Making Milledgeville her home
“My father worked for an airplane company when I was growing up, so I had been to the United States about nine times before I decided to study here,” Collier, director of multimedia technology and information systems instructor, said.
Collier is tall and wispy with long arms and legs. She has blonde hair and a wardrobe that any women could lust after.
Collier was born in Rennes, France located about four hours west of Paris and thirty minutes from the English Channel.
“It was an exchange between the University of Reims and GCSU,” Collier said.
It was spring of 1996.
“I lived in Terrell Hall on the third floor. It was co-ed then,” Collier reminisced in her rounded French accent.
Terrell Hall became the home of the Mass Communication Program in 2005. It is now filled with bookcases, filing cabinets and professors. The bathrooms still contain shower stalls and the creaking floors hint at memories of dorm life.
Perhaps it was Collier’s love of the South, or her desire to perfect her English that led her to become an American citizen and stay at GCSU and receive an MA in management information systems. However, she blames it on a boy.
“Jason lived on the second floor (of Terrell Hall),” Collier said. “He was from a small town in Georgia called Perry, and we used to laugh about it because with my accent it sounded a lot like Paris.”
Jason and Caroline began dating in the first year of her exchange. They were married in 1999.
Many exchange students deal with missing home.
“The hardest thing for me was being far from my family. It was the late 90s so we did not have the internet and technology was not as advanced as it is now.”
It was found by the Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences at Wiley InterScience, that the greater the cultural distance between France and the foreign community, as measured by the Cultural Distance Questionnaire used in the study, the greater the psychological distress of the international student placed in that community. Furthermore, the results showed that it was the food that had the greatest impact on the intercultural adjustment.
“I miss good cheese and bread the most,” Collier said.
Customs surrounding French cuisine are quite different as well.
“We eat everything with a fork and a knife. Jason still gives me the eye when I eat my pizza with utensils,” Collier said. “Oh, and Americans put a lot of ice in their drinks. I hardly use any but when the in-laws come over I fill their glass completely with ice.”
Learning the intricacies of a new language is also difficult for many students living in a new culture.
“I had taken about nine years of English but the education program in France is not that good. It is completely different to be over here and be immersed in the culture and the language than to just hear about it. I could read it pretty well,” Collier said.
Life-long friends are made between students on study abroad and exchange student experiences. Adeline Bramlett, manager of Tre’ Bella, in downtown Milledgeville was also a study abroad student who’s stay in Milledgeville has well exceeded the average time for most study abroad student.
Adeline’s husband was actually Caroline’s husband’s roommate.
So whether or not you are in Milledgeville for a four-year (or five-year) degree program, you never know how long your stay might extend.
Collier plans to return to France one day for the sake of her children, Elodie,7, and Tommy,4, who she speaks French to on a regular basis.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Nov 21 2008. Filed under Features.
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