Feb 4, 2024

I had a strange experience this week upon leaving my French lesson.

But first, let’s travel back in time a couple of months.

Beep. Boop. Whoooooooosh!

[ Steps out of time machine two months earlier ]

Each week after class, I walk out the door of my French teachers home feeling some combination of stupid, tired, and more stressed that I had been an hour earlier. The homework also provides very little in the way of positive feelings. It’s a chore, albeit a chore I’ve chosen to do.

My usual work on the other hand rarely stresses my out.

Ok, we’re done here, that was just a little bit of context setting. Thank you for travelling with us.

Boop. Beep. Whoooooooosh!

[ Returns to the present day ]

It was 11am on a Thursday which meant I had to start packing up for my French lesson. In a push to complete some work for a client presentation, I hadn’t left my laptop for three hours straight and was feeling unusually exhausted. The last thing I wanted to do was drain my mind further with some French verb conjugation.

I considered skipping class. Something I’d never done in my real school days.

Actually, I did skip class. Once. For a whole day. Our entire year Art class did. We went to visit an exhibition our teachers had told us to see. When we returned the next day, our teachers claimed they had never given us permission to go, and we were all given the most serious of punishments: A Saturday detention.

Dun dun duuuuuun!

Having made it through about 11 or so years of school without any punishments, I was pretty scared to share the news with my parents. But when I told my mum, she didn’t seem to care at all. Maybe she figured it was about time I did something naughty. Maybe she was furious and kept it bottled up. Maybe she’ll tell me after she reads this blog. Maybe I’ll never know.

As an adult there are no punishments for skipping class. Perhaps there should be. We all need a bit of stick instead of carrot sometimes. But, I suppose most people just never go to class at all after school ends. Forever traumatised by years of forced, dull education.

Probably the only reason I went was that I pay for all my classes up front, and there’d be no refunds if I cancelled on the day.

I also knew that given how many times I’d thought about stopping lessons before, if I broke the chain now, I might never had another french lesson again.

Consistency is key in habit building. There’s a reason Duolingo has “daily streaks” built into its design.

So off I went to French class.