I'm an Adult. (Excuse me While I Call my Mummy)

Well. That was possibly one of the busiest and most stressful weeks of my life.

Oweek was awesome. First week? Well it was cool but not so cool… maybe even downright overwhelming – don’t get me wrong, I’m not some wishy-washy winger unused to the realities of real life… (Ok. I am. I’m really just a spoiled brat, but I’m TRYING dammit!)

So I love all of my subjects. Creative Writing was a blast, I just felt like I was suddenly in a lovely place, and suddenly homework was to write poetry! That’s just about the coolest thing ever, but then I am a massive dork, so I could be alone with that assertion.

I listened to music.

I watched films.

I read novels.

And this is all subject stuff. This is what I do now, and that’s so cool. It’s unbelievably fun and engaging when you’ve been stuck in full time work for a year. Maybe it will wear off, but the interest is there and that’s all that counts, the rest will come.

Yep, that’s right. I love ALL my subjects (yes, even you Homer to Hollywood even though your many required texts are horrendously expensive when added together) but where was I? Oh yeah, every subject, every single one…

Bar one.  Ain’t that always the way?

Yeah, turns out I can’t stand French, which is odd, because my original plan had been to try to major in it, but alas, it’s not meant to be. I knew this almost immediately when I walked into my seminar and the guy just spoke French the whole way through, assuming all of us could understand.

Nope. No way. Oh, pardon me, a few people could… and I asked them why too… why was it again?

Because they studied super hard in VCE?

Because they were smarter than me and I was the stupid one?

Because they had watched French news since they were six?

No, try having FRENCH PARENTS or a GAP YEAR in France. Yeah, that’ll do it. Everyone in the seminar I spoke to was either had some ties to French that were NOT VCE, or they were just as freaked as I was.

Needless to say I was thoroughly intimidated. So intimidated that I actually had a panic attack after class and called my mother with the ol’ “I… can’t… breathe… stupid… smart… people… didn’t… understand…” which then deteriorated into another one: “ButifIdon’tgetitnowthenI’mgoingtofailUniversityandendupdrivingatruckwith someguynamedDanwho’ssecretlyapervertandI’llendupcutintotinypiecesandfl usheddownthedrainallbecauseIcouldn’tdoFrenchatUni!”

Fortunately my mother, though it has been a year after VCE, is used to such rants and amazingly was able to decode the above and told me something simple, so simple in fact that I was surprised I didn’t think of it first: just transfer out of it.

Now I can hear many of you screaming in academic defiance at this:

“But what about how useful another language is?”

“What will you do for your major?”

“If you don’t learn a language doesn’t that make your degree in Arts essentially useless?”

And of course: “But it’s only the first week!”

Trust me, I’ve heard them all. And here is my answer. It is only the first week. And after only one seminar I was so panicked and freaked out that I actually had to CALL MY MUM. Nothing is worth that kind of stress, and I don’t actually LIKE French. I like France, I like the French (as people), I even like French accents (who doesn’t). But I don’t actually like French as a language. In fact, if I remember back to the way I felt in my VCE French exam, I actually kind of hate it. I just did it for the above reasons, and they’re the wrong reasons because they’re someone else’s reasons.

I’m a grown adult now (granted one that still calls mum to have a bit of a sob/ freakout/ mini-tantrum) and hence can now do what I want, and live with any mistakes, if I have to.

So here’s my advice from the lesson I learned this week:

If you don’t like something, you need to change it, and you need to do it before the census date (which I think is next Friday).

Oh, and bonus lesson! Yay!

You’re not alone. Granted a lot of people understood French in my seminar but a lot of people were freaked out enough to change just as I did, and it’s always good if you can find these people and have a chat with them, because it makes you both feel better and like you’re not total idiots for not understanding what the hell was going on.

Oh and bonus bonus lesson! (My, aren’t we lucky?)

Never, EVER, watch Atonement when you’re mildly upset. It will leave you craving chocolate but unable to move for fear you’ll wake your neighbors in what I like to call movie-induced melancholia, brought on by both the sadness of the subject matter and the sheer gloriousness of Keira Knighley’s face and dress (OH LORD HOW I WANT THAT DRESS!)

And with that sweet readers, I’m off, I’m obviously getting delusional and need some kind of fix, be it caffeine or sugar or just sweet conversation.

Au revoir.