Starting Over

What with all the changes going on in life right now, I feel like I'm being handed a blank slate, and I have the opportunity to do whatever I want with it. I am starting out at a new ground zero, in the best possible way.

I've spent the last 21 months (!!) since I've been home from Paris thinking about what I wanted to DO with my life--thinking about how to move forward, how to make my mark on the world. There is something in me that can't be content simply living my life without giving back and trying to make the world better.

I've gone back and forth between so many things--things that I really do love and have an interest in, but ultimately realized aren't the best fit for me:

1. Art History - working as a professor has its perks, I'm well aware. But I don't know that it would make me happy and excited to go to work every day. I think Art History is just a great hobby of mine, not a passion that will translate well into a job. I do still think it would be fun to do museum education, but I think I'll do it on a volunteer basis, rather than as a job. I was mistaking my wonderful sister Amy's passion for Art History as a deeper interest than I really had. Does that ever happen to you? Someone is so passionate about something, that just listening to them makes your heart beat faster, and makes the subject far more interesting to you than it might otherwise be? I feel that way when Amy talks about art. And silent films. :)
2. Literacy Education - I feel so strongly that education is crucial for every person--man, woman, boy, girl--regardless of their station, religion, access to technology, etc. Everyone should be taught to read and write, learn basic math skills, and learn a trade or attend university. However, ultimately, I don't think I want to be a teacher, and I don't think an administrative position would be very satisfying for me. It's too hands-off.
3. Fighting Human Trafficking - This is something that I have been thinking about for the last few months. It's something I feel really strongly about getting involved in--I think it's atrocious that there are people on the earth that still think it's okay to buy and sell other human beings for their own benefit. Again, working in this field means I would probably be in an administrative position behind a desk somewhere, which doesn't really appeal to me. I would rather be involved on a volunteer basis or donate money to an organization I believe in.
4. French Masters, PhD. I love French. I love France. I love francophone literature. But, like I mentioned above, I don't want to be a teacher. I don't really want to be a professor. I am satisfied to just love French and continue to develop my language skills. And go back to France as often as humanly possible.

I have always wanted to be an artist, and for years I thought about graphic design, but beyond knowing that graphic designers made "pretty things," my knowledge of the profession was pretty limited, and I didn't know that it was very possible to make a living as a designer. I thought being a graphic designer would be more along the lines of the "struggling artist," which I didn't think I could handle. Now, after having worked really closely with the graphic designers at my company for a few years, I have a much better understanding of the different kinds of projects graphic design involves, a little bit of the process, the back-and-forth with customer/company expectations, and the crazy hours that the designers often work leading up to a huge deadline. And also how much they make, which isn't the deciding factor, but a comforting reassurance that I wouldn't be destitute doing what I loved.

I think for a long time I did French because I loved it, and for a long time I kept doing it becauase I was good at it. Once I realized I didn't want to be a teacher, the career options seemed really limited.

But here's the realization I had a couple of weeks ago, when I sat down to think about what really makes me happy:

If I didn't have to worry for one second about my personal financial security, what would I want to do all day?

Paint. Draw. Create.

So that's what I'm going to do. I am going back to school to get a BFA in Art and Visual Communication, with an emphasis in Graphic Design (and a second emphasis in Fine Art - Painting, if they'll let me!). When I realized that creativity is what really makes me tick, everything fell into alignment for me: it felt way more authentic than Art History (for obvious reasons, mentioned above), it felt more marketable and more like something I would like to do for a living than French, and it's something I am geniunely interested in and want to develop skills in (and have wanted this for years, without daring to do it).

And here's the best part: I can do all of the things I mentioned above! I can continue to love and learn French, I can be involved in Literacy Education, I can help fight human trafficking, and I can support cultural and museum education/outreach, all through graphic design. I can have my cake and eat it, too, without changing my qualifications every time I turn around. Talk about the best of both worlds.

I got accepted to school on Friday, and I start in May.

I can't wait.

