but with German subtitles as a crutch. Otherwise, though, it goes well.

Japanese
As of the beginning of the month, I've let myself ignore my Anki vocabulary deck. It felt delightfully subversive to do so, and a sense of relief has washed over me, even if it's uncomfortable to see the undone reviews sitting there. I simply have no further interest at present to expand my vocabulary in the way that would be necessary to begin reading newspapers or what have you.
When I do pick things back up again eventually -- whether that be in six months or five years -- I think I will actually focus more on very specific sets of vocabulary. One thing that interests me is learning the set of terms specific to Japanese Buddhism, some of which are indexed at the Nichiren Buddhism Library. The other thing I find interesting are the proverbs that Bu Sensei has collected for those preparing for the Japan Proverb Test or the Kanken. Either of these endeavors would be very kanji intensive, so it wouldn't make sense to begin anything new until after I have finished Heisig, I believe. But it could make for an interesting project later.
Heisig continues to go well. I go to Daiso perhaps once a month, and I'm surprised how I can read more of the packaging during each visit without trying; the newly learned characters simply spring out. The kanji are also quite helpful for clarifying the differences among similar products where the English/Spanish translation on the packaging is poor. I was pleased to be able to differentiate among charcoal gel deodorizers for the refrigerator, freezer, and closet during the latest visit.

Norwegian
Eep. Amid such intense focus on French in the last few weeks, I've often found myself forgetting to maintain Duolingo until just before midnight. A couple of nights ago, I did totally forget, realizing only around twenty minutes after midnight that I had botched my 56-day streak. I haven't opened the app since then... I guess the streak was the principal motivation for me continuing on. Otherwise, I wasn't getting a lot out of the regular investment of time, I feel. There's only so much playing around with sentences about spiders and wolves that one can stand.
My SRS-guided learning schedule for Assimil is going OK, though. I have missed a day or two here or there, but making it up the next day is not problematic. The review count is generally from two to six per day, which is manageable. I fear that my passive approach is all too passive, however. I feel like my comprehension and retention are solid for the lessons that were 15+ days ago, but not at all for more recent material. I don't know if this means that I am too passive in my approach to the texts, or whether I am indeed simply as slow a learner as I have always thought myself to be. It is difficult to acclimate myself to a method in which writing and structured grammatical lessons do not form the core of the pedagogical approach. I have other resources at my disposal that could complement Assimil. But it all comes back to time: I know I'd need to put in a good, solid two hours per day to see better progress, and I simply cannot spare that at present. So, passive it is for now, and I try to swallow my discomfort at the fact that I haven't yet assimilated the more recent material to which I've been exposed.

[schlaraffenland]

YTD totals as of 31 July:

GERMAN.
Pages read this month: 463
Hours of AV consumed this month: 5.5
(I finished the Super Challenge!)
Vocabulary learned: 559/1000

FRENCH.
Pages read this month: 648
Hours of AV consumed this month: 17.7
Vocabulary learned: 2250/3800

JAPANESE.
Kanji learned: 1305/2200

NORWEGIAN.
Assimil Norwegisch ohne Mühe: 24/100 + active wave: 0/100

[schlaraffenland]

And now, an attempt to get back in the saddle... it seems I'm not the only one feeling an odd slump in the last couple of weeks. I feel so groggy all the time, though I haven't made any particular changes to my habits. I think I could benefit from adding more physical activity to my routine, though. Perhaps I have just been coasting along for some months unhealthily without any feedback from my body, and it has now decided it's had enough. Grogginess has meant great difficulty concentrating, and then getting a lot of simple things wrong, which has led to me putting off reviewing and learning, which has meant no progress, which has led to a feeling of ickiness... time to put a stop to it!

I was pretty content with my July totals and with how undemanding the slightly larger workload felt, so I had decided for August to step it up even further and add a few extra days per month of new material. In the face of suddenly feeling so not up to par, however, I haven't even been meeting my normal workload goals in August. I've even missed, for the first time since February, a couple of days' worth of reviews. I think there's still plenty of time to rally, but I am a bit concerned, and I need to figure out how to rout this now.

German
I read Stefan Zweig's lovely little Schachnovelle and some other things lying about. I have a few books on the way and will try Hesse for the first time as well. I can't tell how much is grogginess and how much is actually cause for concern, but I just don't feel as quick on the draw with German in the last week or two -- I fear that if I got into a situation where spontaneous conversation were called for, I might struggle more than I should. Well, that's what happens when you don't speak daily and go several days without listening to anything, either. I should have some opportunities to practice in the coming couple of months for sure.

