I’m still a terrible French speaker because I practice with no one, but sometimes find myself thinking in French. I only notice because there’s some word I can’t quite retrieve and then I’m like, “Oh, I was thinking that in French…huh.” I think that’s because I’ve been watching loads of French TV shows with no subtitles, and reading a good amount of French books and such.

My main wish in how I should have been educated differently is that anything to do with useless math had been excised, and I’d been put in intensive language classes from the time I was five. I think I could’ve easily been highly fluent in 6-8 languages. Hell, I was creating my own languages from a young age.

But I had no support, and no one cared at all about my particular talents and proclivities. Everything was designed to standardize me (and everyone) and force me through the education sausage factory, all the while attempting to convince me even then that only STEM mattered, and that because I did not adore math and worship at the all-hallowed math shrine, that something was wrong with me.

Well, nothing was wrong with me. I knew that at the time but I can say that authoritatively now. I could’ve been really something in the language arena (and I’m still pretty darn good), but it was just never destined to be due to where I grew up and the absurd STEM worship that was already present and now has only worsened.