Well, I passed. I’m not going to post my score because I am not proud of it. I’ve decided that since I now have a much better example of what I need to do to pass the C2, I am going to go for in in June of 2019 or perhaps December of 2019. It depends on my schedule. We have a family trip scheduled for March, so there could be some interruptions that prevent my taking the exam in Summer.
All-in-all, the experience was very worthwhile. In my preparation for the exam I really pushed my skills to the next level and I think that I can replicate those results in a more systematized manner now. Being a self-directed learner is hard work. It’s not so much the learning that is difficult either. Maintaining your motivation and making sure that you are working on the things that will have the most impact on your productive skills is far harder than the actual studying/learning. But, I believe that I have found a system that I can both maintain consistently and that provides me with the maximum amount of value from the learning perspective.
That being said, I still find it hard to integrate all of my languages into my learning, though. Ideally, I should be doing a little of each every day. But my time is so filled to capacity that I find I have to make decisions in the moment about what to do. And that always leads to bad decisions being made. If I have learned anything by now it is that I should have all of my material ready for learning when I am in a “sprint”. Having to think about what to do kills productivity. And since I already have a structure and routine built up around Italian, It’s far easier to follow through with that language. As a result, the others get neglected. I suppose I just have to start adding something small and simple into my daily routine. Personally, I don’t see how people whose job does not revolve around the languages they speak are able to maintain more than two foreign languages. It baffles my mind. Over the next few months, I am just going to have to decide if Portuguese, Italian, Irish and Basque are just too much for me and maybe I need to be more realistic about my goals and prune some of them.