That's her!

During my last week of classroom observations, as I walked into the classroom, one of my students yelled, “That’s her! She’s the one from Harvard!” She had brought a friend to meet me. Apparently she has been telling all her friends about the Harvard student in her class, and they are all jealous.

It’s hard to know what kind of effect you have on an environment when you study it, even after an incident like this one. Theoretically, after 7 weeks I start becoming a normal presence in the class, but the Harvard name is hard to get past. As much as it opens doors, I must also be mindful of how it influences my interviewees.

A good researcher must also think about how their subjects affect them in return. I was rejected from a swanky downtown nightspot a few weeks ago for not dressing well enough. It came as a surprise until I took a good look at the others in line. Most of my time is spent in high schools in working class neighborhoods, so jeans and sneakers are all I wear anymore. Not exactly made for clubbing.

As if I cared what nightclubs thought of my clothes.

Sick of croissants

This blog was written over the course of a very long day.

Three months, and I’m ready to leave Paris. I passed by a bakery today, and was somewhat nauseated by the thought of yet another chocolate croissant for breakfast, hungry as I was.

I’m sick of dressing decently for interviews, dog poop on the street, expensive Parmesan cheese, the Parisian cold, sandwiches on a baguette, long paper, using the metro as my office, people being distant, fries with mayonnaise…

I want to wear sweatpants to dinner, dammit.

Ok, I’m just tired. I will probably miss fresh bread, my friends here, my high school students, my teachers, running around every day, cooking for myself, being surrounded by amazing restos.

So I’ll come back and again, and realize that I still can’t take more than 3 months here.

Get off my terrain

I showed up to one of my high schools today, and was introduced to another researcher, there to observe the same class. My first reaction: they’ve come here too.

They, as in the army of researchers and journalists who are interested in the same affirmative action policy that my thesis is on. The ones I try to avoid as I choose my high schools, and I conduct my interviews. One of my interviewees has already talked to three researchers, and she’s tired. “We’re starting to feel like wild animals. I can only hope that your theses will change attitudes about us.”

Of course, I don’t see myself as part of this body. I’m not voyeuristic, I tell myself. I’m not coming in with ridiculous stereotypes about the French banlieue—hell, I live in the banlieue. Yes, I go to these schools alone, without pepper spray and everything. I’m not shocked when these kids say intelligent things.

But aren’t I one of “them,” all the same? I am an outsider, trying to understand the lives of these students and teachers by talking to them and ‘observing them in their natural environment.’ We researchers are carving up the banlieue to study it, so interested in understanding how it works, yet in doing so we are contributing to the stigma.

An inevitable catch-22?