Paved with Good Intentions

I'm going to ignore the fact that the beginning of the well known proverb states that it's the path to Hell that's paved with good intentions.

Instead, I choose to believe that the path to a happy future is paved (a.k.a. awkwardly cobbled together) with good intentions, half-starts, mistakes, and refining moments, which eventually become less and less messy and lead to calm, authenticity, and joy.

I dropped out of school. I love art history, but I don't want to DO art history. I know. You can mock me. I pick something I want to do and I am gung-ho for a while, and then change my mind.*

In other (very much related) news, I have come to a mutual decision with my boss that I'll only be at my current job until April sometime. I'm not happy here, and we both know it. He wants me to be happy (and so do I), and he needs someone in my position who is passionate about it (which I am not).

So, lots of things to think about in the coming weeks. Lots of prayer, trips to the temple, self-reflection, and a lot of facing my fears. The things I think I would love to do for a living are not really that stable (painting, designing jewelry). The only exception to that is graphic design, which I am currenly considering. It's creative, which I love, and it also gives me a skill that will allow me to work for companies and organizations that I really believe in (UNESCO, art museums, anti-trafficking organizations, literacy organizations, etc.), without changing my qualifications every time I turn around.

Here's to getting a second Bachelor's Degree. Oy. At least this one will be marketable. :)

Wish me luck!



*And I reserve the right to keep doing so until I've found my happy place.

Research Proposal

For my research proposal, I decided to compare and contrast The Return of the Prodigal Son as depicted by three different artists: Rembrandt, Tissot, and Chagall. I'm going to talk about their religious backgrounds briefly so there is some personal context, and then I will address their artistic style and a few formal elements--most likely color, lighting, and perspective.

Fun, right? :) You probably don't think so, but I am actually really looking forward to seeing how the paper turns out. My rough draft is due tomorrow, so I'll be spending a few hours on it tonight and polishing it up over the next few weeks. The concept of a rough draft is weird for me--I usually just sit down and write it out in one sitting or two straight from beginning to end and then have a couple of people look over it. This will be a new adventure in disciplining myself to just getting the general ideas down and getting the structure and flow together without worrying about my exact word choice and whatnot from the get-go.

These are the paintings I'll be discussing:

Tissot's

Chagall's

Rembrandt's



Ooh, they just give me chills.

Research Proposals

Since we've met a total of three times, it only seems natural that I would already have a research proposal due today for my art history class. Right? Because a week is definitely enough time for me to know which art objects in a span of 20,000 years I'd like to research.

All sarcasm aside, the real problem I face is narrowing down the things I want to research. My three possible topics were:
1. Comparing funerary masks of various cultures and the meaning/power that was attributed to them by that civilization.
2. Discovering (for myself--not all of humanity--obviously) what kind of link there is between abstraction in Mesopotamian art, and abstraction and pattern in Islamic art.
3. The iconography (meaning of the symbols) of Egyptian jewelry and cultures it was influenced by/influenced.

The second topic came to light because I asked a question last class period that my teacher didn't have a definitive answer to, so he said, "That would be a great research paper."

The third topic, though... is much more interesting to me. Hmmm, I wonder why...

So, I'm printing out #2 and #3 and taking both of them with me to class.

(Really, I'm turning in the Egyptian jewelry proposal, and keeping the Islamic art proposal as a backup in case my professor doesn't like my first submission. Wish me luck.)

With Both Feet

A while ago I posted about all of the different options I was thinking about for school.

Well, I made a decision, and I start classes on Monday.

I'm currently going back to BYU as a Post-Bac/Evening student, taking prerequisites to get into the Art History and Curatorial Studies MA program. My end goal is to work in Museum Educational and Family Programming, and I would also love to teach part-time (maybe full-time eventually. We'll see.).

So that's it.

At least for now. There is the one hurdle of actually getting accepted to deal with. GRE, here I come.

Change

I like change. I crave it. It's refreshing and renewing to me.

My college roommates used to joke about me being pregnant all the time because I always wanted to move our furniture around in different configurations. When I owned a house, the artwork on the walls changed about every 6 months.

