From Dilettante To Fluent: Examen de conscience

dil·et·tante
n. pl. dil·et·tantes, also dil·et·tan·ti  

1. A dabbler in an art or a field of knowledge. See Synonyms at amateur.
2. A lover of the fine arts; a connoisseur.

A ruthlessly compassionate friend – the best kind of friend a person could have – gently, diplomatically and correctly let me know that I need to change my approach to learning and speaking French toute de suite...and basically start over again. My approach has been casually inconsistent, lacks structural depth, and has paved a road to the constant nag of bad habits. Of course, I knew all of this, but external confirmation of what was linguistically happening sailed me past the soothing sirens of defensive denial and created another trap: cut the crap, or live in the limited and even more boring Parisian Anglophone bubble.

     Verb tenses, noun genders, and vocabulary are not the problem: my allergy to the unavoidable tedium and discipline that comes with grunt work is. I am abundantly clear and completely petrified by that notion such that I am going to have to change methods of study that have allowed me to get away with being a dilettante for 25 years.

     Education in America is odd and enough, but my experience was even more so. My basic education up to ten was a strikingly solid foundation in an excecptionally good local school system. Then, my father's job took my family on a tour of five cities when I was between the vital ages of 11 and 15. In each location, I used that foundation and my natural abilities to keep my grades high while never having the continuity that would teach one discipline and commitment. With no nationalized exit exams to worry about, no reputation to uphold, there were no incentives to going through the boredom and annoyance of learning beyond the next Friday's exam or the paper that's due in two weeks. This method served me well through university, which I found intellectually engaging but by no means challenging, and through my professional life to date.

    But now, when I have no choice but to learn profoundly, get all the formulae correct all the time, and am not bestowed with the luxury of forgetting everything that is of no interest to me after the final exam; I am in the midst of the confrontation of a lifetime. In a way – the good old American glass-half-full way – this situation is a poetically perfect opportunity to do more than just learn French. Now if I could just get that little three-year-old voice in my head saying 'I DON'T WANNA!' to shut his trap...

Comments

[Adam]

The spectre of Joan Crawford that lives in my head always motivates me to do things that I don't want to do. Maybe I can arrange for her to visit you for a few days.

[Otir]

Do you have a tutor? Sometimes, it's easier to learn if someone is tutoring you.

[Mizez Slocombe]

@ Otir Ha. I start with a tutor very soon.

[vuhsnoff]

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