How I became a near-native speaker of English — what I did to get there (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series, I covered how I went from a teen to a university student who, at the end of his 3-year English Bachelor at the University of Groningen, failed his BA thesis. I called it my pinnacle of failure. What happened then?

Honestly, I was done. I looked at the feedback my supervisor had given me, and it was all language feedback. I knew I hadn’t written the strongest discussion section (which is why it got rejected the first time around), but I felt I had improved it sufficiently to at least pass the second time, and had I failed the second round based on the discussion, I would have accepted it and I would have done new research next year. But now: I failed because of my language.

I felt like I had to climb Mount Everest barefoot with a donkey on my back: I was never going to get there. We were in July, the university was closed, people were on holiday, and I couldn’t contact my supervisor — which made sense. I had to put my mind to it and solve the problems she pointed out.

In the end, I passed my BA thesis with only the pass mark, which was nothing to be proud of. This experience, however, opened my eyes: even though I had completed a BA programme in English, I had lived in the UK for six months, and I did a lot in English, I wasn’t there…