Study Abroad
[Check out part 1 of this 3 part series]
When it comes to learning a language, what could be better than study abroad? Having studied abroad in the United States and becoming fluent in English, I naturally thought about studying abroad in France to improve my French. This opportunity came much sooner than I expected.
I hadn’t really heard of the Tufts European Center when I applied to the school, but the idea of going to France quickly captured my attention after my French professor told me about it. Spending months in the middle of the Sound-of-Music-ish Alps while having cheese and baguette for breakfast sounds like a cliché French summer experience, but that was exactly what I did—of course, combined with a variety of other things.
The European Center, housed in a former monastery built in the 11th century, is located near the French city of Annecy. The Center offers two summer programs to Tufts undergraduates: Tufts-in-Talloires, a six-week long session offering credits equivalent to two classes, and Tufts-in-Annecy, a four-week long French language session. I ended up attending both. In the Talloires program, I took an oxymoronically interesting math class on electoral methods with a polyglot Tufts professor who’s obsessed with Chopin, as well as an animation class with a charismatic SMFA professor who also performs ventriloquism as a hobby. Since Talloires is a small village with merely hundreds of residents, an inflow of nearly a hundred Tufts students and faculty meant that we ran into our professors in coffee shops, grocery stores, and beaches on a pretty regular basis. My classes also relied quite heavily on what Central Europe offered—the math class looked into various election methods utilized by members of the European Union, whereas the entire animation class went on a field trip to the annual Annecy International Animated Film Festival. I also did some traveling myself as a history nerd, attending the D-Day 75th anniversary in Normandy, visiting several Parisian museums and cafés, and sailing in the beautiful port of Marseille.
The Tufts-in-Annecy program had a much more close-knit community. We quickly formed a friend group and began exploring what Annecy could offer with Professor Pauling, the kindest man whose passion for romance languages would put the L'Académie Française to shame. After a morning of intense classes at the school, we would have lunch on the beautiful banks of Lake Annecy before going into the touristy Old Town for a daily immersion activity. I also made quite a lot of friends from Switzerland, South Africa, and Ireland through the classroom, and we went on a trip to Geneva together to visit the UN Headquarters and play laser tag. Moreover, the friends I made through the program stayed in the same French classes with me for my entire sophomore year—we studied for tests together, had “French-only” dinners where we forced ourselves to practice the language with each other, and stress-baked cakes on at least a biweekly basis. The study abroad experience, for me, not only accelerated my academic progression but also helped me find a community on campus—I couldn’t be happier that I took advantage of this opportunity.