Alumni Feature: James Stewart ‘12

9/28/2018

James Stewart '12, Rabun Gap alum and Fulbright Scholar recipient, shares about his experiences at Rabun Gap and what he's been up to since graduating.

James Stewart ‘12 has been busy since graduating six years ago from Rabun Gap. After double majoring in French and Biology at Davidson and graduating in 2016, he has taught English on French-speaking Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean and most recently worked as a Fulbright Scholar in Cameroon conducting HIV research. Mr. Stewart, originally from Hayesville, NC, came to Rabun Gap in 2005 for sixth grade.

James visited Madame Shook’s French classes earlier this month as a guest lecturer. He talked about his experiences in French-speaking countries in Africa and his time as a student at Rabun Gap.

What made you and your family decide on Rabun Gap?

My mom found Rabun Gap and said to herself, “I have to take James there! He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s gonna fall in love with this school.” She actually told me in the beginning, “I have the perfect school for you. It’s over in Rabun Gap, it’s wonderful” and I said, “I don’t want to go.” and she was like “Here’s the deal, if you will go and shadow a student for just a day, and you come back and say you that don’t want to go, I will never bring it up again.” I absolutely loved it.

What made you love Rabun Gap on that first visit?

The arts and languages; walking around and seeing the flags. Since then I think they have tripled. At that time I think they had 16 or 17 countries represented and now we’ve hit 50!

What caused you to be interested in French?

Madame Shook, hands down. I want to say I’ve always been a language person and just never realized it until coming here. My tenth grade year, I could no longer avoid Madame Ann Shook who was the scariest of all the language teachers because she was the most intense and everyone knew it! We always dreaded the days that she would sub in our classes. After that, she just inspired me and made me fall in love with the language. She is one of the reasons that I continuously come back because she’s truly awesome.

Looking back as an adult, what in your mind makes Rabun Gap a special place?

Its rural location and its very humble roots. Its simplicity in a lot of ways, juxtapozed with this incredible academic international community.

What was it like double majoring in French and Biology?

Everyone said, “Why? That makes no sense, those two things don’t go together at all.” People wanted me to pick one and I said, “No, I want to do both!” It was part of my college search, double majoring in Biology and French and studying abroad in France for a full year, not just a semester. I looked around and had a couple different options. Davidson said it’s going to be hard but everything here is hard, and I said, “I graduated from Rabun Gap, I can do hard. It’s no problem!” Davidson felt like an extension of what I had here at Rabun Gap. It was very

multicultural place and very small, community driven. It was one of the rare places where athletes and artists were students first and athletes and artists second.

What were your plans after graduating from Davidson?

Adventure time. I knew that I wasn’t done traveling. Everyone told me to put off being an adult as long as you can; go have adventures as long as you have opportunities where other people pay you money to travel and do fun things. Coming out of Davidson, I applied for a Fulbright grant to go to Cameroon and do HIV research. To me, this was the culmination of my two paths: science and language. People wondered what I was going to do with Biology and French and my answer was to go do Biology in a place where they speak French. I was the runner up for the Fulbright grant for that year -- I was the alternate recipient. My first year out of Davidson, I did not go to Cameroon but I had a back up plan of going to teach English in France. This program is call TAPIF - Teaching Assistant Program in France. It’s a program that sends Americans all over France to be assistant English teachers in French schools for seven to eight months. You are placed in either a middle school or high school. Most people request to be near Paris or the South of France, but I wanted to be on an little island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, because that sounded awesome. I went to Reunion Island where I taught English for eight months and it was one of the best experiences of my life. I lived with a Creole family there and they incorporated me into their whole family unit. I ate with them every night, the Creole grandmother would cook every night, and we would eat together as a family. There were all these Creoles who had lived on this island forever and the American hanging out together. It was a great experience.

What happened after you received the Fulbright Scholarship?

