Years ago, when I worked in France, by coincidence a good friend of mine from middle school was there at the same time doing a semester of law school abroad. I always thought that would be a nice thing to do if I ever went to law school, and indeed, when it came time to choose which school to go to I chose the one with a French program.
And then I wimped out and didn't even apply to it. I got really skittish about my French skills and decided learning the law was hard enough – having to do it in another language would probably not be all that much fun. And so I picked an English-language program instead, and one thing leading to another, here I am in Germany. NOT France.
But glutton for punishment that I am, I decided to take Cour Jouridique – a course on French law taught all in French. It was sort of a bonus course – outside my main focus – but it was kind of nice to get a taste of what I passed up by not doing the French program as originally planned.
As the course neared the end, though, I once again got skittish about my French skills. I kind of knew what was going on in class. But did I really? Unfortunately, to get credit for the class it turned out that I had to sit for the exam (apparently auditing wasn't an option, which I didn't realize until quite recently). So I did, yesterday. And I THINK I passed. Perhaps not with flying colors, but perhaps just enough. (Fortunately I think I'm able to take it P/NP, which poses much less danger to my transcript, I think.)
It was the first – and only – course I've ever taken in a language other than English (not counting language immersion courses). That in and of itself was good to experience. Of course, in some ways it was particularly difficult for me: legal vocabulary lists, for instance, were translated into German... And it did tax my skills a bit. I kept feeling like everyone else spoke better. And maybe that's so. But you know, I need to cut myself some slack. All my classmates, 19-22 years old, started learning it years ago when they were children – as one is supposed to do with learning a language. Whereas I didn't even START to learn French until I already was their age (21). So maybe, all things considered, I'm really not so bad at it after all.