Group of young adult students in classroom. (hryshchyshen (123RF))
Every time someone asks me where I’m from, it throws me off-balance. After my whole life of answering this question, I should be used to it and should know what to say, but I don’t, and I always jump into an over-descriptive spiel in response to what should have been an easy question. Other people almost always respond that it must be so hard to uproot my life every few years, or that I probably miss my dad when he’s deployed, or that it must be fun to live on base. The truth is that I haven’t moved nearly as much as other military brats, that my dad hasn’t been deployed since I was a baby and that I haven’t lived on base since I was three years old. I usually spare them this explanation and just nod awkwardly, because I learned a long time ago that many people assume that every military kid has the same experience.
But these interactions always make me wonder what it would be like if I had lived on base, gone to DoDEA schools, had a more absent dad, and maybe lived in the U.S. for more than three years. I wonder what it would be like if I’d lived the normal military brat life.
I think that if I had grown up living in on-base housing and going to a DoDEA school, I would have had something more similar to the American high school experience. I would have been surrounded by other Americans with similar backgrounds to mine, an American curriculum and American testing and grading.
Instead, what I got was an early immersion in an entirely French-speaking Belgian public school when I was five years old, followed by four years of homeschooling, and then back into a bilingual French-English school in France. The changes were a little brutal and unbalancing, but I enjoyed every one, at least for a while.
What I’ve found is that people assume all of these changes in schooling must feel intense and scary all the time, but they forget that you get used to anything after a while. My experience doesn’t feel like anything crazy, because I lived it.
But what I often forget is that my experience is unique, it is special, and it is part of who I am. Thanks to my childhood, I am fluent in French, and I always underestimate the impact of this on how I think. I’ve learned first-hand that the French language is structured differently from the English one, and the French mind works and thinks differently than the English one. I’ve learned that cultures are more different than just a language and how people dress; it is how they think as well.
An example of this is that if I ask someone in the French service sector to do something they don’t normally do, their initial response will almost always be no, but after a little bit of insisting, they will often change their response to maybe, and then do their best to accomplish the favor. I think this is linked to a more closed, seemingly negative approach towards strangers in France, as opposed to a friendly and helpful, consumer-centric behavior that is expected from employees in the U.S. The message here isn’t that French people are meaner than Americans, but that they tend to be more reserved and less people-pleasing than American employees, possibly because of the absence of a tipping culture in France. I find a little bit of wariness of strangers to be a good thing.
The best part of my experience is that my dad, an intelligence officer, hasn’t been deployed since I was a baby. My life definitely feels more complete than it would if he hadn’t been there, and I’m extremely lucky to have a dad who works nearby.
My experience in different schooling systems is definitely something that I am grateful for, since it’s given me different perspectives and ideas than I would have had if I had simply gone to DoDEA schools. Especially going to a French-speaking school and then returning home to my English-speaking family, I have gained an ability to change my perspective and behavior depending on my cultural surroundings; something that is immensely special and useful in this day and age. I may have missed out on things like having mostly American military friends and school experiences like homecoming and prom, but I have learned things thanks to my experience that I could not have in other circumstances, and for that, I am extremely grateful.
Editor’s Note: This article was written by a member of the local military community, not an employee of Stars and Stripes. Neither the organization nor the content is being represented by Stars and Stripes or the Department of Defense.
