Relief

The German professor was much, much more lenient with me than I could have ever expected.

We sat down and had a conversation in German about what I study and what I'm going to do in Germany. He started off with easy stuff (asking me my name and such) and then gradually worked toward more complicated conversation, repeating or explaining himself whenever I didn't quite know what he meant. And I didn't do perfectly, sometimes garbling my sentence structure or forgetting words, but I managed to answer his questions.

And then, when he got to the form, where he had to evaluate me on a scale of "a" (fluent) to "e" (extreme difficulty understanding anything), I was inwardly praying "Please don't give me any 'e's. I'd be happy with 'd'." And he gave me "c" on both understanding and speaking (that means I can handle more than just basic sentences!) and then when he got to the writing and reading part he said, "You took the reading course? Well that means you'd have an easier time with reading than with speaking. And do you find that it's easier to write than to speak?" I confirmed that I had an easier time writing, because then I had a chance to stop and think of case endings and word choice. And so he gave me "b" on both of those. Which is huge. He just told them I'm a step below fluency, on both writing and reading (which are the important ones, when you're researching). I don't think I deserve it, but that's going to be really helpful for my application.

(And then he recommended that they pay for me to get a couple months of a German course once I'm in Berlin! He said that it won't hinder my application any, and would make my transition to Germany easier. That would be very helpful.)

That means I just might have a solid application to send. I'm going to start breathing again.