Two years ago, I decided to take Conversational French 1 at Grossmont College. I came to that decision because my wife and I were going to Europe for the entire month of June 2019. At one point in my life I was “fluent” in French, enough so that I had a job speaking French on the phone. But, that was quite a long time ago, and I wanted to “refresh” my French-speaking abilities before we jetted off to Paris.

Now, two years later, I have decided to take Conversational French 2 and French 4! I have discovered that I really enjoy learning foreign languages. I think the language-learning process scratches a certain area of my brain that I can’t get to otherwise. About a year ago, I decided to teach myself Dutch.* I want to continue to chip away at learning Dutch, but I decided what I really wanted was something more structured and something that would hold me a bit more accountable … thus, I decided to dive back in to a semi-advanced French class.

My teaching schedule is pretty light next semester (I am actually using some “banked” time just to meet my 100% load obligation), which means I should have a little more time and mental energy to dedicate to something like this. A big change I am hoping to make about everything is to spend more time doing things “for me.” This is one of them (even though I know taking a college class is not super high on many people’s “for me” lists).

*I have this long shot hope of finding a job in Belgium or The Netherlands, or taking a sabbatical to live out there for six months or so.