La Douce France - Pt. 1

La Douce France

by Nicholas Andrian on Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 12:36am

Since I expounded earlier upon Quebec, I thought it would be a propos to write about the major role that France and the French language have played in my life. Now I am about as French as one would expect from a grandson of Greek immigrants raised in gritty Newark, which is to say, not at all. However, when I took French as a freshman at Brick Township High School (for the third time, by the way...oui, I was left back twice in a row...however, since Sister Catherine had skipped me from kindergarten to first grade due to the fact that I had learned how to read, I was only one year behind), I fell in love with the language, thanks to a sweetie of a teacher, Miss Virginia Sessa. Miss Sessa had spent two years in France (Bordeaux), had a perfect accent and although she was a new teacher, she had a knack for sharing her love and knowledge of the language. When she would describe the monuments of Paris, for example, you could close your eyes and actually feel the stones of Notre Dame Cathedral. Soon, I sank my teeth into her class and found I had a gift for language. I attribute this partially to the fact that I learned Modern Greek at my maternal grandmother's knee; in fact, I knew very little English until the age of four, when I started to interact with other children in our neighborhood. Whatever the reason, my enthusiasm for French spilled over to my other subjects and by Christmas of my freshman year, I was doing all the "nerdy" things I used to always make fun of other kids for doing, i.e., representing my homeroom in student council, writing a school news column for the Asbury Park Press and actually studying for tests as well as doing my homework. As a result, by the end of French 1, I had already finished the second year book. I later took two years of Spanish and one year of German; I was also selected to take English 5, comparable to AP today, a wonderful course concentrating mainly on Semantics. At the end of it all, I was awarded the Ocean County Freeholders scholarship which covered my tuition at Montclair State University for all four years. I did not even apply to college, so satisfied was I to have gotten through high school. However, during our English 5 class on the last day before Christmas break, my good bud Howard Wagner, having just been accepted to Trenton State (now the College of NJ), suggested I apply to Montclair as they had an excellent language department. I got a pass to the guidance office, they had an application to Montclair on file, I took it home, filled it out, took the entrance exam, got accepted and voila! I sensed then (and I know now) that the good Lord directed my sails in the direction He wanted me to go; He didn't stop there, however; He still nudges me, sometimes kicking and screaming, to bigger and better things. I shall continue this in Part Two.