My University French Professor
"I knew you as a good student. 52 Friends showed me a real person beyond a bright Schulich student," says Monsieur Marjollet.
Yesterday I met Monsieur Marjollet for coffee, or perhaps it was the day before. He sits in a booth at a Toronto café as I run in, late having been stuck in traffic or because I had a morning meeting run longer than expected. Despite this late arrival, he feels guilty that I’ve driven into the city.
There are few people like Monsieur Marjollet but there is only one him. I enrolled in two of his French business courses during my second and fourth years of university, respectively—quickly learning that it is common practice for Christian M., as he signs off emails, to walk around handing out chocolate while students handwrite answers to test essay questions.
He is known by these students to be poised and inquisitive. Monsieur Marjollet who has since retired was in his late 60s when I turned to my classmate Paulina and whispered that he is more technologically savvy than my parents. A story he finds flattering when I share it—he assumes he lags in those skills.
It is the desire to learn that makes Monsieur Majollet someone cherished. He’s interested in various topics—including learning Danish but also in his students. “Is Daria working in Amsterdam now? Did Pegah move into the city? And Valeska?” he asks of my friends from his class.
There are two words for the irregular verb, “to know,” in French. The first, savoir, means to know something factually. The second, connaitre, means to know by way of familiarity—to have personally experienced.
A French teacher I once had during a summer camp in Quebec explained that the easiest way to make the distinction is that the V in savoir refers to verbs while the N in connaitre refers to nouns. For example, savoir would be used for saying, “I know how to dance,” while connaitre would be used in this sentence, “I know Miriam.”
As a professor, Monsieur Marjollet knew me as a student. His job was to concentrate on intellectual abilities with little insight into personal lives. I’d submit my work for grading and anxiously wait for it to be assigned value as if it were some sort of currency.
Though I was never one to associate my worth with a mark, I observed that a grade whether high or low was a form of deception. A professor seemed to like me more when I earned an A or less when my preference for creativity never led me far in a subject like finance. Figures acted as the basis of familiarity—the same way they do in most grownup contexts.
We say I am a lawyer who works these many hours. I’ve had these many promotions. I’ve visited these many countries. This is how much my home costs. And then we feel like we know someone.
When Monsieur Marjollet became the Head of New College at York University, he discovered the non-academic life of students. A perspective few professors are lucky to face—to deal not with knowledge but with people’s lives.
“For me, 52 Friends, in other words, you, are an example of the student versus the human being. I knew you as a good student. 52 Friends showed me a real person beyond a bright Schulich student,” he says.
It is the lunch hour and the café we are sitting in is becoming increasingly noisy. This annoys both of us. Monsieur Majollet leans in to tell me that he has always been a pessimist. Since as long as he can remember, which is to his early childhood in his native France, the glass has been half empty.
“My mother’s mother died when I was born, maybe that is why,” he says.
I understand him in certain ways. My mother’s mother died when she was pregnant with me and although I don’t consider myself a pessimist, I have been prone to periods of unhappiness. “My sadness stems from disillusionment,” I say.
I have a habit of idealizing situations. I’ll walk a street and picture it as the set of the 1960s film. I’ll find humour in a bad date. I’ll listen to Puccini when I accomplish a great goal as if he is singing to congratulate me. Then someone, usually someone completely irrelevant, will question my whimsyness and I’ll doubt my right to see the positive in most things.
“My grandparents always say that life is like a dream,” I say.
“I don’t know if I see it that way,” says Monsieur Marjollet. “Write more about your grandmother. She’s much more interesting than me. Surviving a war. Two immigrations.”
Growing up among Russian Jews, I considered my grandparents ordinary. My grandfather, Mordecai, the optimist. My grandmother, Rozalya, the realist. The two survived the Holocaust thanks to their parents' efforts and met in Vilnius, Lithuania in the early ‘60s. In the 1970s during the Soviet aliyah, they emigrated to Israel with my father and his sister and then to Canada eight years later.
Life made the two tough and practical. My grandmother laughs when I tell her about some of my problems, assuring me that they are not problems but eventual memories that should be funny.
Her name, Rozalya, reminds Monsieur Marjollet of a Polish lady he knew during childhood. A woman who left Poland with her sisters after World War One with no education to work on farms in France. She later became a housemaid for his maternal grandparents and it was around that time he came to know her—eventually, she married and had eight or nine children.
“The hardships these Rozalyas have suffered without complaining humble me,” he says.
Monsieur Marjollet, the pessimist, is anything but misunderstanding. He’s currently responsible for a 94-year-old man with Alzheimer’s—a man who pre-COVID and until the age of 89 rode his bicycle around Toronto. We acknowledge that the long-term side effects of the pandemic are failing to be fully addressed. I mention the lack of care my mom received as a breast cancer patient during that period—the identity crises many of us faced in a constricted world.
This pandemic that ate into my early 20s and changed my perception of time—the lost years amplifying my wish to live meaningfully. It’s been five years since I graduated from university, five years that feel like a lifetime ago, sometimes it feels like just yesterday. For Monsieur Marjollet, it is the latter.
I thought of myself as an adult when I started my degree at 18, but can now recognize this was the beginning of adulthood and self-discovery. At a young age, first-year students join courses like The Meaning of Life.
“There are people who fail that course. Imagine failing The Meaning of Life at 18. I don’t know the meaning of life,” Monsieur Marjollet says. “Do you?”
“No,” I answer.
We’re led to believe that if we want to live a full life with positive relationships, romantic or platonic, we need to prepare ourselves for one another like an assignment for grading or a sales presentation. If, however, we truly aspire to be known by way of familiarity then we should want to be accepted as we are—optimist or pessimist.
“Accept ourselves and then have others accept us,” says Monsieur Marjollet.
“Maybe that is the meaning of life,” I say. “To accept.”
Hey friend, thank you for reading! I’m glad you’re here. Please leave a comment if you have a moment, I’d love to know what you think of this piece or anything else :)
If you liked what you read, it would make my day if you shared it!
And if you’re not a subscriber but stumbled upon this page because someone shared it with you, please do subscribe.