This coming Tuesday, I will go back there to do this again and hopefully I won't get another one of these.

For those of you who can't be bothered to read the links, or who haven't been reading long enough to know the story, I am planning to become a freelance French-to-English translator. Because I have no experience (although I do actually believe I am capable of it, as unlikely as that may sound coming from me), I am trying to gain a professional qualification at vast expense to myself to help me on my way. I took all three papers of the exam last year, but failed one of them, which was distinctly NOT part of the plan and left me feeling extremely dejected, never having failed an exam in my life and truly believing that this was the one (the only) thing I have ever excelled at.

On Tuesday, then, I shall resit the failed paper (again, at vast expense to myself) and wait around fourteen weeks for the results. If I fail, I will have to wonder whether, once again, I have chosen the wrong path in life as well as wasting several hundred pounds which could otherwise have been spent on stopping our kitchen roof from leaking.

It is hard to know quite how to prepare for an exam when one has no idea why one failed it the first time around - feedback evidently not being part of the extortionate fee. I came out of that exam feeling quite confident and my instincts on these things can normally be trusted. In fact, I think part of the shock of failing was that that trust had been seriously called into question.

I have mostly dusted myself off from last time, though sometimes a speck reappears here or there to remind me of my failure.

Still, I shall try again. I have no alternative, this is my plan and I must stick to it.