After leaving Clonard in 2006, I lived on campus at Monash University in Clayton for two years, where I began a Bachelor of Arts, studying French, English, journalism and theatre. I decided to put my French to the test in 2009 and completed the third year of my degree at the Sorbonne Nouvelle. This marked the first of about ten years living, studying, and working (mostly in teaching roles) in Paris

It was in 2020 that I ended up leaving Paris and headed south to Toulouse: I had defended my PhD thesis in 2018 and was lucky enough to be offered an ongoing position as a senior lecturer at Toulouse Jean-Jaurès University. As part of my job, I teach a range of practical translation and translation theory classes, supervise postgraduate research, and carry out my own research, mainly on the representation of urban youth speech in French and English. I now have both French and Australian nationality and usually spend a month or so with family and friends in Australia over the European summer.

The skills I developed at Clonard laid the foundations for my career path. In the French classes I took from Years 7 to 12, Madame Lyon encouraged us to speak authentic French with a Parisian accent. In VCE Theatre Studies and English, Ms McKenzie and Mrs Hildebrand taught us to use words well and wisely. Without their guidance—and that of many other teachers—I wouldn’t be where I am today: working and living with and between languages.

Though I graduated from Clonard nearly twenty years ago, I often still feel like the teenage girl I was in the early 2000s, trying to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. The space Clonard gives students to explore their emerging identities—while encouraging them to approach learning with curiosity, to have fun both in and out of the classroom—continues to shape the way I engage with my own students: with care, compassion, and humour.

Tiffane Levick – Class of 2006