The first TalkAbroad had me nervous. First because I lost my paper, second because I had never attempted anything like this beforehand. Whenever I conduct an interview with someone, it’s always a professional setting: I know everything about my subject before we talk, I know exactly what to say and how to pace it, and I’m not the center of attention. With TalkAbroad? I was shoved out of my comfort zone and felt very on the spot, which I guess is exactly how we’re supposed to learn. My partner’s name was Albert Legrand Goza, from Togo. He works as a French professor online, conducting classes over Zoom, Skype, and TalkAbroad. That eased my nerves a little knowing that he was a professor and probably was very skilled in the art of talking to a horribly confused college student.

At the beginning of our conversation, I had gotten so flustered and nervous that he paused us very early on to go through a couple breathing exercises. I really appreciated that small break. I stopped panicking as much–I would be a liar if I said I stopped panicking at all–but he did ease my nerves a lot. I stuttered, forgot what I was going to say mid-sentence, or pretty much blanked on vocabulary that I should have memorized by now, but he was very understanding of it. The conversation was kinda rocky at the start because of me. Thankfully, as it went on, I found a bit more comfort and slowly gained my footing. Yes, I was still embarrassed, and yes, I was still panicking a bit on the inside, but I found that it really wasn’t that bad. My nerves were getting the better of me.

I think I did somewhat well answering the questions. I asked him one or two of my own, about if learning Spanish was difficult for him. I definitely could have worked a little more on using more complex sentences, or just overall giving a bit more with my responses. I should probably run through my responses or work on calming my nerves, so I don’t forget those responses I worked on.