Tuesday 13 March 2007

pot calling the kettle balck

After 3 years of correcting my colleagues' franglais, the shoe passed to the other foot last week, as I pulled my finger out on writing the french summary of my thesis. Franck C, Franck F, Jacques, Sophie and Erwan all helped me with my copious spelling, grammar and style problems.

Coming through my various (and admittedly not particularly deep) studies of English throughout high school, I was usually the kid who had only a few comments on his assignments when they came back. I was kind of a nerd. Shock, horror. It was weird this week to get documents back awash in red, blue and even green ink. It gave me a little insight into some of the students I went to high school with. Its not that I didn't understand the rules of french grammar. Its just that when I read English, errors just seem obvious, whereas in French, I really have to look for them. Anyway, the net result is that I'm pretty crap at French written expression.

I declared the french summary innings closed today, though. I actually played the bureaucracy game last friday, but the doctoral school handed me a Skip-A-Turn card because my boss had signed the wrong page of my thesis. Fortunately, the scolarité (postgraduate studies?) didn't seem to care, and processed the rest of my paperwork with nary a batted eye.

Tomorrow I'll take my thesis back to the doctoral school, and I should be done with it until my examiners come back with corrections.

1 comment:

Keith Duddy said...

Wow Jim, it's all getting so close now!!