Just Call Me Superwoman

My original plan was to complete my application dossier for French citizenship while I was on maternity leave. As in, before the baby was born.

But life, laziness and bureaucracy got in the way and, with my return to work looming, it had to be done this week, as I'm pretty sure that once I start back I will have no spare time to do anything for myself ever again, let alone the brainpower and motivation for mammoth administrative tasks.

And so it was that yesterday I found myself trying to finalise everything at the last minute with a baby and toddler in tow - a situation which really deserves the invention of an extra circle of hell just to accommodate it.

Things started off badly when I popped into my local tabac for a timbre fiscale. You can buy these online now, but for certain procedures you still need the paper ones. Unfortunately the paper ones are being phased out by the end of the year, so hardly anywhere stocks them. I was advised to go to our nearest town centre (a 40 minute walk away with a double buggy when I had a million other things to do and nap times to respect) but luckily along the way I found another tabac which just happened to have the right ones. Another stroke of luck was the lovely HR lady at work emailing me a copy of a payslip 5 minutes after I left a message on her phone, which saved me rushing to go and collect it. Finally, a trip round Monoprix with the buggy and the toddler pushing a mini shopping trolley left me with just the right change for the photo machine (because I had realised the night before that none of the photos I had at home actually conformed to the regulations any more). With those missions accomplished, we fitted in a trip to the park to reward the toddler for her patience, then the baby considerately fell asleep independently in her cot (currently a rare feat for her). Nobody had cried all morning, and I sat down to lunch with the toddler feeling like superwoman.

The last hurdle was to photocopy all the documents (around 50 pages in total). The fact that this had to be done twice was not clear on the original list I had, but was written in big bold letters on the instructions from the préfecture which I came across at the last minute. Except that the printer was running out of ink. A trip to Carrefour to buy more took an hour out of my evening after some very tired children had gone to sleep, and I finally went to bed myself just after midnight with my alarm set for 6:15.

On the excellent advice of a friend, I turned up to queue at the préfecture half an hour before it opened and managed to be second in line to submit my dossier. That took just over an hour and the baby, who had been woken up early for the occasion, managed to stay reasonably cheerful for the duration (luckily the toddler was in childcare, because having her there would have been a challenge too far). And then, having spent the past 48 hours flying by the seat of my superwoman pants, I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief because all that paperwork was GONE.

I would like to say, though, that although the list of documents is long and takes a lot of time (and money) to assemble, the actual procedure so far hasn't been anything like as awful as I thought it might be, and I was very impressed with the staff at the préfecture. Not only did they respond to all my (many) email enquiries within 24 hours, they were also extremely nice in person. When the baby started to get fussy as I stood at the desk while they took my first set of documents, the lady told me to pick her up and she would sort the paperwork. I was offered a room to breastfeed in as I waited to be seen (I have no shame whatsoever about breastfeeding in public, but the thought was kind). At the end, I needed to make an appointment for the interview stage but I didn't have my holiday dates and the man was happy to give me his email address so I could confirm later. Everybody smiled at KB and helped to keep her happy. So maybe the stereotypical unhelpful, grumpy fonctionnaire is finally becoming a thing of the past, or maybe the trick is to always take a baby when you go to the préfecture!

Under Examination

Recently I finally did something I've had at the back of my mind for a long time: I took the language exam to obtain the certificate required in order to make a French citizenship application.

The Test de connaissance du français pour accès à la nationalité française is a shorter version of the full Test de connaissance du français, which evaluates the candidate's level of French within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages . The levels range from A1 (Breakthrough or Beginner) to C2 (Mastery or Proficiency). In order to apply for citizenship, you need level B1 (Threshold or Intermediate). In the ANF version, you only sit the oral parts of the exam, so there is a listening test followed by an interview to judge spoken expression.

Having studied French at university and lived in France for ten years, I wasn't worried about reaching the expected level, but I did feel a certain level of nervousness nonetheless. This was probably mostly because, precisely because I have studied French and lived here for so long, it would have been very embarrassing not to get a good score, even if the only people who knew I was taking the test were myself and Understanding Frenchman, and he probably knows my level of French better than anyone!

Also, while I think the questions in the test are probably very fair, the way it works is quite stressful because you have to listen to an audio clip and only when it's finished do you find out what the question about it will be. You only hear the clip and the question once, so in my mildly sleep deprived, pregnant state, I wasn't worried about not understanding the information, just about forgetting what had been said!

In the end, that only happened once, and I was happy with the level I came out with. The interview part was actually much less stressful, because it was face-to-face with a real person, who was very nice and made me feel at ease. For the final result, they combine the listening and speaking scores, so I have to wait a few weeks for the CIEP to mark the interview, but according to the feedback from the interviewer, everything went well.

What was funny, though, was the feeling of being under examination, and the accompanying nerves, because they made me realise that it's actually a really long time since I've been in that situation. I think the last official exam I sat was my driving test about a decade ago. Throughout my twenties I took endless university exams, followed by a string of job interviews as I got on the career ladder, but for the last few years, I've become far more used to being the examiner than the candidate. I don't think it made me any more nervous than I would otherwise have been, but the feeling of mild nerves was definitly less familiar than it used to be. I wonder if we really get more confident as we get older because we are more sure of ourselves, or just because our competence is less often put under scrutiny!