Two Years In!

It's hard to believe it’s already been two years since I started my PhD in French and Francophone studies at WashU. Here’s a little update on how it’s going!

Paris! Last summer working in France

The number-one highlight, hands down, was working in France last summer as a Program Assistant for WashU’s Art of Health in Nice. This was the same program I attended as a student eleven years earlier, when it was called France for the PreMed. Everything truly came full circle here. When I was an undergrad in this program, I was working on wine research for my Honors Thesis. Last summer, that work came full circle when we assigned the article I published from this undergrad research, and I led a class on the topic. Unfortunately, due to university guidelines, we couldn’t do a wine tasting in class, but I led a chocolate tasting, which was delicious!

Grad conference at UNC!

WashU has also allowed me to travel within the U.S. to present my research. During my first year, I presented at UPenn, and in my second, I presented at NeMLA in Pittsburgh for a panel on witches in literature and at UNC. How do I move from teaching yoga to francophone witches, you might ask? That’s a story for another time, but in short, my research at WashU has looked at Guadeloupean women’s writing on maternal health, and when we talk about midwives in stories, whether as an accusation or a reclamation, the word “witch” often enters the conversation.

NeMLA in Pittsburgh

My second year also marked my entry into teaching at WashU! In the Spring, I taught French 1010. Watching students go from saying little more than "Bonjour" to holding real conversations in French was incredibly rewarding. I shouldn’t be so surprised that I loved teaching French since I also love teaching yoga, right? I thought it might be different. It was not. Standing at the front of a classroom felt strangely familiar. It turns out teaching language and teaching yoga have more in common than I expected: both are about creating enough trust for people to try something difficult.

A lucky rabbit latte while rehearsing my talk

The greatest challenge so far was the Master’s exam. In the fall of my second year, I had a two-day exam process that included three hours of essays in French, an oral presentation where you are given exactly one hour of prep time, and a grueling grilling during an oral exam. I genuinely felt like I'd forgotten how to speak French at several points, but somehow I passed. That was not fun; let’s never do it again.

A selfie after the French MA exam

Currently, I am studying for the PhD exam, and I’m enjoying the process a lot. Yes, there will be another oral exam, but there is no impromptu presentation, so having more time to prepare papers and a syllabus ahead of the process will soothe my anxiety. I’ve learned through the process that I’m more of an auditory learner than I ever believed. Maybe that changed after having children, when I suddenly had far more opportunities to read with my ears than with my eyes. I’ve been doing most of the reading for school through audiobooks, and I’ve found I associate specific details with what I was doing with my hands as I was hearing the words. Sartre brings images of scrubbing under the counters. Molière? Dishes in the sink. The associations help give texture to the words for me.

Summer studies in St. Louis

So what is on the horizon besides the PhD exam? This summer, I’m going on a solo research trip to Guadeloupe in the Caribbean! In addition to reading books on the beach, I’ll be visiting archives and having conversations with collaborators. I'll be sharing more about the trip, as well as plenty of travel, research, and yoga adventures in the months ahead. Stay tuned!