College Essays about the Villages
College Application Essay, 2009Due to circumstances, scholarships, and inherent linguistic masochism (possibly genetic, definitely dominant), I attended a language camp every summer for nearly half my life, and was preparing to take a college course in Danish, my language of choice. Parents, talk to your children about foreign languages, before someone else does. More potent, inviting, and broadening than any drug, by the time I was finishing camp that summer, I had already enjoyed a brief flirtation with German, and a short but passionate summer fling with Norwegian. All the while, unbeknownst to me, forces were aligning to set me up in a long-term engagement with Russian.
For me, learning a foreign language had never been an intentional goal. The concept was first mentioned to me when my parents heard of some summer language camps and asked if I was interested. Learn a language? Sure, I thought, and then I’ll go ride my bike. And so, nagged, instructed, and fretted over, off to camp I went.
Eventually, this is how I found myself standing on the grass in front of a brown building rising out of the woods. Two minutes later, I recognized what I had done. I paused, considered for a moment, and doubled over in a silent scream of ecstasy. If I could understand, truly understand a language, I was ready to swing down from tall buildings on webs of my own making to save distraught businesswomen. The world could end tomorrow and I would bring it back to life. I was impervious to all but kryptonite.
It was not that I loved grammar. It was not that I loved impossible, mouth-wrenching pronunciation, a trait prominent in Danish- a phenomenon which has been tentatively identified as a language, but which later research may yet prove to be a throat disease. It was and still is, the nature of language, of ultimate understanding, which cannot be explained in the words I know now, except perhaps for this:
I stood with my friend on the grass after listening with no particular attention to one of our counselors. I turned to walk to my cabin, and four steps later, realized I had superpowers: I couldn’t recall the language in which we had spoken.
Two down; 6,807 to go.
College Application Essay, 2003
“Arie–ette?” Someone was calling my French name, sing-song style from across the cabin. I looked up from my lesson plan to see Bernadette shivering beside my bunk bed. “I’m co¬–old.” In typical ten year old fashion, she had managed to leave her sweatshirt downstairs in the dining hall and now, just before lights out, had nothing more than her flimsy pajamas and her sleeping bag to keep her warm. I chuckled a little and reached up to my bed where I had placed my staff jacket. “Voilá, petite1,” I smiled, helping her into the oversized jacket. Suddenly, I laughed outright. This was my summer: a tiny, grinning girl wearing my Concordia Language Villages2 staff jacket. Nothing could have pleased me more.
This summer I spent eight weeks of my life in a little world that follows rules of its own. At Lac du Bois, a French immersion camp in Minnesota and Georgia, no two people have the same French name. If you don’t ask for the butter in French, chances are no one will pass it to you. And if you think that you cannot sing when you arrive, you will leave knowing that it doesn’t matter how well you sing, as long as you do it. As a counselor, I lived, worked, and played with campers age 7 through 17. Every staff member at orientation was given a slip of blue paper on which to write a job description for the summer. What did it mean to “do my job” as a monotrice3? After thinking a while, I wrote, in French, “If even one villager4 learns one thing because of something I taught him, I will have done my job.” This summer, I did not live for myself alone: my villagers came first. However, I found that in living for my kids, I could be myself without trying. And in everything I did, I tried to make a positive difference to the villagers and staff.
One of my favorite summer experiences is teaching nine year old Emilie theater. Through hard work, creativity, and not a little flexibility, I managed to direct seven campers through a shortened version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. On the day I taught the song “Belle” from the musical, I was walking to the main building, Paris, as Emilie wandered towards her learning group. She was holding the song lyrics, and as I passed her, I heard her singing softly to herself. For me, this was a clear sign that I was doing something right. At the very least, I had taught her a bit about French culture through the play. That same night over dinner, another mono, Laure, and I were discussing why I’d chosen to be a counselor when I glanced at the table beside ours. Emilie had placed her script in front of a mono and was animatedly explaining the plot while pointing out her lines as Quasimodo. She was so proud of her part, so excited about the play, I couldn’t help grinning as I watched her. I remembered vividly being in her position, learning lines by heart, throwing myself into village life as a camper of thirteen. I turned to Laure smiling but with tingling eyes. “Are you crying?” she asked in French, noticing the almost tears. I shook my head and looked again at Emilie. “J’ai fait une difference pour cette fille,” I explained. I had made a difference for Emilie. I had taught this girl something that she was excited about, that she would always remember. “C’est pour ça que je suis mono. That is why I am a counselor.”
Though the months of June through August were filled with international staff members who became my close friends, my summer was truly not about the counselors. My summer was about the kids. My memories are filled with girls like Emilie, who learned something because I taught them. Kids like Isabelle who went from never having spoken French in her life to using simple but complete sentences by week two. Boys like Joseph, who overcame his coolness to speak French for five minutes, albeit on a dare. Lac du Bois creates a safe-haven for metamorphosis. The villages have changed my life, both as a villager and now as a counselor. However, the buildings and staff alone do not create this world of life and language. It is the campers that make the village, and those kids that made my summer.
1. petite: little one (female)
2. village: camp
3. monoteur, monotrice, mono: counselor
4. villager: camper