So. Why bring this up? Well, I just realized today that it is an important factor to consider as I'm weighing different career options.

My most recent career decision is Museum Studies. And I happen to think it's a perfect fit for me.

For the past 6 months or more, I've been trying to decide between art, education, and public administration.

Museum Studies combines them all. I decided I would really love to be the education director of a museum--coordinating workshops, seminars, school tours, creating curriculum based on permanent and temporary exhibits.

Think about it: I would be involved in education (check), surrounded by art and constantly thinking about/researching/talking about art (check), and the content I develop would change regularly, as would the people to whom the information is presented (check). Art, education, public administration, and change.

It's been a long time coming... but I feel really good about it!

So, to help get some experience under my belt, I am volunteering as a docent at both the Springville Museum of Art and the BYU Museum of Art. I'm really excited.

(I just hope it doesn't mean another 4 years of undergrad studies before I can do a Museum Studies Certification.)

Keep your fingers crossed for me! ('Cause I'm going to do it all while working full time.)

L'embarras du choix

At a ward activity with my church in Paris, there was a potluck with some of the most delicious-looking foods I've ever seen.

As I stood before the buffet-style setup trying to decide where to start, a member of the bishopric came up beside me with the same "Where do I start?" look of hesitation on his face.

"Ahh..." he says, "L'embarras du choix." Roughly translated, that conveys the idea of "overwhelmed by my options" or "spoilt for choice."

And that's the perfect description of my life right now. Really, where do I start?

I've been thinking a lot about graduate school, but for the life of me I can't settle on one program over another. It's kind of distressing, mostly because the deadlines are all coming up soon, and I'll need to get cracking on the GRE for some of the applications.

I feel pulled in several different directions. These are the programs I'm thinking of applying to:

-French studies
-French Teaching
-Language Acquisition
-TESOL
-MPA
-Literacy Education

If I did either of the last two, I would want to do both and end up working for a non-profit with a focus on literacy education (either K-12 or adult ed). But I also feel like I should work in that field for at least a year or two to determine whether that's something I would want to do as a full-time career.

I think with French Studies or French Teaching it's almost a no-brainer that I at least apply, but the catch with that is I don't think I would want to teach secondary, so I would have to also do a doctorate. Yowza. I'm 28. You do the math.

They're all sort of related, having to do with literacy, teaching, and language... but they're all different enough that they don't really overlap. Except maybe Language Acquisition and TESOL. Those probably have some significant overlap in the theories I would study.

So, I'm not gonna lie... I think I would love them all. I'm not really making salary a part of the decision, because choosing a career based on how much I would make is a recipe for disaster (based on previous experience).

That's all. Just needed to get it off my chest.

Decisions, decisions...

So, since I've been home from France I've felt like I should go back to school.

[Insert me whining here.]

I'm secretly (or not so secretly) looking forward to learning all kinds of good stuff, and I'm very openly annoyed about being a poor graduate student living in a crappy basement apartment in Madison, WI. Even though I haven't even applied to the program yet.

Shall I share with you my master plan?

Go to school and get my Master's. (Right now looking at PFMP at Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison and French Pedagogy at NYU)
Get a job at a university or junior college.
Use my faculty/staff benefit to take fine arts classes and become a famous painter, quit my day job, and move to the French countryside where the most difficult decision I will make each day is if I should do plein air painting or use my awesome studio.

Good plan, right?

I know. If you need any help formulating an awesome plan of your own, just let me know.

My French Grammar Classes

took place here.


Just down the street you'll find Notre Dame.


Right next door is this great park. I spent a lot of time in that park.


Ahhhh, Paris. I miss you already.

No More Pencils, No More Books...

... you all know how this finishes, right?

School is done.

