Le Vendôme III: The Year Abroad -The speci(man), the myth, the legend
Paris. The city of lights, the city of love, the city of snails, croissants, baguettes and the infamous snootiness of the local residents. Columnist Jasmine Eden Gray shares humorous and insightful stories from her time in the French capital during what can be an exciting but also tumultuous period - the year abroad.
When you first hear about the mysterious and exciting Year Abroad, you find out that you have the choice to work, study or volunteer. After two years of intense university study at Cambridge, there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted a break from the student lifestyle. And so, internship hunting began. When I realised that you cannot use British Council teaching as a backup year abroad activity choice, I had to commit to doubling the stress of the already demanding period that is Lent Term, by lining up multiple job interviews, translating CVs, and dealing with rejections while also trying to appreciate the fleeting moments you have left in college before going away.
I cannot speak for every second year MMLer, but I am the one writing a column so, I might as well be. At least from my perspective, I will say that whatever preliminary expectations you might have about your Year Abroad plans are likely to turn out quite differently in the end. Whether it be that your dream internship simply turned you down, or a miscommunication somewhere caused a certain plan to fall apart, it is almost inevitable that you will have to make peace with our lovely little friend called “change” in your third-year plans. I vividly remember sitting in my college café one afternoon when I got the email saying I got a teaching job in Paris. Teaching was certainly not high on my career prospects, but it was a job offer and a stress alleviated.
As an MMLer at Cambridge, the Year Abroad remains an incredibly abstract concept for so long until you are actually buying a baguette and inhaling the fumes of the Parisians streets as a rat scurries behind you. Discussing this with my three roommates, we concluded that we all had a singular “epiphany” moment in which we were physically, mentally, and spiritually aware that we were on our Year Abroad. For one, it came a month in as we were roaming through a pop-up thrift market. For me, it came as I was walking by the Jardin de Tuileries at sunset waiting for a friend, and the Eiffel Tower came into view in the orange sky – so cliché, I know. The year is no longer abstract.
With that new-found clarity also comes the reality of your year activity. Starting a job can be terrifying, but add in a new city, communicating in a non-native language, and being thrown into an environment for which you had a mere three days of training, it’s safe to say that I found it all a tad overwhelming. My suspicions that my passions did not in fact lie in teaching were quite quickly confirmed. However, I am grateful to have pushed myself to put that theory into practice. And I got some humorous stories out of it.
My version of being thrown in the deep end was being tasked with handing out the sweets for a kid’s birthday in the playground on my second day. Little did I know after they had finished singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in both French and English that twenty-four children would swarm towards me like vultures going in for the kill. I somehow managed to get out of there without any talon marks, yet mentally the scars will never vanish. I’m making the kids sound like monsters, which they weren’t, that is until Halloween when I had to ask mental maths questions to a short, hooded vampire who was attempting to say ‘thirteen’ through plastic bloody fangs. But they were perfectly pleasant angels most of the time. However, if you had caught sight of them during sport when they were learning the Brazilian dance fighting ‘capoeira’, chanting loudly while taking tactful swings at each other, you might think otherwise. This was certainly a sight for the horrendously hungover eyes of my fellow intern one Thursday afternoon when the children decided to display their new skills in the playground for us.
Despite the numerous comical events I was racking up in my memory bank, I did not find myself thriving in the school, and decided to contact the year abroad office to enquire about leaving the job early and switching to a study placement. Although I detest and do not believe in the phrase ‘everything happens for a reason’, the fact that I managed to get the last Paris university slot a day before the deadline does feel like the universe played a small part. I pushed through to the end of the term, having been switched from a classroom to an office job by my superiors who thought my talents perhaps lay outside the school environment. After Christmas – which involved grey hair inducing visa stresses that I do not wish to dedicate any valuable words to – I returned to Paris with a student visa, ready for a new adventure.
In a future column I plan to outline some of the differences that I have noticed between studying in France compared to the UK and delve into the myths and mysteries of the Erasmus experience. But I shall finish this one by imparting some advice to those yet to embark on their year abroad adventure. Change is inevitable. Both of my other working flatmates also changed plans to another internship after their first one didn’t work out as they had planned. It’s stressful, and it’s annoying (admin ugh), but it’s doable and ultimately exciting for you to have a new experience and make the most out of the minimum eight months that you’re away. Take it all in your stride. And then use it for journalism content.
All images belong to the author.