Today had my presentation in French Literature after WW2. I dropped Le Bomb Atomique, man--once in front of the class je m'ai trouvé completement incapable de formuler une seule phrase en francais. It wasn't a lack of familiarity with the material, it wasn't nervousness (for Christ's sake, I was a teacher at the university level for 7 years), it wasn't a lack of language skills. I simply lost the ability to formulate my thoughts coherently in French. Any of you who work in another language from time to time have probably experienced this.
What a disaster! I should have drunk a glass of wine ahead of time--that typically shuts off the internal censor who prejudges everything and causes the mouth and brain to work at odds.
Oh, well. I'm just happy it's over now.
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