 |
Akio Yamanaka
On November 9th, my friend Yasmeen forwarded to me an email from the U.S. Embassy in Paris, regarding two “Cote d’Ivoire” demonstrations that would be held on November 11th at Place Victor Hugo, with the warning: “American citizens are…urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations if possible, and to exercise caution if within the vicinity of any demonstrations.” I thought to myself, okay, so I’m not an American, why is she sending me this? I didn’t really think much about it and closed the email. It couldn’t have been a few hours later when she called me and asked, “Did you get my email? Are you going?”
You have to understand, I was never an activist at Pitzer. Surely, I had numerous friends there who actively partook in demonstrations and awareness weeks, and I sympathized with the minorities and the women and the countries that were being oppressed in the books and articles from class. I understood the concepts and the theories, but I wasn’t about to throw myself into danger. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have gone had my friend not sounded as enthusiastic as she did. “Yeah okay, I’m going.”
I always imagined demonstrations to be violent, with people looting and the police with their K-9 buddies hosing down or arresting the peaceful demonstrators with tear gas and batons. There would be the news crew with their cameras and their colorful armbands marked MEDIA, photographing images for 8 o’clock news, and massive chaos everywhere.
How faulty my imagination proved to be. I cannot even put into words how large and powerful the world seemed to me that day; and perhaps I shouldn’t. All I can say is that in one afternoon, all of the problems I had encountered in adjusting to life in Paris seemed to disappear.
In my experiences so far, I realize that AGS is what I make of it. The administration has been wonderful. The professors are extremely resourceful. If anything, the students have helped me the most in adjusting to the school and to Paris. For instance, the Student Association at AGS recently put together a fieldtrip to The Hague to visit the Peace Palace, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and we had the opportunity to have a discussion with a judge from the ICC. I have heard of previous trips to the N.A.T.O. and to U.N.E.S.C.O. The proximity of all these institutions to the school and to the field of International Relations is phenomenal.
At the same time, graduate school, for me, is not just what I learn in my coursework, but how I learn it. I can choose to come to Paris, refuse to speak one word of French, go to class every day, defend my thesis, and graduate with Honors. There is nothing wrong with that, it is your choosing; and perhaps there are students who do that. The problem, I find, is that I can just as easily do the same thing in an institution in the United States, minus the burden of the language barrier, minus the exchange rates, minus the headaches associated with the French system. I think what sets this school apart from other institutions is that it allows a diverse group of English speaking students (with varying degrees of French proficiency), to come together in Paris and not only do research for their theses, but also have the experience of being a foreigner. This feeling is very different from your typical vacation to Prague. I’ve found that if you are willing to step outside your domain of comfort and you force yourself to live and assimilate in an unfamiliar or foreign setting, you become aware of your own strengths and limitations, and you begin to connect concepts from the classes with your real life experiences.
When I review the pictures from the demonstration, I realize that an element is lost in the process of flattening the world onto a small glossy piece of photo quality paper. While the photographs of protesters with their signs and placards provoke some sort of emotion, it is as though these feelings are objective, much like the pictures I see in an encyclopedia. Yet every day, when I step out of my apartment, I become subjectively reminded of the fact that I am a foreigner, and each day, I become exposed to a new experience that forces me to rethink and revise my conceptions of the world around me.
This, to me, highlights the education I am receiving from AGS.
Here is the web information for the school I am currently attending:
www.agsird.edu
My website is:
www.akoism.com |
