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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