In 1986, Richard Hamming, who had spent three decades as a mathematician at Bell Labs, gave a talk to researchers at Bellcore called "You and Your Research." In it he asked a question that still unsettles anyone who hears it honestly: what are the important problems in your field, and why aren't you working on them? He had watched brilliant colleagues spend whole careers on safe, secondary questions, not for lack of talent, but because the important problems were uncomfortable and the secondary ones kept them busy.
For a school, Hamming's question is a direct one: which part of what we offer actually helps students move forward, and is our effort going there, or into what is easier to produce? Nine months after launching our learning platform, we can answer it with more than intuition. We built a great deal: courses, programs, series, workshops, events. What students return to is not content. It is the moment when a real person listens, responds, and invites them to try again. Much of the rest, however well made, has made less of a difference than we hoped.
So we are choosing. The French Club will become a bit simpler: fewer offerings, each rebuilt around live practice with a teacher who hears you. None of this is retreat. It is focus. I'm currently working on the winter session calendar and so, a mild reassessment is in order.
Staying relevant has little to do with adding more. What learners need most is also what is hardest to automate: the patient, human work of helping someone hear, speak, and keep going. That is the important problem in our field, and it is the one we intend to work on.
The same question can be a gentle one for learners too. What tends to make the biggest difference is often the part that feels harder: understanding French at natural speed, with its liaisons, its elisions, its vanishing "ne"; speaking in the moment, finding a word in real time rather than recognizing it on a page; hearing plenty of French you genuinely enjoy; and staying with it over time. Progress in French is rarely about talent. It is mostly about continuing, and those who keep going usually get further than they expected.
If you like, try Hamming's question on your own French this week, with curiosity rather than judgment. Which part of your practice feels most alive, worthy and relevant, which one has had the greatest impact, and could you give it a little more room, energy and time over the next 6 months?
Fluency is not built from everything we do, but from the few essential things that matter most over time, and that we keep doing. Very often, those things lie just beyond our comfort zone. As October begins, you might choose one thing to do differently, simply because, deep down, you know it is the right call.
Every one of us, we sit comfortably on unrealized potential. The name for that zone is: our comfort zone. Venture a bit beyond that. Choose yourself, fully. Your full potential, your growth, and the full reach of your own potential.
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