The Fulbright Essay

The importance of finally posting this essay will become apparent after the next post is made. For now, suffice it to say that I am finally satisfying the numerous requests made by my students to be allowed to read it. This was my labor of love last year when my then high school seniors were busily writing their college essays. The task was to write a brief autobiographical sketch of our lives - I decided to take a creative approach to an otherwise slightly boring topic.

"There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away, nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry. This traverse the poorest take without oppress of toil; how frugal is the chariot that bears the human soul." - Emily Dickinson.

I was a young girl in high school when I first came across this poem by Emily Dickinson and over the years this poem has taken on new meaning for me at various stages of my life, but always with the same constant theme - books have been my means of traveling the world, meeting new people, and learning about different cultures. My books have provided a means of escape in troubling times and comfort in times in ease.

My earliest childhood memories involve books. I grew up in a small New England mill town as the eldest of three children in a middle class family. My parents saved for years to be able to take us to Disney World when I was twelve, so the ability to travel extensively, or even attend the European trip to France when I was in high school, was quite beyond my reach. However, I did travel to the Midwest and experience life on the prairie with Laura Ingalls Wilder, solve the greatest mysteries with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, travel under the sea with Captain Nemo, experience seeking the white whale, Moby Dick, with Captain Ahab, and grow up in a family of all girls, little women, with Jo. My summers were spent reading in the backyard under a tree, by the window of my bedroom or on a sandy beach. Never was I without a book or my library card.

Later, as I grew more sophisticated, I toured Shakespeare's Renaissance England and Italy, Fitzgerald's Jazz Age, Hemingway's Spain and Cuba, Dickens' Industrialized England and revolutionary France, Austen's English countryside, Flaubert's provincial France, Tolkein's Middle Earth, Remarque's first world war, Denisovich's Russian gulags, Allende's Chile, Kingsolver's work of the American missionary in Africa, O'Brien's Vietnamese jungles, and Golden's world of a Japanese geisha girl. My travels took me from one corner of the world to the other, while I remained in my sheltered mill town with a foray to the "big city" to attend college.

As I grew and explored these worlds, the words of Emily Dickinson's poem resonated in my mind from my young adulthood. I was traveling, despite my limited financial means, my ambition to become a writer or journalist inspiring me onward to my commitment to the years of education that desire entailed. It was only natural that I would enter college as an English major, and by my junior year also add the study of world history as a second major. My travels in my novels had sparked an interest in other cultures and historical events that I wanted to pursue on a more intellectual and factual level. Still, my travelling was limited to the classroom and historical fiction.

Later, as I married, had children, and divorced I continued to find solace in my stories and the places I could travel. Eventually I found my way into educational publishing and ultimately returned to school to pursue my Master's degree in secondary education with a concentration in history.

On my first venture into the world of the classroom I quickly introduced my students to the novel, A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. Lessons on writing and interpretation were combined with history lessons on the causes and effects of the French Revolution and videos on King Louis and Marie Antionette. The one thing I lacked, while exposing my students to this world, was first hand knowledge of the places I was teaching about in my lessons- the streets of Paris wandered by a lonely Sydney Carton, the Palace of Versailles, the Tuilleries gardens, the Conciergerie where Marie Antionette spent her final days, the Place de Vendome, the Siene River, the French countryside and the chateau of the Marquis, the city of London, the Old Bailey, Tellson's Bank, the town of Dover, and the experience of a ferry ride across the English channel. I did not think that this was inhibiting my enthusiasm for the story and bringing this revolution to life for my students. I continued for thirteen years to introduce my students to the world's of my favorite authors, without ever having ventured to Europe, not realizing that my desire to see the world through my own eyes, rather than through the pages of my books, would soon change.

In the fall of 2007, at the age of 42, I was offered the opportunity to be a teacher/chaperone for the school sponsored European trip, which would take place in the summer of 2008, run by my own high school French teacher. Excitedly, I seized this opportunity, not only for myself, but also for my seventeen year-old son, Zachary. I had never had the chance to attend this trip at his age, and I was determined to provide it for him. Since I was able to attend without cost to myself, I began urgently to save the money for Zach's ticket. I was thrilled to get my very first United States passport and thought of the Spanish and French stamps that would be put on its pages. Our trip was scheduled to take us to Barcelona, Provence and Paris...finally, I would be able to walk in the footsteps of Sydney Carton and see the places in my favorite novel.

Nothing can explain my first reactions to the view of the Spanish coastline and Spanish mountains from the highest heights of Barcelona. Tears came to my eyes as I imagined the world of Don Quixote and his windmills. I eagerly learned all I could as I toured this marvelous city. I basked in the richness of its architectural structures and swam in the seas of the Mediterranean as I imagined the Spanish Armada sailing away to invade England. I continued to remain in awe as we traveled by bus through Spain as Hemingway's world of the Spanish Civil War swept before me as I saw old forts in the hillsides. Entering France I visited the intact walled city at Carcassone, constructed by the Cathars to protect themselves from French Catholic invaders. I took photograph after photograph so that I could finally have slide shows of my own European travels to enhance my classroom lessons.

When I arrived in Paris, after a TGV ride through the French countryside, I was overcome once again by a rush of emotions. I could not believe, after years of burying my nose in books with Paris as the setting, I was standing on the platform of the train station...like Charlotte Gray seeking her lost love from World War II. My desire to see the places in the pages of my books has been sparked with my first European tour. In nine short days, my life changed, no longer are the pages of the books good enough. I want to experience first hand, by immersing myself in the culture and lifestyles of the countries I have read about all my life. I believe that I will be a better mom and a better teacher for the opportunity to participate in the experience of a Fulbright Teacher Exchange program.