1.
Either you're one of the lucky few whose parents are native speakers of the language you study...
2.
...or you do the best you can while cursing your parents and their English-speaking ways.
3.
You're super annoyed that the one subject has TWO separate exams.
4.
One of which is inconveniently scheduled on a Saturday morning.
5.
Part of you is thankful, because knowing a second language is super helpful...
6.
...but the other half recognises how hard it is to be tested on it, and wished you'd waited until after school to learn.
7.
Your bedroom wall is covered in verb tables.
8.
There's nothing you hate more than an irregular verb.
9.
And you outwardly curse whoever decided that Latin-based languages needed eight different forms of past tense.
10.
You try to convince yourself that reading your favourite book in your second language counts as studying.
11.
Or that watching a movie with subtitles on is totally helping you learn.
12.
You've considered cheating by writing key phrases and conjugations inside your dictionary.
13.
The science and maths kids will never understand how stressful speaking exams are.
14.
And all the humour that once came along with hearing "oral exam" has disappeared.
15.
You have certain sentences drilled into your head, to the point where you're certain you'll never forget them.
16.
Though you know that at least at one point in the speaking exam, you'll sound like this:
17.
And there's nothing worse than doing a listening exam and realising you missed a key sentence.
18.
But despite all the struggles, its pretty fucking cool that you can speak another language.
19.
And you've come to feel really, really grateful that English is your first language.
