When I was four years old, my mom enrolled me at the French-American School of Silicon Valley. Neither of my parents are French, nor are they fluent in that language, but my mother wanted me to be “cultured.” The teacher, or madame, conducted our daily lessons solely in French, and by the end of the year I was speaking fluently in the present tense and could do simple oral addition in the language, a task that I hold issue with...

I transferred halfway through the year and almost found it easier to do...