I took four tests last week:
1) French Cinema
2) France and Europe (politics)
3) Phoetics
4) Written exam (grammar, conjugation, essay, reading comprehension, listening comprehension)

and today I ACED my verbal French exam. It consisted of choosing from a hat one of 8 texts the teacher had decided upon, preparing in the back of the room (with a blank text--not my own, and no dictionary) while another student had their exam, and then sitting down with two professors, reading out loud to them, and then giving a summary of the text, my own thoughts, and answering any vocabulary questions they had for me.

The student before me struggled a little bit with knowing the vocabulary for his text, and they asked him a lot of questions, so that's what I expected for mine. But after I read a sample of the text, my professor said, "Okay, the time is yours."

That's it?? The student before me at least got a, "Okay, so what do you think of the relationship between these two characters?"

So, I just talked for a few minutes. Essentially, here is the idea of the text and a general idea of what I said:
My text was from the Lettres Philosophiques by Voltaire. This particular letter was about how the willingness of British subjects to be involved in commerce created additional liberties for them as indiviuals, helped the State at large to progress, and even helped the mighty British navy to become what it was at that time.
Voltaire compares this to the Germans, who he said were too obsessed with discovering and proving their noble ancestry to be involved in business affairs, and the French, who he said could buy a title for the right price, then spent the rest of their lives thinking the most important information they would need to know was what time the king arose and retired, all while looking down their noses at the merchants.

His point was that even though the merchants in France might be ashamed of themselves because they hear themselves spoken of so degradingly all the time, they were doing more to help the country progress than the "powdered" courtisans.

Interesting, no? I thought it was, anyway.

After I gave my schpiel, the two professors said, "Very good. Really, very good. Ummmm..." and then they looked for vocabulary to ask me about. But, sneaky like I am, I had purposefully used all of the difficult words in my summary, so they knew I understood them.

So, that was it. They thanked me and sent me on my way.

Yep, I'm awesome.

(Well, today I felt awesome. Ask me about my conjugation skills some other time.)

Phonetique, Linguistique, Orthographe (Phonetics, Linguistics, Spelling)

Strange things are a-happenin' with my language skills these days. French spelling and pronunciation have very little to do with one another (as our phonetics professor keeps drilling into our heads--"Stop looking at the word--just say it!" But in a nice way, not a drill-sergeant way.). So phonetics and understanding how to recreate sounds independent of spelling is important.

However, it's causing some problems with my spelling in English.

Don't worry that while chatting with my dad just now I wrote. "Okay. Love you. Buy."

Or that while writing the above pseudo-quotation from my phonetics professor I put TWO P's in Stop(p).

Help(p)!

My Grammar Teacher...

...probably thinks I'm a total flake.

I missed Friday because I was feeling gross all morning.
Monday I left halfway through class because I felt like I was going to throw up.
Tuesday I went to class, which was incident free.
Tuesday right after class I got hit by a bus.
Today I am missing class again (not to mention the first day of my "France and Europe" seminar and my second session of phonetics) so I can go to the hospital and get x-rays done.

If I was my teacher, I would be annoyed. Thank heavens it doestn't count for anything.

Though, they can report "truant" behavior to the Embassy and get me kicked out of the country. I don't think this week will lead to that kind of action, though. :)

"Soon" is a Relative Term

Ha. So today I feel like crap. I totally interrupted my French class by leaving to go to the bathroom and then going back in, packing up my stuff, and leaving. My teacher was probably bugged, but he was in the middle of talking, so I didn't stop to explain.

But I think that's better than vomiting in the middle of class, right?

So now I'm camped out at home for the night, working on re-writing all of my class notes, creating verb-conjugaison(tion) and usage flashcards, and updating my A-Z address book with alphabetically categorized vocabulary words and their root words/derivatives. Don't be jealous.

On the up side of things, I went to my first French Cinema class today. I'm pretty sure it will consist of us watching a movie every Monday at 10, and not much else. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will take the least effort imaginable.

Today we watched "Oscar," a comedy of errors/farce filmed in 1967. I laughed out loud a couple of times, even while trying to read the french subtitles. But some of the gestural comedy was a little much for me.

