Bienvenue to the French Class, Intermediate 1. It’s a Thursday afternoon, and you’re an hour late for the first lesson. Mon dieu, and it’s only two hours long! Your bike decided to collapse in on itself down All Saint’s Passage, so you rode the last five minutes like the BFG doing Bikeability. This is not a good start.

No, luckily none of that is happening to you, much as my vivid writing may convince. But it did happen to me when I tried out French lessons for the first time this term. I enrolled in an Intermediate French course – believing my old top set credentials viable enough – and that afternoon, scuttled into the class, which was midway through a listening exercise, not daring to look up at the teacher in fear of some real bon mots coming my way.

“In my eagerness to show off my amazing French – “Erm, Ruby” – I had unwittingly supplied my teacher with an instrument of torture”

The only seat remaining was right at the front, slap-bang in her face. It was only as my teacher came over to question me that I realised the entire class is spoken in French, not just the bits you need to learn. “Enchanté”, she said (I had a feeling she didn’t mean it), “comment t’appelles-tu?” That was easy enough to answer. “Ruby” is miraculously still “Ruby” be you in Brittany or Bradford. I am a universal constant. In my eagerness to show off my amazing French – “Erm, Ruby” – I had unwittingly supplied my teacher with an instrument of torture for the rest of the lesson. Impervious to my tactics of rifling through my bag, drinking water, and plain ol’ looking out the window, “Ruby” was increasingly used across the remainder of the hour, and responded to with blundering answers of epic proportions.

However, this class (though harrowing at first) became the most enjoyable part of my week in Michaelmas, and after a term of it, my attitude vastly differs from my first impressions. It probably helps that the teacher I was so afraid of is about ten times nicer than every lady with cruel red glasses and a severe blue button-down who subjected me to the language in school. In this class, it’s more of a collaborative experience, even though I maintain a constant need to remind myself that I am, indeed, an adult now.

“You’re being challenged, but you’re also making connections with the classmate sitting next to you”

You’re being challenged, but you’re also making connections with the classmate sitting next to you (which can’t really be said for a lecture or lab), and as we’d do a round-robin answering a question about ourselves, I’d learn a bit about the people around me as I translated the grammar structures they were using. Yes, there’s still a test at the end, but the grade isn’t the only reason anyone’s there. I found myself noting turns of phrase that I thought were charming as well as verb conjugations, a process which encouraged a new way of learning for me. I actually enjoy speaking shoddy French with my friends outside of lessons, or trying to understand a New Wave film around the subtitles.

Doing the homework I wasn’t sure was even due (she also gave that in French), I realised what I missed from those weird Year 8 lessons: it was a time when your classes didn’t rule your life. At Cambridge, it’s so easy to see everything as a means to an end. Even when I’m at a society meet, or writing for Varsity, my CV is always in the back of my mind. It’s not just for me. By no means have I mastered French, but I’m finally learning for myself alone. So, if you have the time and resources, consider adding something to your week that has nothing to do with your LinkedIn profile – it might just rekindle a love for learning that you left somewhere inside your old CGP books.