The smallest one was Madeline...

This past month has been wonderfully full.  Days have been packed with French meetings and internship meetings, coffee and classes.  I had forgotten how beautiful a full schedule is, how refreshing it is to fall asleep exhausted.

On Friday I met with the directors of Impact and Launch, two scholarship programs unique to Wofford.  As we discussed the possibility of a photo shoot and how to convince 60 students to engage in bio-writing activities, I felt like an adult.  I was contributing in a new way.

I have worked with adults before, but it has always been as an assistant.  Me, being told what to do, when to do it.  As I collaborated on ideas, my position changed from one of a doer to that of a contributor.  As part of a team, words were bounced back at me, made better by their stint in another’s brain.

I came to the meeting with a task.  I needed 60 bios from busy students who are tired of answering emails and taking surveys.  There was no way that SurveyMonkey would give us what we wanted from the students.  How do we get students engaged?  What question needs to be asked.  We stumbled upon it.  How did you get from infancy to here?  It is open enough that students can read in to it. 

“For gypsies do not like to stay -
They only come to go away.” 
 Ludwig Bemelmans, Madeline and the Gypsies

Here as in, this room, on this day?  Here as in my emotional state?  Here as in my major?  The possibilities are endless, and the responses promise to be varied. 

As a member of Impact, I am now asking myself this question.  My bio will be next to all the others.  How did I get here?

I owe my love of adventure and baguettes to Madeline.  As the smallest in my class, Madeline’s own height appealed to me— as did her adventures.  She explored a beautiful city, one full of cafés and mishaps.  My child-mind saw the streets of Paris and never again considered the sidewalks of Jacksonville.  Since the age of 3, I have tried to find Paris.  Not just Paris the place, though I have come to love this, but Paris the idea.  Madeline’s Paris was a maze of streets melding into each other.  I try to find this, wherever I go.  Paris remains an idea, an idea I find every day hiding just behind the words of “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” and just behind the bell tower of Wofford.   

Trying to find Paris.

There is a first attempt.  I think it is what we are looking for.  This is me in a paragraph.  It says more than the words.