Friday, November 30, 2012

In Search of Lost Time: My First Astrological Study, Part 1


I realized not long after my arrival in Nantes that I had a wealth of astrological data to work with. We received a list of everyone’s birthdays at some point either before or early in our stay. I also had a “controlled population” and could see them interact. So I decided in my first few weeks in Nantes to do an astrological profile of the Fall 1991 class. 

Did anyone know I was doing this? Come on now…what sun sign is writing this blog? OK, so seriously, I don’t recall telling anyone about it at the time, and I played things fairly close to the vest in Nantes.

My first task was to sift through the list of birthdays. At the time, of course, I had no software and very few books to work with, so I forget how I handled any “cusp” people. I also had no computer so I wrote everything down by hand using my preferred writing tool: A mechanical pencil. How last century, right?

Once I had the birthdays, I constructed three different sets of information, all broken down by sex and sun sign. I was looking for patterns of the class as a whole, but I was also very interested in checking out the sun signs of men and women and seeing if there was a significant difference.

Women made up the vast majority of students in our class, but that is neither surprising or unusual, as females make up the world of modern languages almost entirely, especially in the academic fields. French is even more female-dominated than others; men have told me that French doesn’t “sound masculine” and so many boys chose a different language, usually Spanish.

Anyway, astrologically speaking, the number of women in each astrological element was about equal, with fire being slightly more than the others (air, earth, and water).  Many of them did show the qualities of their element. I found that fire sign ladies in this class seemed to be more outgoing and passionate; earth sign women tended to be hardworking and serious; air sign ladies seemed more brainy or thoughtful; and water sign women more sensitive or emotional.

The results aren’t surprising for anyone who studies astrology, but it really helped me to see “astrology in action” through observing others. I tell my students that study is essential, but watching people act and react is a vital component piece of it as well. Seeing what is typical or not for a given element, sun sign, moon sign, rising sign, etc., helps solidify what you read.

Two very typical fire sign ladies bear mention here. One Aries woman had a French boyfriend, which was very rare for our class; she was the only one I saw who dated someone in country. To date in a language that’s not your own takes some real courage; love is hard enough in your native language and culture, much less one that you’re still learning.

The other was a Sagittarius woman, and she exemplified her sign in a very positive way. I actually have a photo of her where I told her to “Give me a Sag pose!” She played along…I may have even told her to act like she was drawing a bow like the Archer, but at the very least I know that idea was something we had discussed. She had a fantastic sense of humor and always seemed to be having a great time. I never saw her melt down, which was also rare because we all had them in Nantes. She was probably the most spirited classmate I had. To top it all off, she was a redhead, so it was easy to see her hair and think “fire”!

Thanks for tuning in to part 1. Come back tomorrow for part 2, where I talk about my astrological results of the men of Nantes. 

PS--T-3 days to blastoff! :)

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