I’m sitting in French class. The professor promised our midterms today. He announces he finished grading them and that the average was a little lower than usual. My stomach sank.

Saturday morning I woke up to the thought of a huge mistake I made while taking this test last Friday. It had to do with the verb aller and the imperative form with tu. Anyway, I had confused a bunch of rules and wrote down words that didn’t even exist, much less made sense. And if I actually remembered that mistake, I knew I’d made more.

So at the end of class the professor hands us back our tests. I look at the listening portion and see I hadn’t missed any. Neat. Then I lift the cover sheet to the part I took in the testing center. On the front page I see the numbers from the listening part added to the written part, and I’m a little incredulous. So I look through the test and see what I’ve missed – and my dream was right on. I missed a few other points as well (confusing a couple feminine nouns for masculine), but I also received a few bonus points, one for using de+noun in a ne-pas structure, and another point for being brilliant, pretty much.  (Note: I say I’m brilliant or a genius when I can’t remember specific details.) The professor had also written bien next to a paragraph I’d composed which was supposed to be a letter to a friend telling her why she should stay at my grandparents’ apartment in my hometown.

I flip back to the front page, and I start to believe the 96% a little more. I do a little fist pumping, and I look around and tune in to my classmates’ comments on their exams. I made eye contact with someone, and she asked me how I did, and I tried whispering the score to her, but it comes out loudly anyway. I want to dance around the classroom so bad, but I refrain. I return the exam and exit the room.

I beeline from that building to this here computer lab and get on gchat and first thing I say to anybody is my French test score.

We celebrate by listening to the Ting Tings and Journey together. Because technology rocks.

Have I mentioned that I really like school?