Working at my museum has made me feel somewhat like a Canadian, as establishments in the French Canadian region always greet visitors with “bonjour, hi!” in order to cater to both French and English speakers. As our museum tends to have more English-speaker tourists as visitors (excluding school field trips), I too have learned to adopt this greeting in order to easily notice those who hesitate to greet me back in French.
This is one of the most important soft skills I have had to learn at my workplace: understanding how to greet, sell tickets, and present the museum in two languages. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, the structure of my speech when doing my presentation of the museum is fairly different in the two languages. With French, I don’t always have as detailed vocabulary to explain my linguistic knowledge to those who do not study it. Yet with English, I seem to be using my French presentation as the base, so if I am too distracted that day, I can get them a bit mixed up.
I think by now, I am most comfortable talking to student groups and explaining their scavenger hunt task in the basement. It still helps when their teacher wrangles them for me and re-explains some aspects, but I feel that more classes really listen when I give them instructions. Working with students is not always my favorite task, but there are some highlights like these and when I get to talk about language with them or answer their questions.
As for hard skills, I have dabbled in a handful of different projects and can run the museum on my own if necessary. Not only do I have research projects to complete when not aiding school groups, I also have to fix computers when they stall or freeze, update digital displays when I have new content, and use my artistic skills to fix physical aspects of displays or repair artifacts.
To be honest, I am not incredibly focused on improving certain skills and goals, I have just found a lot of joy in working at this museum. I take on as many or as little projects as I like, and I get to rotate between tasks so I am not always just speaking to visitors or always doing research. I’ve met so many fun and interesting people that I keep forgetting to go out and explore Paris. For example, how could I not go to our soiree and watch a language related research presentation? It was so hot that day, but I am very happy I stayed to see what our special events are like.
Though this certainly hasn’t meant that I’ve done completely nothing! This past week, the placement program hosted a fun little dinner where we could all spend time again with the team and the other students. It was nice to see all of them again! I even went out to dinner with a few of them before we joined the others to watch the France vs. Senegal game. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of the restaurant we went to for dinner; it was quite the interesting experience as it was rainforest themed with projections, lights, and sound effects to create an immersive effect. A little silly at times, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.
Today marks four weeks before my flight out of Paris. I’m a bit intimidated as I now feel a bit pressured to see things, but I’m trying not to stress. I’ve decided to look for classical music concerts and really take days to go see other museums instead of saying “ah, but what else would I do when it’s so hot?” And I will remind myself to take more photos!
