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Armed with a dangerous guttural \u201cr\u201d and a quick draw of the cigarette lighter, I graduated from Bates College in 2002 with a major in Francophone Studies and a secondary concentration in Economics. The former, French language and francophone cultures have been a life long passion, while the latter appeased my parents\u2019 endless question of \u201cWhat are you going to do with a French degree?\u201d I\u2019d like to think that they\u2019ve eaten their words a bit in the last 5 years or so. I\u2019ll tell you why.<\/p>\nA month after I graduate from Bates, I became a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Fouta Djallon which is a region of Guinea, West Africa. Nestled in Timbo, a mountain village in a valley, I taught middle school Math (in French of course) while I also worked with the village youth group to spark HIV\/AIDS awareness amongst their peers. Living without running water, electricity, and a computer was a bit of a stretch for me, but I learned to go to bed when the sun went down and get up at the 5am prayer call. From 2002 \u2013 2004, I felt a bit disjointed from home life, but I cherish the adventures, life lessons, and people that I met because they have helped me find a big part of who I am. I resided in Guinea for another year where I was fortunate enough to work at the Institut National de Recherche et d\u2019Action P\u00e9dagogique (INRAP), a branch of the Guinean Ministry of Education. I jumped right into the use of radio and other media for educational purposes where I worked with a training team of highly skilled Guinean educators. We toured the country training school administrators and teachers on the use of student-centered learning and teaching techniques along with how to adapt radio and audio media into the classroom.<\/p>\n
After hundreds of hours on bumpy dirt roads and sleeping with mosquitoes, I trekked back to the States to \u201csettle down.\u201d Equipped with an \u201cr\u201d that rolled like the hills of the Fouta Djallon and an endless supply of friendly greetings, I enrolled in the Master\u2019s of Education program at the Center for International Education (CIE) at the University of Massachusetts \u2013 Amherst. I wanted to study the theory and practices of the types of development work that I had been doing in the Peace Corps. Somehow the travel bug still fluttered inside me. CIE sent me to Madagascar and the Comoro Islands in the Spring of 2007 to work on a radio education project. Chaotic as it was, I simultaneously helped write radio scripts while I also finished my master\u2019s thesis.<\/p>\n
Currently, I\u2019m pursuing my doctorate at CIE\/UMass where I\u2019m studying, teaching, recruiting for the Peace Corps, and more. This year, I\u2019ll be working in Senegal on a CIE project called LIRE (Learning Initiatives for Rural Education) where I\u2019ll be collaborating with teachers in local schools in Senegal who teach multi-grade levels. My academic interests are extremely varied, but I plan to focus on issues surrounding technology in French speaking Africa. This includes the ways that youth are using computers and cameras for non-formal educational and employment opportunities, the meanings that youth attach to these media, and how power, agency, and creativity interplay in the use of technology. My dissertation research will be done in Guinea, where I will get the chance to reconnect and\u00a0reminisce with old friends and family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Needless to say, my family is somewhat speechless. I am an \u201cexemple\u201d of what you can do with a degree in French. Take your language skills into an interdisciplinary field. Trust me, you\u2019ll have too many options from which to choose and too much to do! Good luck!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paul St. John Frisoli Class of 2002 Major: Francophone Studies Minor: Economics…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_batesModPostContentOverride_prepend":false,"_batesModPostContentOverride_append":false,"_batesModPostContentOverride_append_before_footer":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-306","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/french-francophone-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/french-francophone-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/french-francophone-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/french-francophone-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/french-francophone-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/french-francophone-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1452,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/french-francophone-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/306\/revisions\/1452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/french-francophone-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}