I wanted to go for an exchange for a long time. My father made me watch the French movie “l’Auberge espagnole” by Cédric Klapisch when I was a teen. Looking at this student living a chaotic life full of colors in Barcelona, this desire to have as well an experience abroad bloomed right away. However, I always considered it as a one time experience. I never thought about the fact that I could spend more time out of France and my comfort zone.
It is fun to see how impactful an experience can be on someone’s life. It is by meeting German people who are very familiar with gap years that I realized that I did not have to follow the traditional French path. Indeed, in France, it seems that everybody has to know directly the studies that they want to do, the job that they will have for most of their lives. I understood, thanks to my friends from Germany, that I have all the time in the world and that the most important thing is to enjoy life and to live experiences that make us dream.
In December, I was really into the idea of taking a gap year. I was thinking about doing an internship in France for six months while studying for the “Tage mage”, the exam needed to apply for French business schools. After this internship, I was planning to travel for a couple of months in South America where I would learn about permaculture by working in a farm and then travel on my own with my backpack. Then, I would have come back to France with those great memories in my mind and this feeling of freedom still vibrating.
Even when my International friends were telling me about the fact that I could do a Master's in the Netherlands or in another country than France, I was saying that it was better for me to come back to my country. I was not even considering the option to make this International experience more than a one year thing. At one point, about February, I really became aware that I only had one semester left in Groningen and that after that, I will have to come back to my normal life in France. I was very disturbed by this thought and I decided to apply for some Masters abroad. At the beginning, I was not thinking at all seriously about the reality of studying abroad for two more years. I was pretty lost about what I wanted to do at the end of the DUETI. Being very interested in sustainability and loving evolving in an international environment, I was looking for some Masters in France that could conciliate those two topics. The only Masters that I found after dozens and dozens of hours of research were taught in two prestigious French schools, Sciences Po Paris and ESCP. Of course, I needed to find back up plans because obviously my chances of being selected were pretty low in view of their expectations. I needed to find other options so I applied at the Sorbonne and Dauphine and as I write these lines, I still did not receive the answer of Dauphine (May 28th) but I was selected by the Sorbonne to make videos of myself as an interview. Even if the Master was the second best Master of Management of France, I decided not to do the videos because I already knew that I did not want to study there and that my application for a Master's degree that I really wanted had been accepted.
To recontextualize a bit, I started to list all the Masters I was interested in in a document and I was also contacting students who have graduated from those trainings in order to get feedback. I started this process about one year ago but I really started to spend a lot of time on that research in October. I looked at so many Universities all around Europe and at one point, I knew what I wanted. For this DUETI, I was hesitating between Groningen and Lisbon. Indeed, I went to Lisbon with my parents a couple of years ago and I completely felt in love with this city. I loved the sun, the colors, the music, the general atmosphere and I felt that I belonged there. I chose to go to Groningen because I thought that it was very consistent with my plan to work in sustainability and I liked the courses that were taught here. In the partner University of Lisbon, it was related to communication and advertisement, interesting subjects just not related to what I want to do in the future.
I took time to know what I really want, where I was seeing myself, about the city where I would be fully happy. I did not have to think about it twice, I knew it was Lisbon. I looked at the Master’s degrees related to Management, internationality and sustainability and I applied in two programs in a business school named Catolica-Lisbon. When I received the call of the admissions officer announcing that I was accepted into the program I preferred, I could not believe it. With one of my French friends, we were coming from the French embassy in Amsterdam where we had just given the proxy for the first round of the elections that were coming in a few days. We had talked before for hours about our life, ambitions, dreams and at one point I talked about Lisbon and the fact that I had this feeling that I would feel at home there. When my phone started ringing and I saw Lisbon's name on the screen, I felt panic mixed with excitement. Immediately, I thought of the application I had made to this Master's program. I thought that they must want to give me an informal interview and I hesitated to pick up the phone because the situation was not the best (car was quite noisy). My friend insisted and I finally picked up the phone. When this woman informed me that I had been accepted I could hardly believe it. I was very moved and confused because I understood the turn my life was going to take with this new adventure, terrifying but so exciting. So yes, I will not have a French degree so I may have to start working abroad after graduation. When I will have demonstrated my skills, I will be able to come back to France if I want to. Anyway, for now I am so happy to know that my crazy Erasmus life is not going to end anytime soon. I will continue to experience amazing things that I would have never expected and I am very excited about it. I am also very proud of myself for getting the courage to listen to me and my dreams. Thus, the adventure is far from over and if all goes well I will move to Lisbon for the next two years.
The moral of the story, trust yourself, look around and you will see that other paths are possible. Life is only the sum of our experiences and the only thing that counts is to be at peace with yourself and enjoy life!
コメント