French
I upped the number of new words learned per day by 50 percent in July, and while the number of reviews due in Anki each day seemed scary, it was actually quite manageable. I would still like to up it further this month. It looks pretty certain now that I'll sit the C1 exam in December, so I need to get this A1-B2 vocabulary out of the way right quick and move on to C1-level modes of expression. My passive skills seem pretty decent at present; I read way more than I expected last month and understood it well, even if I could not necessarily write a summary in the same register. I have definitely not given enough attention to active skills and am really at the point where I cannot permit myself to say "later, later" any longer. (It was fun to be able to justify that all these months so far...) I will make an effort to write like my life depends on it this month. I will also be moving on to longer works of nonfiction, and I think that that will help me as I develop a writing voice.

Japanese
I think I can challenge myself better here, too! Because of how much attention I need to devote to French in the final three months of the year, I'd be happier knowing I had only 200-400 kanji to learn in that period instead of 600+. I was feeling like I was in a bit of a slump in late July and that I had to force myself to bite through whatever was next on the list, so I gave myself a bit of a treat by learning about 100 characters out of order. I simply went through the rest of Heisig and marked everything I already knew pretty well by sight -- characters from packaging, or technical terms, or from temple names, like 仁, 奈, 香, 極, blah blah blah -- and learned them. Since they already felt like old friends, it was quite simple, and it gave me a little confidence boost. But now it's back to where I should be in the middle of the book, and it might be a bit more of a struggle to get through what's left without these little treats scattered throughout. I will keep watching my learning pace and base it primarily on how much I get wrong each day. I have noticed that if I am having a week where I forget how to write 25 percent of characters correctly on a given day (!), that means I have been pushing too hard with new characters or am reviewing too late in the day. When I consistently get only about 10 percent wrong per day, however, I know that I have a manageable load of new material.

Norwegian
Ugh, I haven't learned anything new in Norwegian for about three weeks, and that's driving me nuts. I keep feeling like I need to put off my lessons when I can't devote proper time or energy to the learning process. At the same time, I definitely don't want to give up. I chanced upon some Norwegian YouTubers (in English) the other day, and upon hearing their accents, a certain affection came over me, as though I were seeing the charming little gestures of a particular friend whom I had missed for a long time. And I realized that that's why I'm doing this: for that sense of affection and gladness when I do interact with the language or its traces. That's all the reason I need. There is, fortunately, no exam to sit and no need to worry about a deadline. Affection is enough. But it is not always enough to impel me to put this language at the top of my list of priorities, and that is where I keep stumbling. I hope I can get better this month. My plan is to continue with Assimil in the passive phase; I won't start the active phase, I have decided, until early next year. I hope I will be in better shape after my French C1 to turn my attention to pursuits like this.

[Prohairesis]

I can't tell how much is grogginess and how much is actually cause for concern, but I just don't feel as quick on the draw with German in the last week or two -- I fear that if I got into a situation where spontaneous conversation were called for, I might struggle more than I should.

I went through a similar situation back when I was still doing my Bachelor's in French in Paris. Basically, every summer I would spend the first month in Germany doing a language course, then I would head back home to Bangkok. During those couple of months, I definitely felt my active skills weren't at peak efficiency, and I generally required slightly more time to regain momentum and fluidity of expression. I would place myself at the border between C1 and C2 at that time (this was back in 2013/14). The curious thing is that every time I had to distance myself away from French and come back to it for the rentrée universitaire, I felt like I had gained a fresh perspective on things and even the act of reading something in French or simply speaking the language was exciting and made me appreciate how cool it was to know the language !

Currently, I am at a point where I have honed my skills to a near-native level, so distancing myself from the language several months at a time does not make a big difference compared to being fully engaged and immersed in the language on a daily basis. All this to say, I think you have nothing to worry about. If anything, you will come back to German with a fresh perspective on things. You know the French adage : reculer pour mieux sauter.

French
My passive skills seem pretty decent at present; I read way more than I expected last month and understood it well, even if I could not necessarily write a summary in the same register.

If you're referring to the synthèse written part of the DALF C1, you're not actually expected to develop a summary with the same register as the source text. I actually believe the examiners discourage this. What they're looking for is for candidates to adopt their own tone and style, while reproducing and remaining faithful to the contents of the source material. You will actually find that examiners encourage test-takers to adopt their own tone and style. With the DALF C2, for instance, the production écrite task asks for you to adopt the appropriate tone and register by considering the target audience you are writing for (specified in the question).

[schlaraffenland]

I'm not dead, I swear! (But maybe I'm not so alive?)

I had the most horrifyingly lazy August, in which I completely dropped the ball and did goodness knows what until the early morning every day. Seriously, I don't know what I did, and I have very little to show for it. I hit maybe 10 percent of my goals last month, scarcely read a lick, and feel dreadfully behind in everything. I've tried to convince myself that if the French take the whole of August off, then maybe I was just doing the same in my own way.

