College Essay
My first real attempt at speaking French happened when I was ten years old with my French cousin, Marthe. In the middle of our umpteenth game of silent Uno, we grew tired of the language barrier between us and resolved to do something about it. After gathering some paper and a box of colored markers, we wandered around my grandparents’ house pointing at random objects. I provided the English word for each object while Marthe provided the French equivalent. We spent ages in the kitchen alone, raiding every cabinet and refrigerator shelf until we had a comprehensive list that could barely fit our papers. Years later, in the midst of cooking a traditional Senegalese dish at a French summer program, I realized that I could still name every item in the kitchen. Although my French kitchen terminology was solid, little did I know my lack of music vocabulary would one day haunt me.
Beginning my internship Junior year at a bilingual academy, I felt more confident in my French skills than ever before. My assigned classroom resembled a typical elementary school art room— the lingering scent of acrylic paint and the vibrant paintings plastering the walls— with one notable exception: the students’ incessant chatter and all instruction was strictly in French. Here, I would sooner say nothing at all than be caught speaking English.
One afternoon, a student named Skylar sat alone in his usual seat at the centermost table. He always resembled the eye of a storm, the only respite of calm in the chaotic classroom. Passively glancing down at his untouched sheet of paper, he perfectly juxtaposed the tempest of ten first-graders armed to the teeth with art supplies.
Calling me over, my mentor Claudine gestured to Skylar and implored, “Why don’t you help Skylar make this?” punctuating her sentence with her magenta-painted fingernail tapping down onto a picture of a trombone. Recognizing it immediately from my years in youth orchestra, I eagerly nodded. Claudine snapped her binder of instruments closed and bustled off. Approaching Skylar, I was met with a crushing realization— I had no idea how to say “trombone” in French.
Mentally preparing myself to look like an absolute fool, I was forced to just work around it. “Today, we’re going to make an instrument,” I ventured cautiously, more unsure of my French now than I’d been in years, “One that you blow into so it makes sounds.” Skylar, assuming I was prefacing some silly game, became instantly annoyed. Dejectedly, I admitted that I didn’t know the French name of the mystery instrument. Now more sympathetic to my situation, Skylar started guessing.
“Is it little?” he asked. “Loud?” I answered his queries, but to no avail. His descriptors gradually increased in complexity, prompting me to request definitions in the millisecond-long pauses between his rapid-fire questions: poignée (handle), incurvé (curved), and en cuivre (brass). By now, our back-and-forth had accumulated a flock of Skylar’s classmates, enraptured by the utter train-wreck unfolding before them. I gesticulated and sketched (which, given my pitiful drawing skills, only served to worsen the problem), until finally, Skylar jumped up from his chair and raced over to a pile of cardboard. Twisting a skinny piece into a handle and fashioning a bell out of a coffee container into a reasonable representation of a trombone, he looked to me for confirmation that he’d guessed correctly. I had never been more relieved in my life.
Sure, I’d struggled in front of ten impressionable kids, but I'd encountered a situation and its accompanying vocabulary that could only be gleaned from a Francophone elementary schooler in the midst of an artistic crisis. Quitting and leaving Skylar confused and trombone-less would have left me without the satisfaction of solving the problem, and without the unexpected discovery that the French word for trombone is just trombone pronounced with a French accent.
Beginning my internship Junior year at a bilingual academy, I felt more confident in my French skills than ever before. My assigned classroom resembled a typical elementary school art room— the lingering scent of acrylic paint and the vibrant paintings plastering the walls— with one notable exception: the students’ incessant chatter and all instruction was strictly in French. Here, I would sooner say nothing at all than be caught speaking English.
One afternoon, a student named Skylar sat alone in his usual seat at the centermost table. He always resembled the eye of a storm, the only respite of calm in the chaotic classroom. Passively glancing down at his untouched sheet of paper, he perfectly juxtaposed the tempest of ten first-graders armed to the teeth with art supplies.
Calling me over, my mentor Claudine gestured to Skylar and implored, “Why don’t you help Skylar make this?” punctuating her sentence with her magenta-painted fingernail tapping down onto a picture of a trombone. Recognizing it immediately from my years in youth orchestra, I eagerly nodded. Claudine snapped her binder of instruments closed and bustled off. Approaching Skylar, I was met with a crushing realization— I had no idea how to say “trombone” in French.
Mentally preparing myself to look like an absolute fool, I was forced to just work around it. “Today, we’re going to make an instrument,” I ventured cautiously, more unsure of my French now than I’d been in years, “One that you blow into so it makes sounds.” Skylar, assuming I was prefacing some silly game, became instantly annoyed. Dejectedly, I admitted that I didn’t know the French name of the mystery instrument. Now more sympathetic to my situation, Skylar started guessing.
“Is it little?” he asked. “Loud?” I answered his queries, but to no avail. His descriptors gradually increased in complexity, prompting me to request definitions in the millisecond-long pauses between his rapid-fire questions: poignée (handle), incurvé (curved), and en cuivre (brass). By now, our back-and-forth had accumulated a flock of Skylar’s classmates, enraptured by the utter train-wreck unfolding before them. I gesticulated and sketched (which, given my pitiful drawing skills, only served to worsen the problem), until finally, Skylar jumped up from his chair and raced over to a pile of cardboard. Twisting a skinny piece into a handle and fashioning a bell out of a coffee container into a reasonable representation of a trombone, he looked to me for confirmation that he’d guessed correctly. I had never been more relieved in my life.
Sure, I’d struggled in front of ten impressionable kids, but I'd encountered a situation and its accompanying vocabulary that could only be gleaned from a Francophone elementary schooler in the midst of an artistic crisis. Quitting and leaving Skylar confused and trombone-less would have left me without the satisfaction of solving the problem, and without the unexpected discovery that the French word for trombone is just trombone pronounced with a French accent.