Student Profiles
Student: Joe Paillé
School: St. Olaf College
Major/Minor: History and Economics double major
HECUA Program: Divided States of Europe: Globalization and Inequalities in the New Europe (DSE)
Who is Joe Paillé?
I grew up in Auburn, Maine, which is an old mill town on the Androscoggin River. Looking back on my childhood, I had a pretty stereotypical New England experience. I followed the Red Sox every summer, my parents worked for L.L. Bean, and I enjoyed cross-country skiing in the winter, etc. When I was really little I used to want to be a hockey player and I’d shoot at our refrigerator in the kitchen until it had a huge dent in the bottom. I went to high school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and headed out to St. Olaf for college to try a new part of the country. Aside from that I’m really into non-fiction writing (David Foster Wallace!), trail running, impressionist painters, cooking, thrift stores, and documentaries.
Who or what has been influential/inspiring in your life?
It’s not just one person, but I’ve always loved talking to people who are passionate about things. There’s a guy who I knew in middle school who went to school to be an architect and ended up doing Mongolian linguistics. I think he’s actually living in Mongolia now. It’s rare that you find something that you’re that passionate about and it’s inspiring to see people who do what they love even if it doesn’t seem like the most orthodox thing in the world. I always love it when you meet someone and the first thing they ask is “What are you reading?” There are so many interesting people in the world.
What’s an issue you care passionately about?
I think that if the past few years have shown anything, it’s that we need better financial literacy. We’ve developed a complex financial system in which everyone participates, but not everyone understands how it works and even fewer people know how to thrive in it. And you can either 1) try to make economics simpler or 2) try to help people understand it. And number one really isn’t an option. I think that what you really see here is an opportunity, especially in schools, to make sure that people have a basic handle on how the market works. And I don’t think that it’s about making money, but being able to understand what’s going on. There’s something really empowering about picking up the business section of the Times and being able to understand what’s going on.
What interested you about the HECUA program you participated in? What convinced you to apply?
I have some Norwegian heritage and I took three semesters of Norwegian at St. Olaf, so I knew I wanted to study in Norway. And the DSE program’s time in Poland really appealed to me too. I didn’t find out that we switched the trip to Hungary and Romania until after I signed up, but it didn’t affect my decision to do the program. How many times in your life to you ever get the chance to go to Romania?
What was your most memorable field speaker or class activity and why?
I think when you’re abroad you realize how different the rest of the world is. But there’s a lot of things that are really similar, and in some ways that’s one of the most startling things about going abroad. When we were in Romania, we visited an Orthodox Church and there’s icons just covering every square inch on the inside. Someone said something like, “Why do you have so many icons?” And the priest said something like, “Well that’s how we keep people interested. I wouldn’t want to listen to myself for that long either.” I think that that’s one of the biggest things you take away from being abroad. You have these long stretches of pretty hard stuff and you kind of wonder why you’re doing it sometimes, and then you get these little moments where it clicks.
If applicable, where did you intern while participating in your HECUA program? What did you like most about your internship? In what area did you grow the most at your internship site?
I interned at BYMIF, which is a center for unaccompanied refugee minors who are living in Oslo. So I was there once a week and I did a lot of English tutoring, which was nice because I got to use some Norwegian. And we played a lot of ping-pong, which I wasn’t very good at according to most of the youth there. (It’s true.) Working at BYMIF was amazing because you really get a new perspective in a foreign country. And BYMIF really changed a lot of my preconceptions about Norway. Before working at BYMIF I’d always kind of sold myself short on learning Norwegian. Not in the sense that I wasn’t trying hard enough, but you kind of think that it’s not really all that practical and you’ll never use it. I remember there was one day that Margareta visited the BYMIF site and I was tutoring one of the youth there. And so you realize that you’re speaking Norwegian with a Norwegian, a Romanian, and a Pakistani. I think that in the three or so months in Norway, that’s one thing that stood out. You have all these expectations and then they’re gone just like that.
There’s part of me that feels uncomfortable with the idea of studying abroad so that you can have personal growth. I was lucky enough to have the privilege of working with a really amazing group of youth for three months. I think that going abroad for personal growth kind of neglects the other side of the coin. I have the privilege of being invited to work with these people for three months and taking what I learned and doing something with it. And after I left, those youth are still there. So did I grow or not? I don’t know. But if the youth there enjoyed having me around once a week, then I don’t think personal growth really matters. I was swimming with one of the guys from Eretria and he said that he liked talking to me in Norwegian since I helped with his English. And that’s enough.
What were/are your impressions of your HECUA program director and/or other teaching faculty that took part in leading the program?
Margareta was amazing. Just so much personality. I have to say that going back to Romania with Margareta was really amazing to see. It really makes you look at a place differently when you’re traveling with someone who calls it home. Besides all of the connections and bargaining she did for us, watching her interact with the people there was really amazing.
How did this HECUA program make an impact on your life and how you think about your future (feel free to share journal entries or pieces of a final written assignment for class)?
I don’t know if I’m really ready to give this question the answer it deserves. The entire experience was incredibly humbling. I remember one morning in Feresti I went out for a run at six in the morning. (Feresti is this really small village. If you look it up on GoogleMaps and zoom in super close it doesn’t even show any roads going to it.) And I ran past this man who was visibly confused, so I stopped and shook his hand and tried to communicate with him. And we had no ability to communicate. I kind of pointed to myself and said “English, American, Obama.” And he just gave me this look that was really friendly, but totally confused. You go into these situations where there’s a complete disconnect and you realize how much else there is in the world. It’s kind of ironic, because realizing how privileged you are is an incredibly humbling experience.
What’s your post-graduation plan?
After graduation I’m planning on going to divinity school and becoming a rostered pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. I’m really interested in using congregations as leaders in financial literacy programs and seeing how we can get the church involved in new areas. I was actually at a meeting a couple of days ago about getting congregations involved in micro-lending in their communities. Just really cool, relevant stuff. And when I tell people that I want to be a pastor, you get the rolled eyes and the disappointed looks and stuff, and that’s kind of why I want to get involved in this area. It’s really easy to just knock something, but it’s a lot harder to try to improve it and do something positive and try to change people’s perceptions. But it’s a lot more worthwhile too.
There’s this quote from Rabbi Hillel that says, "The world is equally balanced between good and evil. Your next act will tip the scale." There are days when it’s really hard to be hopeful, but you just have to keep plugging away, you know? You either try to make things better or you get complacent. And complacency is just about the worst thing in the world. So you just try to make things better.
