The Blessed Tutoie

Some work difficulties are simply
unforeseen.

As you may know, in French there are two pronouns for "you", the singular / informal "tu" and the plural / formal "vous". Whereas in Parisians tend to be fairly casual at work and tutoie (refer to using the more casual form, "tu") most everyone, here in Martinique, as one would expect in more rural settings, manners matter much more, and there's much more vouvoying going on. Furthermore, as I am a foreigner, and as white people risk coming off as entitled here, I am especially careful to vouvoie everyone until they tell me to do otherwise.
Today, a second teacher told me to tutoie her. That makes two out of eleven teachers that I work with and zero out of countless administrators who have decided that, since they see me at least twice a week, I can go ahead and talk to them like work friends instead of in the more distant way.
As I made sure to remind the teacher in question, I might still mess up and call her by the wrong one, since remembering and switching such usages hardly comes naturally to anglophones. To this day, before I email any adult in French, I usually check the last email I sent them to make sure of which pronoun I used before.
One neat memory this brings up for me, though, was being vouvoied at the Sorbonne. Apparently there scholars, as young as eighteen as they may be, are guaranteed the respect of a vouvoie, as of course the students are vouvoying the professors and assistants. I've always wanted to know the story behind that, though it may just be a general tradition. Needless to say, it eased my aching pride, struggling as I was to glean the meaning out of the rapid-fire, two hour-long lectures on subjects I only *thought* I had a decent knowledge of before, to be vouvoied by a professor.
Here not even the students vouvoie me - nor do they vouvoie their regular teachers, either. Go figure.