The student who does no work in French

The Student who Does No Work showed up for the third time to the class , which is in the ninth week out of 15, and was in the French discussion group, in which there were only four people. We showed one another our screen clips and explained them. I noticed that, even after hours of work, I’d written “victoire” when I meant “vainceur.” When we got to the Student who Does No Work, he said he hadn’t finished watching the film yet.

“Have you started it?” I asked brightly. I know, that was mean. I don’t know why I’m so annoyed by the idea of someone passing the class without doing any work. If I’m irritated at anyone, it should be at the instructor, who reminds me of LittleBoss from my old job.

The Student forwarded the film on Kanopy to a random place and said something incomprehensible–but certainly French–about it.

The instructor stayed with the non-French group and we ran out of things to say about the movie. I decided to ask a question whose answer I was really interested in: Why are you here? In addition to the Student there were two graduate students, an actual French one and an American one. “I know you’re here because you want to become an officer,” I said to the Student.

The French student asked, “What’s an officer,” and the Student explained (in French) the ranks of being an Army Reserve officer, starting with Lieutenant, which he pronounced in a non-American way, like “loyt-net.” He now works fulltime at the Amazon Fulfillment Center, he said, and trains just once a month at his base. When he gets to be an officer, he said, he could be sent anyhere in the world; for example, to Japan or Korea.

To my credit, I didn’t offer other suggestions as to where he might be sent.

I know from former students that one good thing about this Amazon Fulfillment Center is that they are very good about working around students’ school schedules, so having a job there is not really a good excuse for doing schoolwork. Still, I felt sad for him.

“And what is your native language?” The French student asked him, and I did feel a bit of malicious glee, because I knew what was coming: he’s from the Ivory Coast, and his first language is French.

The Student said he was a French major and bragged that when he took the French placement test, he tested out of first-year French. I felt stunned because how could a native speaker only test out of first-year French? I felt sorry for him and a little mean.

I asked the graduate students what they hoped to do with their French MAs, and they don’t have any particular plans. And yet neither one of them actually comes from Cincinnati; they must have made a difficult decision to apply to the school and then move here. I don’t know why I was so surprised; I was the same way in my 20s. As TAs, they get free tuition and about $20,000/year in stipends, and they all seem to have roommates, so it’s not like their losing a LOT of money. The French student said her decision to get a French MA in Cincinnati was sort of like the Student’s decision to get a BA in French, but obviously it’s not. The American, who’s about 22, said she’d learned French completely as an undergraduate. They seemed surprised that I had no plans for spring break. “When you’re retired,” I said, in French, “Every day is like spring break.” Later, I thought of all the grammatical mistakes I had made.