I promise at some point I'll put up the pictures from last week. Maybe even tonight. But first, I need to give some attention to my schoolwork.

le bon usage

In French academia, there is one grammar book that rules them all. Initially created as a self-collected series of grammar rules, le bon usage (translates directly as "the good usage," or more correctly as "on correct usage") is THE resource for all questions grammatical in the French language. Maurice Grevisse is the one who did the inital compilation (to use in his own teaching), and although he has passed away (1980), his son-in-law has continuted the tradition of providing updated editions at regular intervals, the last being the 14th edition in 2007.

My French teacher told us about it in class, and although he told us he wouldn't make us buy it, he did insist that if a long-term study of the French language was in our plans (10 years or more), it was simply indespensable for understanding all of the complexities, contradictions, and "exceptions" that exist in French.

So I bought it yesterday. It is 1600 pages, and I had to auction off my virginity to buy it.

No, it wasn't really that expensive, considering that it's an investment in my education. It is quite the massive book, though. So I'll be sending it home with my parents when they come in April. My teacher said it's more complex than anything we would need this semester, but I'd rather get it now and send it home than get home and pay to ship it across the globe. I know how expensive THAT can get, and last time all I ordered was a dictionary on CD-ROM.

So, needless to say, books are some of the things I'll be stocking up on while I'm here and sending home with loved ones.

(Side note: one of the rules that is surely explained in le bon usage is the use of capitalization. In French, many of the things we capitalize in English are simply not capitalized. Ever. Like french and english, or wednesday and january, or east and west. They're all left in lower case. Is it hard for you to read those without wanting to capitalize every one of them? Welcome to my world.)

Super-duper-Superior

That is officially my rank along the language-capacity spectrum in the Sorbonne's eyes.

Well, not the super-duper part, but the Superior part!! Hooray! (Superior, by the way, is the highest ranking. So, it goes without saying that I felt good about that. But I'm going to say it anyway because I'm so Ego-centric!)

I went to take the first part of my language proficiency test today. It was easy. Of course I made mistakes, but they had more to do with remembering to match my nouns with the proper endings to their adjectives (masculine and feminine) than anything. Oh, and a couple of vocabulary problems on the more advanced portion of the test. But I was the first one done, if that means anything (which it doesn't). Oh, and I didn't mess up on purpose. I did my best, because I figure if I'm going to pay 1400 Euro, I might as well try hard.

Once I was done with the test I met with one of the teachers so she could correct the test and do a preliminary oral proficiency test. We chatted for a few minutes about where I was from and if I had ever been to France (when/where/why). After a couple of minutes she said, "I can see without any problem that you are the Superior level both gramatically and phonetically." I didn't expect her to come to that conclusion so quickly (or at all, frankly. I thought I would be Advanced, not Superior), so it took me by surprise when she thanked me and wished me a good day.

Well, thank you very much.

Looks like that BA degree was in fact good for something.

School Registration...

... is not a one-stop shopping experience here. Today I stood in line for an hour and a half basically to pay my registration fee. I go to a different (third) location tomorrow for my written exam to determine which grammar level I will be assigned to, and then on the 13th of February I will take the phonetics exam (basically an oral pronunciation test, I think).





While in line I met a girl from Seattle who was staying in a hotel while she looked for a place to live. I can't imagine moving here without knowing where I was going to live. Or having to lug my crap all over Paris twice beore settling in. I also met a guy from London who was here at the request of the Red Cross to improve his French. He had just spent six months in Jorda. How cool is that? I wanted to ask if he had gone to Petra, but we started talking about something else. Petra is one place I would like to go before I die. How amazing. (For those of you who don't know what Petra is and won't follow the link I posted, it is the cool city carved out of the red rock that is in the Indiana Jones and the "Last" Crusade movie.)



But, as Jessica would say, "That's neither here nor there."

Because I knew there would be a bit of a wait, I stopped at a bookstore across the street and bought a couple of books to keep me company. I started reading one while in line. It's a play called "Parle-moi d'amour." A direct translation would be "Talk to Me About Love." It's interesting so far... the whole premise is a married couple who aren't happy in their marriage having this big blow-up fight where they air all of their frustrations. It's supposed to examine relations between men and women in modern society. We'll see.

