Sweet Briar College JYF in Paris Alumni Magazine - December 2018

The five in this photo are students from 2017
and they are all in Paris this fall.
in Paris (and three others in France)
either with TAPIF, graduate school, or
as an au pair. I believe this is a strong
testament to how amazing and supportive
Sweet Briar’s program is.
The teaching assistant program
in France offers you the opportunity
to work in France for seven months,
teaching English to French students of
all ages. Each year, over 1,200 American
citizens and permanent residents
teach in public schools across all regions
of metropolitan France and in
the overseas departments of France
such as French Guiana, Guadeloupe,
Martinique and Réunion. The American
cohort is part of the larger Assistants
de langue en France program,
which recruits 4,500 young educators
from 60 countries to teach 15 languages
annually in France. The Assistants
de langue en France program
is managed by the CIEP, the Centre
International d’Études Pédagogiques.
Matt Berry JYF spring 2017
Lafayette College
Le Concours d’Eloquence
Just a few months ago, by a stroke
of chance, I found myself in second
place in the concours d’éloquence, a
university-wide public speaking contest
organized by Université Sorbonne
Nouvelle Paris 3 in April 2018. Nearly
all of my coursework had been in the
theater and cinema departments at
Paris-III, so most of my friends were
performers who worshipped the arts.
One day, my best friend, a girl named
Fanny from the Jura, asked me to
join her in this competition, and so I
dropped everything and went along
with her.
The event structure was simple
enough: The top nine students would
all appear on stage together, lined
up one next to another, for a sudden-death
contest. Each participant
would receive a prompt and immediately
deliver a two-minute speech on
the topic. Following each round, the
judges eliminated up to three participants,
until the top three were left for
the championship round: Under the
same guidelines, the time for each
speech was raised to eight minutes.
Soon enough, I stood on stage next
to eight French university students
in competition. Round after round,
after the president of the university
called my name, I nervously inched to
the podium, gave a nifty little speech
about whatever had been asked,
and I actually didn’t get eliminated.
In groups of three, I witnessed my
friends and classmates walk off the
stage, as I, of all people, entered the
final round. After finishing my final
discourse for the night, I found myself
speechless. I had studied French for
two and a half years, only wishing to
share meaningful stories and conversations
with native speakers. Suddenly,
not only was I recognized for my
ability to do just that, but the judges
prized my performance above nearly
every other competitor, all of whom
were actually French.
It is strange to think back to my
transition from surviving to flourishing
in a foreign city. This experience
was ridden with terror and confusion
in isolating points that had never
seemed so incomprehensibly challenging—from
purchasing a stamp
at the post office to navigating a
snow-covered Saint-Denis with a broken
cellphone. And yet, participating
in the Concours d’éloquence at Paris-III
showed me that my semester
abroad was more than just a series of
belabored successes, but an endless
map of beautiful, comical, emotional,
and vulnerable crossroads, many of
which were shared with real friends
from across the world. For all that, I
may only be grateful.
Kevin Medansky, JYF Spring 2018
Haverford College
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