Sorbonne University has been standing tall within the 5th arrondissement of Paris since 1257, making it the fourth-oldest college in all of Europe. When folks consider this prestigious establishment, their ideas typically flip to its well-known alumni, together with scientist Marie Curie, literary nice Victor Hugo and thinker Simone de Beauvoir, every of whom has left their distinctive mark on historical past.
But what of the American alumna, Irvina Lew, now 87, who adopted her dream of learning in France one summer season in 1958, when she was simply 19? And what did she make of it when she returned in 2025?
I sit down with Irvina to listen to her life’s story, which takes me again a long time to the start of the Fifth Republic in France, when traces of the post-war period nonetheless lingered.
It was 1958, and a 19-year-old Irvina was learning on the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, when she observed an commercial on a bulletin board selling a summer season examine program in Paris. The course would rely towards her school credit again within the United States, that means she would graduate early, an necessary element that helped persuade her father to let her go.
Her mom, nonetheless, was very happy for her to spend the summer season overseas. She disapproved of Irvina’s boyfriend, and though the couple had just lately damaged up, she believed time away would assist guarantee they did not get again collectively.
So off Irvina went to stay in Paris for eight weeks together with her good friend Linda, staying in a small resort on 6 rue de Loussac on the Left Bank, simply three streets down from the Sorbonne, which was owned by a fairly ominous landlady.
Although they by no means realized her title, she turned a distinguished determine of their lives. She begrudgingly allow them to in after they returned late, spent her days scrubbing the pavement exterior, and religiously used ivory cleaning soap, Irvina recollects.
She was additionally at all times absolutely wearing black to honor somebody she had misplaced to the Second World War, which had ended 13 years earlier, although whose id they by no means came upon.
“The rest of the French public looked like they had walked straight off the set of Gigi,” Irvina says, remembering crowds wearing plaid skirts, neat jackets and traditional Parisian fashion just like that of the hit 1958 movie.
They lived on ham cheese whereas learning French grammar and dialog in the course of the week, and of their free time, they explored Paris and past, together with a day journey to the World’s Fairs in Brussels, the place Irvina ate her very first hamburger.
“My friend’s uncle was a bigwig at General Motors and arranged a chauffeur and massive 1958 Oldsmobile for our summer in Paris,” says Irvina. “Americans were quite revered in France at the time, and the boys seemed more interested in the car than in us!”
But the boys nonetheless paid consideration. Irvina says they have been very completely different from those she’d left again dwelling, extra direct, daring, and overtly flirty.
The Parisian youth of 1958 appeared much more ahead than the boys she knew in America, the place the social ‘guidelines’ of courting have been a lot stricter. In France, folks have been much more relaxed about love and romance, a sense that her good friend Linda adopted, and she or he went on to have a love affair on their journey to Italy.
After two months of thrills in Europe, Irvina returned to America, and in a single yr, she graduated from school, received married, purchased a home, had a child and commenced instructing French instead instructor. It was almost 20 years earlier than she had the cash to return to her favourite metropolis, but it surely was at all times her dream.
In 1994, she retired from instructing and have become a journey journalist, constructing a group of tales from her journeys throughout France earlier than publishing her autobiography, Forays in France: A Flavorful Memoir. The e-book is a memory of her life and of France’s position, tracing every thing again to a single summer season she spent learning on the Sorbonne in Paris.
While Irvina’s love for journey and writing was sparked on the Sorbonne, she had lengthy left her 19-year-old self behind. That was, till life got here full circle, when she acquired an e-newsletter, the digital echo of the bulletin she had seen all these a long time in the past, inviting her to review on the Sorbonne University as soon as extra.
Summer and winter college are seasonal academic packages run by Sorbonne University annually. Its summer season programs have been provided since 2011, and the winter session has been held annually since 2020. When Irvina returned in 2025, it was the primary time the course was held in individual.
“It’s incredible that somebody can come to the Sorbonne and study there in the summer without necessarily having a degree,” says Carolina Schleier, assistant mission supervisor on the Sorbonne’s Summer and winter college.
“They sit there like all these academics who have been there before, and have the privilege of learning from top university lecturers.”
Since they first started, the Sorbonne’s summer season and winter programs have welcomed tons of of Francophiles of all ages and nationalities. In January 2026 alone, 171 folks from 34 nationalities participated.
Irvina returned to the Latin Quarter that she had wandered 5 a long time earlier, reliving her youth and reviving her love for studying.
While learning French literature and feminist poetry, she found that Jean-Paul Sartre, a fellow Sorbonne University alumnus, used to sip espresso and have deep discussions on the well-known Café de Flore with Albert Camus, only one arrondissement away from the place she had been learning all these years in the past.
“I was a bit embarrassed to learn they were just one mile away while I was discovering Paris, never having a serious discussion,” says Irvina. “I’ve read all their work now, and it was great to learn about them in my classes.”
Irvina has lived a life filled with studying and journey, incomes a scholarship to review on the University of Salamanca in 1992 and receiving her instructing certification from New York University in 1959. She credit her lifelong curiosity and studying for protecting her sharp over time.
“So many people my age only talk about the past, but who wants to be someone whose life exists only in memory? She says, “History belongs in books, not in people.”
Buy Forays in France: https://www.foraysinfrance.com
Sign up for the 2026 Sorbonne summer season course: https://lettres.sorbonne-universite.fr/en/academics/sorbonne-summer-university
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