Finishing University

So after almost three whole years of undergrad … I’m finished. I would say that it has been stressful but honestly my degree has probably been the least stressful thing in my life these past few years. Despite that though, I still expected to feel some sort of relief at handing in my final dissertation, but I didn’t. I felt kind of the opposite. I keep trying to make myself feel relaxed and relieved but I end up making myself more stressed out because I have absolutely nothing to do except think about the endless decisions and the abyss of unknown I’ve just entered!

I feel a bit empty about it, I mean, it’s been three years of building up to this but it’s a bit of an anti-climax because theres no certain next step. I’m not leaving uni to go straight into a full time job and when I finished in May I still wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to carry on with fully time study. So handing in my final dissertation felt like missing the bottom step of the stairs. I felt nothing but also everything at once. I was sad that my degree was over yet I was excited that I was *technically* free from academic commitments. I’m sure that I’m not the only one that is kind of gutted uni is over. I’ve loved living in York and Grenoble, I felt more at home and at ease in these places than I ever did in my actual hometown (sorry mum and dad!). I’ve met some incredible and interesting people and I’ve had opportunities that I’d never had before nor will ever have again. But that’s exactly it. I’ll never get to have these same opportunities again. When else will it be socially acceptable to be dragged through your flat in a shopping trolley tied to an old climbing rope? When else will there be time to individually pin baked beans to a pin board (hopefully never because I don’t ever want to do that again!)?

I worried for months that when uni ended, me and my friends would all drift apart and never even talk let alone see each other again. In fact I got so nervous about it that I ended up causing a stupid and petty argument with two of my friends on the last day of uni. All because I had this too high expectation that the last day of uni was going to be this perfect, Hollywood-esque, emotional day but it wasn’t and we were all too emotionally exhausted from uni to even try to make it that way. I thought about that argument a couple of days later and concluded that I probably started it to push them away and make it easier to say goodbye but if anything it did the exact opposite. How can you say bye to someone knowing that you’ve upset them?

For a little while I wished I’d gone to a uni that did 4-year-long MFL degrees instead of 3 like my uni, because at least then I could have had 2 years back to back in the same place with the same people and I could have prolonged my immaturity by at least a year (lol who am I kidding it’ll be another ten years before I’m mature). But actually, even if it has felt like it’s gone scarily fast like everyone told me it would, I’m glad it was only three years, because now I’m staying in York an extra year and it doesn’t feel like I’m trapped here like everyone else has been saying they felt at the end of their degree. I’ll probably feel that way at the end of my post-grad next year but then it’ll be time served and I can move on to (metaphorically) bigger and better places.

Oh, and for those of you wondering, I just signed the next year of my life away to being a trainee teacher. Pray for me. xoxo

Returning From Study Abroad

So I’ve been back in the UK for about five months now, three of which have been spent in York. They have flown by and it scares me how quickly and quietly my time in Grenoble is slipping away from me. Before I went away I wrote on my blog about how, although I would miss York while I was away, I would miss Grenoble even more when I returned and this just about sums up how I feel, and how I imagine every other returning student feels too. In my first semester abroad, I also wrote about how I was struggling with loneliness and integrating into French culture but that nonetheless I was still benefiting from my time away. This too is still completely accurate, when friends, family and lecturers ask about my time in Grenoble it is quite bittersweet, part of me wants to rant and rage about all the horrible things that happened but the other part of me wants to preach about how incredible it was and how much I miss it. And although most of the time I tell everyone the positives (so as to not look like I’m whiny), I’ve always said that ultimately I don’t want to go back and I think that that is something only a few people can wrap their heads around.

Coming back to England after a year in France is kind of like amnesia; for example you can’t remember what side of the road people drive on or what language people speak. For the first few months (and occasionally still now) I would forget that people didn’t understand when a French word slipped into conversation and I would carry on as if nothing happened. Anyone who has spent time with me since summer is probably familiar with me saying “I can’t remember how to say that in English”. Forgetting bits of your first language is probably the most infuriating and humiliating part of spending time in another country speaking their language.

