Learn Hardcore French: Plus tard, dans son journal intime, elle veut se souvenir du jour où elle s’est sentie vraiment utile. - Later, in her diary, she wants to remember the day when she felt really useful.

Preposition
- se souvenir requires de:
  se souvenir de ce jour
- se rappeler takes its object without a preposition:
  se rappeler ce jour
Register and frequency
- Both are common and correct in modern French.
- Some speakers find se rappeler a bit more formal, but it is widely used in everyday language.

In your sentence, you could say:

✅ elle veut se souvenir du jour où…
✅ elle veut se rappeler le jour où…

You would just need to adjust the structure:

se souvenir du jour
se rappeler le jour (no de here)

Why is it du jour où and not just le jour où or du jour quand?

You have three separate points here:

Contraction: du jour
We have the verb plus its preposition:
- se souvenir de + le jour → se souvenir du jour
  So du is simply de + le.
Could we use just le jour où?
If you remove the verb se souvenir, you can indeed say:
- le jour où elle s’est sentie vraiment utile = the day when she felt really useful
But with se souvenir, you need the de:
- se souvenir de ce jour → se souvenir du jour
  So du jour où… is required by the verb.
Why où and not quand?
In a relative clause after a noun of time (like jour, année, moment), French normally uses où:
- le jour où je l’ai rencontrée – the day (when) I met her
- l’année où ils sont partis – the year (when) they left
Quand as a relative pronoun here sounds awkward or wrong:
- ❌ le jour quand je l’ai rencontrée
- ✅ le jour où je l’ai rencontrée

Why do we use Plus tard with the present tense elle veut rather than a future tense like elle voudra?

Both are possible, but they do not focus on the same thing.

Present tense with a future adverbial
- Plus tard, … elle veut se souvenir…
  The present veut often describes a general or current intention that is projected into the future. The idea is:
- Already now, she has the intention to remember this later.
Future tense
- Plus tard, … elle voudra se souvenir…
  Using voudra would shift the focus to the future moment itself:
- Later (in the future), she will have the desire to remember this.

In many narrative contexts, French likes to use the present with time expressions (demain, bientôt, plus tard) to talk about planned or desired future actions, similar to English She wants to remember this later rather than She will want to remember this later.

Why is it dans son journal intime and not just dans son journal? What nuance does intime add?

The word journal alone in French is ambiguous:

un journal can mean:
- a newspaper
- or a diary / journal (personal notebook)

Journal intime clearly means a personal diary, something private where you write your feelings, secrets, and thoughts.

son journal intime = her personal diary / private journal
son journal alone could be understood, but intime emphasizes the very personal, confessional aspect.

Why do we say elle s’est sentie and not elle a senti?

French distinguishes between:

sentir (non‑reflexive) – to smell, to sense, to feel (something external)
- elle a senti le parfum – she smelled the perfume
- elle a senti un choc – she felt an impact
se sentir (reflexive form) – to feel (a certain way, an internal state)
- elle s’est sentie fatiguée – she felt tired
- elle s’est sentie utile – she felt useful

In your sentence, elle s’est sentie vraiment utile describes how she felt herself, her inner emotional state. That is exactly the use of se sentir, so the reflexive form is required:

❌ elle a senti vraiment utile (incorrect)
✅ elle s’est sentie vraiment utile (correct)

Why is the past participle sentie with an extra e at the end?

With pronominal verbs like se sentir, the auxiliary is être in the passé composé:

elle s’est sentie

With être, the past participle usually agrees in gender and number with the direct object if it precedes the verb. For se sentir, the reflexive pronoun se represents the direct object (herself).

Here:

Subject: elle (feminine singular)
Reflexive pronoun: s’ = se (referring to elle)
Past participle: senti

Agreement rule: the past participle agrees with se, and se refers to a feminine singular subject, so we add e:

masculine singular: il s’est senti utile
feminine singular: elle s’est sentie utile
masculine plural: ils se sont sentis utiles
feminine plural: elles se sont senties utiles

Could we also say elle s’est vraiment sentie utile? Where can vraiment go, and does the position change the meaning?

Yes, elle s’est vraiment sentie utile is also correct, and both positions are natural:

elle s’est sentie vraiment utile
elle s’est vraiment sentie utile

Both mean roughly she felt really useful, but there is a slight nuance:

elle s’est sentie vraiment utile
- Focus a bit more on the adjective utile:
  she felt truly useful (as opposed to just somewhat useful).
elle s’est vraiment sentie utile
- Focus a bit more on the intensity of the feeling:
  she really did feel useful (emphasizing the reality/intensity of her feeling).

In everyday speech, the difference is subtle, and both are perfectly acceptable.

Why is it où elle s’est sentie vraiment utile and not quand elle s’est sentie vraiment utile?

In this sentence, où is not a question word, but a relative pronoun introducing a relative clause after jour.

French uses où as a relative pronoun for:

places:
la ville où il habite – the city where he lives
and often for time expressions:
le jour où je suis arrivé – the day when I arrived

So:

le jour où elle s’est sentie vraiment utile
literally: the day where she felt really useful = the day when…

Using quand here as a relative pronoun is not standard:

❌ le jour quand elle s’est sentie vraiment utile
✅ le jour où elle s’est sentie vraiment utile

Quand is normally used either:

as a question word:
Quand est‑ce qu’elle s’est sentie utile ?
or as a subordinating conjunction (not as a relative pronoun tied to a noun):
Quand elle s’est sentie utile, elle a décidé d’aider plus souvent. – When she felt useful, she decided to help more often.

Why is the order elle veut se souvenir and not elle se veut souvenir?

In French, object pronouns and reflexive pronouns follow a fixed order when combined with modal verbs like vouloir.

Structure:

subject + modal verb (conjugated) + pronoun(s) + infinitive

So you say:

elle veut se souvenir
subject: elle
modal verb: veut
reflexive pronoun: se
infinitive: souvenir

Parallel examples:

je peux me souvenir – I can remember
nous voulons nous revoir – we want to see each other again

Putting se right after elle as elle se veut souvenir would change the structure and meaning (and here it is simply wrong). Se vouloir exists, but it means to want to present oneself as / to claim to be (e.g. une solution qui se veut moderne), which is not what we need here.