They were three. Students aged 15 or 16, looking shy, in front of me. The one in the middle took the lead. ” Good morning sir ! We are Armenians. You said you learned bad words in Armenian in high school. Can you tell us which ones? »
They looked less shy all of a sudden. It was I who found myself stammering that my memory was failing me, that my pronunciation – if by chance I managed to remember the words – would probably be incomprehensible. “But still…”, their gaze seemed to say.
Each time I am invited to speak to a group of students, whether in high school, CEGEP or university, I remind myself that it is not so easy to capture their attention. I sympathize with the teachers who have to do this on a daily basis. I rarely had to talk about my job to primary school students. Yet they are the best of audiences, my office neighbor Stéphanie assures me. “They always have their hands up, ready to ask a question. »
I knew that the nearly 200 Secondary 4 students who attended my conference as part of their career day would not easily raise their hands. They are like all teenagers of all generations. You have to inject some fuel into the engine to get it running, and not just in very cold weather.
The vast majority of high school students don’t read newspapers, any more than those of my day did. They probably don’t know what a journalist eats in the winter and don’t really care. I felt that I was boring them a bit with the summary of my educational and professional background. I told them that in April it will be 30 years since I published my first article in The Press. A relic. I saw a few bayer aux crows.
I interested them more by talking about cinema and soccer. A hand went up. “Messi or Ronaldo? asked a student, intrigued by my coverage of the World Cup. “The answer is easy,” I told him. He and his friends applauded me when I declared my Manchester United allegiances. I told them that I had seen Cristiano Ronaldo score a hat-trick at the stadium last year and that he was a player I had admired since his debut.
The student looked at his friends smiling, anticipating my response, when I added that in my opinion the best player of all time was Lionel Messi. They let out an “Ohhhh!” collective. I had finally managed to get a reaction out of them!
I understood that it was to my advantage to play the mild provocation card. “What didn’t you like aboutAvatar ? asked a student, after I described James Cameron’s film as a military fantasy in a new-age coating. ” All ! I answered him. Except maybe the special effects. »
I told them about my memories of high school, in these same walls, at the end of the 1980s. That my father was director of students, that my brothers and my sister studied there at the same time as me. That I had found the same classrooms of my adolescence, the photo of my father on the mosaic at the entrance to college, the same Lafleur restaurant where we went to eat fries after our cosom hockey games.
I told them that I had already been sanctioned at their age because I had kissed my girlfriend on the stairs, between two classes (it made them laugh), that I was still seeing friends from high school… and that the first words that I had learned there from my Greek, Armenian and Lebanese friends were, of course, “bad words”.
By telling them all this pell-mell, I said to myself that we do not measure, at 15 or 16 years old, to what extent these formative years, those of secondary school, will be significant in our life course. Whether we liked like me, or not, our school, our teachers, our classmates. Whether or not a guidance counselor – thank you again, Mr. Larochelle – organized for us, in Secondary IV, a visit to the premises of The Press which influenced our trajectory.
I’m not sure Sonny, whose graduating photos we just received, fully appreciates the lasting impact of the past five years. My friend Jacinthe sent me some pictures taken in one of her photography projects last week. She followed, over several years, secondary school students, including Fiston, who appears multiplied horizontally, at different ages, in the same uniform, bigger and bigger, gradually leaving childhood behind.
The three students who had come to see me at the end of the conference were still waiting for my response. I ventured to repeat the only sentence in Armenian that I have known since high school. They laughed, putting their hands to their mouths, congratulating me on my pronunciation.