An experiment, surgery, and french oral (stop sniggering at the back there)

[wildeabandon]

I keep meaning to post here more often, and then I don't, and then there's more to post about, and I feel like I ought to get caught up, and so it becomes more daunting, and then I never post anything. And it doesn't help that I tend to write entries quite slowly, revising the text repeatedly to make sure I've got it exactly right.

So I'm going to try an experiment, where I give myself a tennine minute timer to write something, and it doesn't have to be everything, but at least I'm getting something down. I realised shortly after I decided on this that I would have to add in a minute to revise, so at least I'm not posting half-finished sentences, but let's see if this leads to actually making more updates. And of course I can decide to write a longer post if there's something important, but this feels like a start.

The big news since my last update is that I have a date for my final transition related surgery, which came about rather sooner than I expected on the 15th July (although still in the region of fifteen years since I first went to my GP to ask for a referral to the gender clinic, and waiting lists have ballooned since then). It will be very good to have everything finally working though, and the timing is actually pretty good, as I'll have finished my exams and my spiritual direction course, and so life should be a bit calmer all round.

In other news, I had mon examen oral français a couple of weeks ago, and I felt like it went pretty well. There were two sections - one talking about a particular subject from the course, for which I got the French Resistance, and in particular, whether the extent of collaboration with the Nazis had been exaggerated. For the second section I had to give a very short presentation (very short - they give you two minutes! Who can say anything useful in two minutes?) on a subject of my choice related to the culture and society of France (or other Francophone country). I chose "The birth of the legal concept of secularism in France", on the basis that a)it would have some overlap with my other A-level (Religious Studies), and b)I could be pretty confident of being the person in the room who knew most about the subject. That seemed to work as a strategy, and I think the examiner telling me explicitly that she'd learned something new was probably a good sign.

Comments

[atreic]

I enjoyed reading your short update! :-) Good luck with the surgery and the exam results.

[rmc28]

I like this experiment, please consider yourself encouraged to do it more often.

It'd be cool to see your presentation, feel free to translate it or not (I will employ google translate and my extremely poor grasp of French).

Exam results out in early August I guess? Hopefully you'll be recovered from the surgery too by then.

[emperor]

Good luck for exam and surgery results! Sounds like the former went pretty well, though :)

[wildeabandon]

Presentation, whilst the term the exam spec used, is probably putting it a bit strongly - essentially I had to summarise the research I'd done into the topic, referencing at least two written sources, which in my case was a book "Histoire de la laïcité en France", plus the text of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and the Concordat between Napolean and the Pope. You're asked to submit a form with 6-10 'key findings' in English, which you're allowed to take into the exam, and I basically just translated what I'd written there, which was:

1. The first example of a French law on secularism was the Edict of Nantes (1598), which followed the Wars of Religion, but was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685.
2. Ideas about secularism were developed and discussed by philosophers during the enlightenment, but didn't became permanently enshrined in law until the Revolution of 1789.
3. The tenth article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen says that "No-one should be harassed because of their opinions, including their religion, as long as their manifestation doesn't disturb the public order established by the law."
4. Shortly afterwards, the state declared that the catholic church in France must be subject to the government, and confiscated the goods and lands of the church.
5. This declaration led to a rupture in the church between the priests and bishops who swore an oath to the state, and those who refused, remaining loyal to the Pope.
6. In 1801, Napoleon reached an agreement with Pope Pius VII, known as the Concordat, which recognised the authority of the Holy See over the church, and that Catholicism was the religion of the great majority of French citizens.
7. This agreement did not include the return of goods and lands which had been confiscated. It also kept for the state the right to nominate bishops and archbishops.
8. At the same time, the Concordat recognised the Jewish and Protestant religions, and gave them the same right to practice as the Catholic church.
9. Throughout the following century there were many discussions and arguments between the secularists and the religious authorities about the appropriate limits on the influence between church, society, and government.

[sfred]

I like your experiment too!

Sounds like the exam went well; I hope the surgery goes smoothly too.

[mtbc]

Both are really great! Absolutely fine also to not perfectly tell us all the things. (I've been bad at updating lately, life still quite unsettled.)

[barakta]

Hurrah for surgery date, I hope it goes well with quick recovery. Total timescales are horrifying.

I may steal your "10 min-ish" idea to post here more often myself!

[hairyears]

You have A Lot going on: this has the agreeable sound of someone living life to the full.

[ludy]

Yay! Update and plan.
Glad presentation went well. All the best for the surgery

[ludy]

The sadly underrated 90’sfilm D’artagnan’s Daughter (apparently called Revenge of the Musketeers in the US) has a seen where after giving the young Louis XIV pre-coronation advice Cardinal Mazarin realises he forgot to say “never revoke the Edict of Nantes” and concludes that it doesn’t matter because surely no one would be that foolish …. So any mention of the edict makes me giggle affectionately remembering that scene, even though the real life consciences of the revocation were anything but funny….

[rosefox]

I've thought about doing a similar thing, just to get back in the diary habit. It is hard! Ten minutes doesn't seem like nearly enough, to me. And that editing time is very important.

Congratulations on the surgery being scheduled and the exam going well!

[wildeabandon]

Ooh, that looks quite fun - and definitely counts as revision, right?

Now I just have to figure out how to stream it outside of France...

[wildeabandon]

I know what you mean about ten minutes not seeming like enough, and I suspect that my long term pattern will end up looking quite different, but at least this gets me writing something :)