Learning French

“Tu parles très bien!”. You speak very well, says the man in front of me in line at the local pharmacy, after inquiring about my accent. He doesn’t know how much that compliment means to me, especially after my first week of full immersion in French. He doesn’t know our quick interaction is the product and reward of years of hard work, patience, and persistence. Interactions and brief exchanges around Rennes like this are a big part of why this travel abroad experience has already been so meaningful to me and my French language abilities.
I started learning French in college, and to this day, I consider my intro to French class to be one of, if not the hardest, classes I have taken at college. I felt like a fish out of water, having never applied myself to a language to this extent, nonetheless in a college-level class. Unlike my other classes, French was not something I could “hack” by doing the most or going an extra mile on an assignment. It required patience and practice, unlike anything I had ever needed to apply academically. My college requires three semesters of a foreign language, and I remember how intimidating that felt in the beginning, while I was struggling to stay afloat in the early stages of language acquisition. Little did I know how genuinely life-changing those introductory courses would be for me.
I kept at it, and was rewarded with more and more confidence and comfort in my French classes. I could express questions and opinions comfortably in class and engage in conversation with peers. It was at the end of my third and final semester of French when I felt like I was really starting to get it and could just about feel how my brain was working to learn this language (at this point, I was having dreams in French and unconsciously trying to translate everything). I could not imagine stopping then, so I didn’t. I kept going beyond my required French classes, applying myself not with the end goal of surviving my required classes, but towards thriving in an immersion program like Rennes, France.
My first day in Rennes, meeting my peers and my host family, I felt similarly to how I felt in my freshman year French class - like a fish out of water. I sat in the back of my host family's car on the way to my new home for the semester, unsure of how to express myself and worried I wouldn’t be able to ever communicate comfortably with them. There was so much I wanted to tell them, but I could not find the words and was worried about coming across as clumsy or “stupid”. Though just as had been the case my freshman year, time, patience, and resilience were crucial.
After about two weeks into my immersion program, I have made tremendous progress in both my actual French abilities and in my confidence to speak with my host family, peers, and community in Rennes. I wish I could show my freshman year self how far I have come, and what a role the French language would play in my college experience and personal development. Each dinner with my host family, exchange with a peer, or public interaction like in line at the local pharmacy, represents an acceptance of imperfection towards personal growth. I am excited to see where my French will be by the end of my semester in Rennes!

Megan HAAS
St. Olaf College
CIEE-Rennes Liberal Arts Spring 2026