Not my proudest moment

So I'm a little embarrassed by this one, but oh well.

I hate liaison. Liaison is another one of those things the French invented to make their language sound beautiful (which is does) and harder for foreign speakers to understand. There are several letters that change sounds in front of another word that starts with a vowel (or an h). For example, an X becomes a Z sound and slides into another word - Deux heures is pronounced deuzeures. There are others, but that's the important one for this story. If you ever think you can't tell one French word from another listening to it, that's because it's spoken all as one long, beautiful word.

Point number two is military time, which is AWESOME. You can never accidently set your alarm for 7 PM when you use military time, I'm a huge fan. I've gotten used to all my professors saying times in military time. So much so that it doesn't even cross my mind that they'd ever say something in 12-hour time.

So anyway, I'm making excuses for a really stupid mistake.

When my professor announced the time of our exam I heard douze heures a seize heures. 12 to 16, awesome. I show up the day of the exam, 12 PM, ready to go - nobody there. No note. No class. Nothing. So I figure (he'd been vague; when I say "announced" he'd more like... polled the class to which they responded "eh, maybe" and he vaguely switched back to the old time and... anyway, I could have very likely been confused) that we'd go back to the normal hours of our class, which had been the original time of the exam. So I show up a little before three to find... Our exam had started an hour before. Douze heures a seize heures can also be spelled/read Deux heures a six heures - two to six. Goddamnit! Seize heures a sizeures don't even sound that much alike, but I was so used to military time that I didn't even consider that it'd be six o'clock.

Aside from the wicked embarrassment, I had plenty of time to do the exam. In fact I finished early. But I sure as hell wasn't going to waltz in late (read: run in mortified) and then leave early...