I have to wake up in four hours for a flight, but I hope to catch up in the coming week or so and tally up what I actually did get done, small consolation that it is. I think the change of scene will do me good (and in my favorite city, to boot). Perhaps the lack of change of scene for a while is precisely what led to my burnout.

A month from now, I leave for France, where I will spend the rest of the year preparing for the dreaded C1. I'll then take it in mid-December. I am so, so far behind, especially after my little disappearance of the last month, but I'm hoping that immersion will help and provide its own sort of magic. Half of that is stupid wishful thinking -- "Honestly, what were you expecting when you didn't work for a whole month?!" -- but who knows. Bonus bookends for the sojourn: a day or two in lovely Germany, basking in pure and simple normalcy for a while.

More to come!

[PeterMollenburg]

I'm not dead, I swear! (But maybe I'm not so alive?)

I had the most horrifyingly lazy August, in which I completely dropped the ball and did goodness knows what until the early morning every day. Seriously, I don't know what I did, and I have very little to show for it. I hit maybe 10 percent of my goals last month, scarcely read a lick, and feel dreadfully behind in everything. I've tried to convince myself that if the French take the whole of August off, then maybe I was just doing the same in my own way.

I have to wake up in four hours for a flight, but I hope to catch up in the coming week or so and tally up what I actually did get done, small consolation that it is. I think the change of scene will do me good (and in my favorite city, to boot). Perhaps the lack of change of scene for a while is precisely what led to my burnout.

A month from now, I leave for France, where I will spend the rest of the year preparing for the dreaded C1. I'll then take it in mid-December. I am so, so far behind, especially after my little disappearance of the last month, but I'm hoping that immersion will help and provide its own sort of magic. Half of that is stupid wishful thinking -- "Honestly, what were you expecting when you didn't work for a whole month?!" -- but who knows. Bonus bookends for the sojourn: a day or two in lovely Germany, basking in pure and simple normalcy for a while.

More to come!

It must be something in the air.... Anyway I hope you enjoy your break in your favourite city, and I hope you do pass your C1 in December. I'm considering sitting it in November, but then rediculous me can't get my act together and find myself wanting to do every course I own again right when I ought to be in full native mode with an exam course or two on the side. So... you and me both are a little off at the moment it seems, but good luck to us getting both back on track schlaraffenland! Your upcoming immersion sounds awesome!

[schlaraffenland]

Well, gosh. That didn't quite work out as planned.

I'm back in the U.S. after my two-month stint in France, where I had expected to prepare for the DALF C1 and update regularly. While it wasn't a total bust, many things didn't go quite how I had hoped, to put it mildly. I can say here euphemistically that several of the headline-grabbing items in the U.S. media ended up directly affecting our family this Fall, one after the other. I also ended up needing to seek medical help in France, which I was never able to secure, a process that ended up taking weeks of time in waiting and wondering. In short, I was distracted, deeply sad, and unable to do anything about the things happening to my family or friends back in the States, and I found myself unable to concentrate sufficiently upon the task at hand. In the days leading up to the exam, I decided to cancel, bitterly disappointed in myself.

To be fair, I know I wouldn't have been ready, given the utter lack of time I had devoted to preparation in the preceding weeks. Even showing up to take the exam just to see where I stood with it would have generated lots more unnecessary stress, I decided, when I was already not in good health. What I'm most irritated about (aside from my own self!) is simply the fact that I will now have to wait an additional eighteen months to proceed with my plans to apply to German universities, given how absurdly long it seems to take to grade this exam. I'm aiming to try the C1 again next June. Eighteen months is not the end of the world, in the grand scheme of things, but I'm also not twenty years old, and it is frustrating to have a thing stand between my goal and me which is as uninteresting as it is necessary for progress.

One strange silver lining is that I able to keep on schedule with kanji learning, and I find I am actually now ahead of schedule. I will have learned to write all 2,200 characters in Heisig vol. 1 by the end of this year, about a month earlier than I had planned, even though I was behind by two full months in the late Summer. Writing the kanji provided me with a sort of meditative relief when I was in France, so it was fairly simple to stick to the daily habit. My deck of French vocabulary, on the other hand... well, I barely once touched it in the last two months.

I bought tons of books when I was abroad, including a Provençal textbook and a Provençal translation of Le Petit Nicolas as a treat. I think I have all the materials I need to prepare in earnest for the exam on my own now. And I don't think that my level will drop too significantly in the coming six months, since I feel I did really solidify my base knowledge when I was in France. There's nothing one can do about tragedies cropping up, but I hope that the first few months of 2018 will provide people everywhere with some relief compared to how things have been across the world this year.

I look forward to doing lots of catch-up here and seeing what has been going on in the last couple of months!