This was said to one of my friends in the program by one of our tutors as a joke because my friend had, obviously, said something funny while speaking in English. While it was funny for our tutor to be surprised that my friend was funny, it got me thinking about how hard it truly is to be yourself while studying abroad.
To start, I haven’t felt like I am NOT myself but I do think it’s a weird dichotomy of being yourself while also figuring out who else you can be in another language.
In English, I can banter back and forth with my friends, hold an intellectual conversation with a professor, or explain a story to my parents. Meanwhile, in French I can conjugate verbs until my eyes bleed, count to about 100 and understand pretty much everything my professors say. Learning a language in its country is really different because the accents are different, the slang is strange, and everyone speaks so much faster than what I’m used to while in my American classroom.
I’ve enjoyed every second of my time here getting to learn French from native speakers and getting better at understanding the way it’s spoken by them. However, the other side of that coin is neglecting who I am in English. While we’re in the city my friends and I do speak English but it isn’t really the same when you don’t have your normal community around you.
I find myself missing the inside jokes I have with my friends back home, or craving a burger or even thinking I spelled the word “the” wrong because it’s been so long since I’ve written anything on paper in English. So yes, being here differently makes it harder to be who you are used to being but it also gives you the opportunity to explore who else you can be.
I like to see it as sort of a blank slate. Back home I’m usually more of an introvert but here I’ve been putting myself out there more, trying things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise, being more extroverted. No one here truly knows who I am, which is hard sometimes but also a blessing because I can embarrass myself and at the end of the day it won’t really matter because, who cares? Back home, it would probably bother me because I know a lot more people, but here it’s just a group of people pulled from every corner of the US trying to do their best in a new place.
Sure, because I don’t yet have the French vocabulary necessary to make a joke or understand every word someone says to me, I’m still learning. I’m still growing, I’m still doing my best and everyone here is willing to meet me where I’m at and accept me for who I am while I’m trying my best. And, at the end of the day we’re all in this together and yes, we can still be funny in English, even if no one ever hears that joke that I said silently to myself.
As a last note I also want to mention that a friend in my program is also writing blog posts and his post was where I got the inspiration for this one. I recommend reading his post as well to get a different perspective!
Profite bien tout le monde!