During this past summer, July to August, I was immersed in the city of Québec at Université Laval. I spent five weeks in classes at the university and exploring the city of Québec to learn more about the French language and francophone culture not too far from home.
Going into this program I had very few assumptions about what was going to take place. I did not want to create or imagine various possible scenarios that when they didn’t happen it would tarnish my entire time and experience. I wanted to go in with an open mind and I’m glad I did because the experience was a mix of emotions and unforeseen complications mixed with the blessing of studying abroad and forming new relationships. This was my first time spending more than two weeks away from my family other than when I’m only a two hour drive from them during the school year so I feel it was a new sense of independence of getting to a different country and navigating myself around while also having to exercise my French skills due to Québec being a francophone country. I am especially grateful for the personal growth that came out of my experience. I’m so used to being in my shell and sticking to what and who I’m comfortable with and obviously doing a study abroad and going in knowing no one will force you to find new people. I learned to say yes to things because I felt the urge of not wanting to waste my time in the city or the time with my new friends. This STEP program helped me open myself to new people, experiences, and allowed me to extend what I was learning in the classroom to the outside world due to where the program took place and by the end, I felt much more comfortable in myself and my command of French.
When going to Canada for the program I had no idea what kind of people I would be meeting. I did not expect to meet a girl from Spain, a lot of people from Canada oddly enough, or have the program be full of such a wide range of ages, cultures, and backgrounds. I had thought it would be a majority of people around my age and from America but to my surprise, the program was also open to and consisted of mostly people from Canada through their “Explore” program. In hindsight, I’m thankful for the large mix of people from seemingly all over the world because it allowed me to learn not only about Québec, which I expected to learn a lot about but also all of Canada and also Spain because one of my friends on the trip was from Spain. We could all sit down and discuss and ask questions about their country, politics, dumb stereotypes, and anything and everything. The friends I made shaped my experience in a way I didn’t expect but I’m thankful for the pleasant surprise which allowed me to learn about and explore much more than I had expected to be able to.
The classes I took were the main reason I was there but also gave me much more than just classroom information. I took three courses while I was there, a grammar class, a phonetics/pronunciation class, and an oral expression class. My professors for my grammar and pronunciation classes were my favorite. Each professor was clearly very fond of Québec and also the program and teaching which made learning from them so fun. They put their personalities and special twists to their courses which were so different from any class I’d taken in America. The grammar and pronunciation classes were three hours long starting at 8:30 am but we would always take a break in the middle which I really appreciated and was something relatively unheard of in American classrooms I feel. Because it was an immersion program everything was in French which I feel really benefitted me in my comprehension and also in my ability to express myself and my thoughts more on the spot than I ever had before. It was challenging but in the end, I feel I really benefitted from it and improved in my command of the language and felt comfortable in engaging with university staff, storekeepers, and even when strangers would speak to me around the city. Even some Québecoise, like a woman in line behind me who just struck up a conversation or my Uber driver to the airport, would commend me on my French and my ability to understand and respond and carry a full conversation in French which made me feel really proud of myself an that the program was worth it.
I think the area where I grew the most was personally and that was due to the experiences I partook in while in Québec. I learned to just say yes to things and not worry as much. I would go into the city with people when they asked because I wanted to make friendships and also explore, I would make plans to go get ice cream simply because we could, and when Virginia asked if we wanted to spend a weekend in Montreal I said yes. I didn’t think about reasons not to, I thought about the fact that I’d regret saying no. I booked an Airbnb for the first time, took an immense amount of public transport which is different in every city but also gives you a sense of independence. Might I add Montreal has a metro system which is my favorite form of public transit. Spending a weekend in a city that predominately speaks French with three girls I had only met three weeks ago would’ve sounded like a daunting thing to me last year, but it’s something you just have to take the leap on because you never know when you’ll be given the opportunity again. I also did something in Québec that I think signaled my biggest growth – I went to a music festival by myself for a night. The FEQ (Festival d’été du Québec) is a fourteen-day music festival and I borrowed my friend’s wristband to go downtown and see the headliner of the night by myself because it was something I wanted to do. I walked around by myself, saw the performances I wanted to see, and didn’t have to worry about other people or what anyone thought of me. I talked to people and enjoyed myself and I’m so glad I did it because it was truly such a unique possibility of being in Québec during the festival and also a performer I wanted to see was there that night. Overall, I did a lot of things during the program that a year ago I wouldn’t have thought I would be comfortable enough with myself to do. I think that’s one of the most beautiful effects of studying abroad is that you change and grow so much as a person in such a short amount of time because you’ll never be in that same place or time every again and there’s an urgency to experience it to the fullest.
This program and the transformation I went through during the program are valuable in my life for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I wanted to ameliorate my French language skills and my ability to converse on the spot rather than go through translating isolated sentences forever. I wanted to learn French in a real francophone setting from native speakers and be immersed in an environment where French was expected to be spoken. I think I really got what I wanted in that respect from doing this program and I’m thankful that it lived up to what I wanted. In the future I hope to be a high school French teacher and I think this will be an experience that is the most impactful in my journey of learning French and about francophone cultures that I will be able to use in teaching and showing students that this is a language used out in the real world and not solely in that classroom. Aside from the language and future professional benefits of the program, it really made me step outside of my shell as a person. I put myself out into the program and opened myself to new experiences and adventures that in 5, 10, 20 years I’ll look back on and be so grateful that I did. I’ve come back from the program a much more open person who will throw themselves into anything that seems interesting just to try it out. I truly feel like I’m in a place personally now that without this program I wouldn’t have grown as much as a person.
Without the push and financial cushion of STEP I wouldn’t have been able to say or speak on anything that happened in this reflection. I would have been the same Janelle I was back in May when school let out. I am thankful for the experience and can’t wait to see how what I’ve learned and the growth I endured will treat me in the future.