ACP Year of 1964-65

After my life in England and France, I found that not only was I an American at heart, but I was also a bit English and a bit French. After 20 years of owning a vacation home in France and spending time there every one of those years, I am even more so and feel my life is enriched by this. But in my 20’s, it was a distraction and in many ways a burden since I did not feel at home in any country. In England I was not English. In the US, I was not fully an American. In France(especially since my French was and is a sacrilege to that language of the poets) not French. I did not feel I belonged anywhere and did not have the network of friends or community that most of my classmates had leading back to their family, town and previous schooling. Did others of you have any level of this same experience and if so, did you find in the end that it helped you grow or inhibited that growth? Was this limited to personal relationships or did it affect professional pursuits as well? Did it influence your choice of professions? Spur you to choose a mate from another culture?

Speaking personally, I was the world’s lousiest student at ACP. I am convinced it was only by applying a huge curve on the final exams, that the college not only passed me but gave me a sufficiently high score that I was able to actually get accepted to a college back in the US thus interrupting my fall back position of volunteering for the Navy. But I know there were some very fine students occupying the same space as I was and I am interested in how they rated their academic experience at ACP. Things like: without a real campus how did they find they were able to study? Were their studies enhanced by doing them in Paris? Did the academic experience in Paris enhance their college experience when they went on to other colleges and universities? Did you also attend courses offered by French establishments? Did you take advantage of the ACP excursions and did they make any difference? Did this experience actually lead you to international studies and careers?

In addition to my two years in Paris at ACP, I grew up in England attending English boarding schools as a kid and then switching to the US Forces high schools for grades 9-12, so I grew up both as an expat American and an “embedded” foreigner in the British schools system, so I was given a rather unique opportunity to view my fellow Americans through a foreigner’s eyes. But most of my fellow alums at ACP were military kids who, while they often lived in little Americas on US bases, were also exposed to many foreign countries and cultures in a way that kids raised and educated in the US were not. So this is a bit of a mixed theme but revolves around the question “how has living abroad changed your thinking about America’s role and behavior abroad especially your time in Paris at ACP?”

Welcome to the new Blog for the American College in Paris Class of 64-65. This is entirely experimental and designed after several conversations with classmates that I have been keeping up with sporadically as well as a couple I have just reconnected with after 40 years. 40 YEARS!!!! Yeah, well actually this is precisely the point. We are all at a point where we have some life experience and many of us are facing the big “60″ birthday. Most fellow alums are too busy to waste much time in nostalgia. Despite that, since our class did not have a year book and at the time I took snap shots which ended up as some of the only documentation of our time in Paris and created the foundation of my own career as a photographer. So enjoy the scrapbook that is up at http://daprix.com/acp64-65. (If you don’t want your photos included, let me know at peter@peterdaprix.com). The main reason for this blog is that in one on one conversations with the few alums I am still in contact with, we notice that the experience in Paris seems to have given us a different perception of the world than if we had never left the States. It seems to be characterized by an appreciation that the world operates in an infinite set of shades of grey rather than the black and white that tends to be an American approach. We also seem to understand that other cultures can operate quite happily and successfully, at least from their point of view, under different sets of values, ethics, religions, type of political structure, even with rampant corruption. To be sure, everyone bitches and complains about their leaders, but when it comes right down to it, the status quo for the majority of members of populations is preferable to tearing it all down and trying to live with something unknown. Since this is especially pertinent to today’s US foreign policy, I am particularly interested in a wider set of comments from alums as to how they feel their time at ACP and life in Paris help create their view points and how they look at life as a result. So please feel free to express your ideas about your own experiences on any topic here. We may all have more in common that we think no matter our occupation or political stance. Peter d’Aprix “64-’66.