So, this is my school.

Nice, huh?

This is a little statue of a big-time smartie across the street (with a little park and the Cluny in the background).

The inscription says (basically):

"Paris has had my heart from my infancy. I am not French but by this city, which is inurpassable and incomparable in its variety. The glory of France is one of the most noble adornments in the world (or of the world)."

Amen, Montaigne. Amen.

I'm trying to decide if it's the tourists who rub his feet hoping to come back to Paris (like the Trevi Fountain in Rome), or if it's students who are hoping some of his brilliance will "rub" off on them before they write their big essay tests. (Ha. I'm hilarious, I know. Don't hate me.)

In the little park behind Montaigne I took this. It's amazing how gorgeous sculptures can fall into disrepair becuase there are so many that this is "just another" among hundreds.

And this is the back of the Cluny Museum.

I love the building, and it's actually a really interesting museum full of artifacts from the Middle Ages. I think I'm going to buy a 5-day museum pass next week and go on a musem blitz of the city. I'll definitely be visiting the Cluny.

Registering for School...

... is turning out to be quite the process.

Today I went to the Estrapade Center (which is right behind the Pantheon) for my "check-in," where they basically told me everything I already knew (there's this thing called a website...) and gave me the schedule for the civilization presentations for the rest of the semester.

They also gave me a slip with an appointment to go to the actual Sorbonne building tomorrow afternoon to pay my final tuition fees and then set another appointment to take the language aptitude test.

So, by the time school actually starts, I should be pretty familiar with that area. Should being the operative word here, people. I did get completely lost in that area today.

Thinking About

-bombing the language assessment test for class registration on purpose so I get put into an easier French class (homework is the last thing I want to think about while I'm in Paris--class was only an excuse to get into the country).
-taking a painting class or two while I'm there.
-all the museums I want to visit.
-panini, drinking chocolate and awesome bread with yummy cheese

A Note From France

As I've been going through all the stuff I moved from the townhouse back to my parents', I found a notecard I had sent to Jessica and Happy while I was in Europe with my family last May (2007).



Isn't it cute? I loved the pop-up Eiffel Tower.

Here is what I wrote:

Hey, ladies!! We're off to Berlin in the morning, so I just thought I would drop you a line from Paris before we left. London was great, Paris was FAB-U-LOUS, and I absolutely need to move here. We'll see what Germany and Italy have in store for us next! Thanks for holding down the fort while I'm gone! See you soon. Love, Sar.

Over the past few days I've been having some minor freak-out moments. When I think too hard about moving to a city with 11 million people, by myself, without knowing anyone, I kind of get nauseated. But then I see things like this notecard, and I realize how comfortable I am there, how much I flat out love it, and how well I communicated with everyone in Paris when I was there with my family (I definitely took on the role of official spokesperson).


I'll have two full weeks to adjust to Paris life before school even starts, so I'll be able to figure out where the grocery store is, how long it takes to walk to the Metro, how long the train ride is, and how long it takes to walk to school. I'll have time to go see some exhibits, and maybe even go on my first out-of-country adventure. I'll stop in to go to Institute on my first day, call the missionaries to figure out which ward I'm in, and get myself unpacked and my shelf in the kitchen cupboard and fridge stocked so I don't just eat panini and crepes for a week straight (my immediate family knows that this is a serious possibility). The second day I'm in town is when I go to school to have my language skills tested. Once that is done they will determine which class "level" I belong in and I'll know more about what my class schedule will be like. That's the 22nd... and classes don't start until Feb. 10th. So, really there's no good reason for me to freak out.


I'll also be taking a LOT of pictures. So prepare yourselves.

Advertise on Your Child's Homework

I think this article is sad, but I applaud the teacher. He ensured that his students' success continued despite a lack of funding. Very cool.

And yet not cool that it was necessary.