My first TalkAbroad conversation was with Donavan Beaudoin, who lives in Quebec. He is 25 and studies literature and linguistics as well as being a French teacher. I was very nervous to start the conversation, but he was pretty easy to talk to which helped. I felt less pressure as the conversation continued, but I still felt very anxious compared to how I feel speaking in class. It was very helpful that he spoke slowly and didn’t mind repeating things several times if I needed him to. One of my biggest weaknesses in this conversation was that I was so anxious I forgot certain words or phrases that I had used in conversations before, and I know my grammar suffered because of this. I feel like my pronunciation does need improvement, but I am still proud of it overall, and I think he was able to understand my pronunciation most of the time. Towards the end of the conversation, I decided to ask him about video games, and once we started talking about that common interest, I felt a lot more comfortable talking and I felt as though it improved my speech. I learned that we both like to play Phasmophobia. I think one of my strengths in this conversation is that I didn’t reference my sheet and allowed the conversation to progress naturally. This forced me to eventually work past my anxiety, and I felt that it made me more confident in my abilities to speak and comprehend French. In order to prepare for the next TalkAbroad conversation, I want to work on my grammar and strengthening my vocabulary. For this, I think the CMU program will be the best fit. It allows me to work on grammar and vocabulary through a diverse set of tasks, and it allows the user to strengthen all aspects of speech and conversation. It will help me to remember the things that I forgot this time around and strengthen the foundations of French grammar that I already have.