I learned that I had received it while I was still on Reunion. I came back to the States, spent the summer here preparing, and in September I flew to Cameroon in Africa for a nine month fellowship over there. Cameroon is a French speaking country, so I spent all of my time speaking French. Any time I was on the street and out, I was speaking French. Globally, I was doing HIV research. I had initially applied for the project to work with this one professor at a research lab in the capital city doing work in molecular biology/laboratory stuff. Two months before I left, the lab shut down and the professor was leaving the country. I already had all of my visa information, stamps in my passport,and plane tickets, so I still decided to go to Cameroon. I spent several months building a project from scratch. What I ended up doing was looking at key populations of HIV infected individuals - those most at risk for contracting the disease, which in Cameroon is gay men and female prostitutes. They were the most at risk with between a 30-50% rate of HIV. My project was to look at how well those two groups were retained in the healthcare system after they began treatment. Are they still on it after six months? Are they still on it after 12 months? And if not, why? It had mixed results and limited success. I did not anticipate how fiendish the bureaucracy in Cameroon would be. Something that could get done in three days here took two months there.

What are your plans going forward?

I plan to move to DC where I will start having to be a real adult, get a real job. I’m looking to work specifically with an organization that will allow me to speak French, hopefully French speaking Africa, something with international relations or foreign policy.The position that I’m trying to get is an entry level position like a program assistant for probably a non-governmental organization that works with French speaking African nations implementing various programs with African partners.

How would you say Rabun Gap has impacted your life since graduating? How has it changed you as a person?

Rabun Gap made me who I am. I brought a friend here recently and showed her Hayesville and she said, “You know,I’m starting to understand you but not completely…” and then I brought her here and she was like, “Now it makes sense. You are a country boy, you are from the mountains, you’re Appalachian through and through but you have been shaped, molded and formed and given opportunities and perspectives that most people wouldn’t have.”

My love of culture, my love of learning and curiosity, my resilience, and my well roundedness are from Rabun Gap. When I was there, I was an athlete, in cirque, played the flute in orchestra, on the Honor Council, a Gap Guide and a great student. I did everything. It taught me so much, I can’t even put it into words.

Which teacher or coach was most influential to you?

There are lots of them. Madame Shook for all the reasons I’ve already expressed. Baron Heinemann is another big one - as my soccer coach and my teacher. Andrew Jaffe - his class was the first time that I ever had to work for something. In that class, I essentially jumped from Algebra to Precalculus and I got to that class and told him I couldn’t do it. And he said, “Just stop. You haven’t had to work for anything in your whole life. You’re now in a class where you can’t just breeze through, what are you going to do?” He put the pressure on me and I ended up coming out of it well. There have been a lot of influential teachers: ones who have supported me, ones who have challenged me, ones who supported me by challenging me.

You’ve just come back to guest teach in Madame Shook’s classes for the second year in a row. What drives you to come back and teach other current Rabun Gap students?

I came back from abroad having just spent time teaching middle and high schoolers English and French. I got in touch with her and asked what she would think of my coming to teach one of her classes. She said that she’d like me to come and teach all of them for a day. We decided on a lesson plan that discussed how I got from where I was here to where I was there, because in a period of five years I went from being in those same exact seats where those kids were seated to having travelled all around Europe, having been on this far flung island living with this amazing family, travelling around the Indian Ocean, going to all these amazing places. The lesson was really targeted for the kids like me - local kids, mountain kids - who never would have thought that simply being here and having the opportunities they have here would allow them to do all those amazing things. It was a cool experience.

I decided to come back this year and approached Madame Shook. I said, “I know in your class you mainly focus on France and the French that comes from France. The French only account for a small percentage of French speakers around the world. We never really talk about Africa and I would like to do a lesson where I introduce the country that I came to know and talk about the cultural particularities of it with the kids and share that.” She thought that sounded awesome. I got to do a lesson where I talked about the food and fashion there and how once I was invited to a wedding and it lasted for four days. I actually brought some of my clothes and African garb to show them. I am still young enough, I was here six years ago, and can say, “I’m just like you, just five or six years down the road” and those kids are like, “Wow, if this local boy from the backwoods can do it, why can’t I?”

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