Desespoir (despair)

This week I turned in a real assignment. When my professor handed back the corrected version we had a little chat she and I. Apparently I am ungradeable - my spoken french is tres bien, but my written french needs to be corrected in every line of whatever I write. Usually such corrections aren't major, an 'e' here a tense there, maybe a word that completes a french expression the correct way. Nevertheless it is the line by line correction that makes my writing below a failing grade  (despite my vocabulary or my actual ideas). To add to the demoralizing situation, the professor pondered aloud how she should proceed with me...with a paper due this next week and a final paper due in January she voiced a concern about me receiving a grade in her course. What to do?

The dilemma here is my independence. The European exchange students are 'Erasmus' and they are graded differently that a normal French student. Then there are the American students that come to Toulouse (or so I've been told) every second semester with a program from an American university. These students are in a program, so the manner for grading them and the classes they have would be completely different from my situation. I am here all alone. No program, no exchange, no 'French for foreign students'. I chose Licence 3 - Lettres Modernes because in my undergraduate career I was a French Literature major. I did not come here to sit in conversation classes, I came to be immersed in Hugo, Racine, Verlaine, etc.... and I feel like I'm being punished for such an ambitious idea.

Today I visited EIMA - the organization for international students - to seek help about my grade problem. I certainly don't WANT to fail my courses here and I am working hard in all my classes, but it's not enough I suppose. The French student in charge, who very kindly complimented my French and spoke to me in English, was baffled by my situation. "So, your not in an exchange program and you're not in French grammar classes and you're not Erasmus either?" "Precisely." "Hmmm....that's very strange. Go to the International Students office next door." At the office next door I sat down and explained the situation once again to the woman (we'll call her 'E') behind the desk. "I'm going to fail it seems and I don't know what to do, because I'm working hard (going to class, taking notes, doing homework, etc) but my written French is so terrible my professor literally can't grade it."

The response I received made me (for the first time in my life) want to reach across the table and physically harm E....

-continued in next post-
~Tam in Toulouse