Socialising and French (attempt number 343 to start posting regularly again...)
11 December 2025 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wildeabandon...but I have (sort of) a plan this time. I've put a weekly reminder in my diary to post, which I hope will help, and I'm going to create a sort of vague template of 'things to update about' which I can follow if I'm feeling uninspired, but not restrain myself to if there's something in particular that takes my fancy.
I had a resolution this semester that I was going to study less and socialise more, which is perhaps not an entirely typical student resolution, but felt like it would be appropriate for me. I largely failed. This is partly because there were a number of occasions where I made a plan to go to an event, and then when the time came around I was faced with a choice of going outside and travelling to somewhere with lots of background noise where I would have to interact with unfamiliar humans, or staying in the quiet warm library with my books and my translation (or other work), and somehow the latter was always much more appealing.
So on the one hand, it doesn't actually feel particularly unhealthy that I'm studying instead of socialising because that's what I want to do rather than because I feel it's what I should do, but on the other hand, if I want to reach the stage where I have a francophone circle of not-unfamiliar people to spend time with here, I'm going to have to go through the 'socialising with unfamiliar people' bit first.
On a related note, I am feeling a bit frustrated with my (lack of) language acquisition here. Before I moved out lots of people suggested that being here and using French on a daily basis would lead to a big improvement, but it doesn't seem to have happened. Partly that's probably because I'm /not/ really using French on a day to day basis. I mean, I use it in the shops and to read the news and listen to announcements on the railways, but my actual day to day work is in English, and although I can read fairly fluently, follow to audiobooks and some podcasts, and have an interesting conversation 1-1 with plenty of context cues, no background noise and an interlocutor who is speaking clearly, I still struggle in fairly basic situations without those accommodations. And crucially, I don't think I've improved significantly since moving here, so I need to do something more active to improve, so I've found a "table de langues" to try next Wednesday evening, and if I just don't go to the library after my final lecture that day, it should be easier to escape it's gravity.
I had a resolution this semester that I was going to study less and socialise more, which is perhaps not an entirely typical student resolution, but felt like it would be appropriate for me. I largely failed. This is partly because there were a number of occasions where I made a plan to go to an event, and then when the time came around I was faced with a choice of going outside and travelling to somewhere with lots of background noise where I would have to interact with unfamiliar humans, or staying in the quiet warm library with my books and my translation (or other work), and somehow the latter was always much more appealing.
So on the one hand, it doesn't actually feel particularly unhealthy that I'm studying instead of socialising because that's what I want to do rather than because I feel it's what I should do, but on the other hand, if I want to reach the stage where I have a francophone circle of not-unfamiliar people to spend time with here, I'm going to have to go through the 'socialising with unfamiliar people' bit first.
On a related note, I am feeling a bit frustrated with my (lack of) language acquisition here. Before I moved out lots of people suggested that being here and using French on a daily basis would lead to a big improvement, but it doesn't seem to have happened. Partly that's probably because I'm /not/ really using French on a day to day basis. I mean, I use it in the shops and to read the news and listen to announcements on the railways, but my actual day to day work is in English, and although I can read fairly fluently, follow to audiobooks and some podcasts, and have an interesting conversation 1-1 with plenty of context cues, no background noise and an interlocutor who is speaking clearly, I still struggle in fairly basic situations without those accommodations. And crucially, I don't think I've improved significantly since moving here, so I need to do something more active to improve, so I've found a "table de langues" to try next Wednesday evening, and if I just don't go to the library after my final lecture that day, it should be easier to escape it's gravity.