Being back in England also made me realise how much I missed the weird little things like having an oven, and plugs that don’t require adapters. I remember in my first few weeks back home, my mum suggested we go shopping on a Sunday and I was so confused because in Grenoble nothing opened on a Sunday, not even the supermarket. And even though this wasn’t a new thing to the UK and I had in fact grown up with things being open on Sunday’s for 19 years, I was in absolute awe and swore to never take it for granted again. But on the other hand, being back made me miss the little things I took for granted in Grenoble that much more, like the mind-boggling amount of mountains and countryside surrounding the city, my bike and the proximity of just about everything.

Coming back to uni in the UK was a whole other story. In my other posts I talked about the seemingly infinite number of problems I faced at the university in Grenoble, everything from enrolment, to module choices, to timetables, to exams, to the library … you name it and I probably experienced it. Unsurprisingly, coming back to York made Grenoble uni look 100x worse. I’ve not had any problems at uni since being back. In fact, it has ran so smoothly that I’m slightly suspicious that something awful lies around the corner.

French academic work and teaching was a lot different to how it is in York, in Grenoble it was a lot more exams and revision whilst my degree in York is almost entirely research and essay based. Although the workload in France felt easier to some extent, my marks didn’t reflect this and this semester I have really felt the pressure to try to improve my grades. Not only that but I’ve really struggled re-getting used to writing academic essays, reading and researching and Harvard referencing which has meant that although my semester has ran smoothly, I’ve had to really put my head down and work harder than I ever have done before just to keep my head above water.

Socially, I’m kind of sitting on the fence. On one hand, Grenoble made me more forward, more independent and more sure of myself but on the other it made me more anxious and more controlling. My academic advisor asked me earlier in the semester how I thought my time abroad had changed me and without any hesitation I said that I was more blunt, which I’m still not sure is a good thing. I’ve also found that I struggle more figuring out if somebody is being sarcastic or just being rude which means that a lot of the time in social situations I’m kind of lost. My friendship group has completely changed since first year, in first year my closest friends were my flatmates and although we still speak frequently, the fact that we don’t live together anymore has made us more distant, I expected this but it is still hard to come to terms with, especially considering that for me, it feels as though we all scattered overnight, whereas my flatmates had all of last year to get used to not living together.

I think one of the biggest differences I’ve noticed since being back is how “carpe diem” I am now. Last year went so fast but I was still so oblivious to how little time at uni I actually had left. Now I’m in my final year and these last 12 weeks have gone by so fast that I’m afraid for final semester and what lies ahead of it. I’ve found myself saying yes to just about anything; volunteer work, study abroad promotions, sports, more sports, societies, more societies, extra-curricular classes and just about anything else I can get my hands on and despite the fact that it is exhausting and I have such little free time, I regret nothing, if Grenoble taught me anything its that I shouldn’t take anything for granted because eventually it’ll stop.

Qu’est-ce que je veux faire après la fac?

Quand j’étais petite j’ai dit à mes parents “quand je serai grande je serai danseuse étoile”, puis “quand je serai grande je serai actrice”. Je ne sais pas pourquoi j’ai toujours rêvé d’être une vedette mais je voudrais dire à cette fille de cinq ans qu’en fait, tu ne veux pas être une vedette car tu détestes être regardé.

Dix ans après cela, je rêvais d’être un auteur. Bien sûr, ce rêve est réalisable dans une certaine mesure, j’ai même commencé à écrire quelques livres mais j’ai bien compris qu’il était très difficile de devenir un auteur sans un autre travail ou sans découvrir le monde un peu d’abord.

Au collège j’ai fait un échange linguistique / culturel à Beaune et c’est là-bas que j’ai bien noté que j’ai aimais les langues. J’ai compris aussi que j’aimais communiquer, j’aimais être capable de communiquer avec quelqu’un d’autre sans avoir besoin d’un dictionnaire, Ça m’a rendue très fiere de moi. J’ai donc commencé à étudier la langue des signes pour communiquer avec les sourdes, puis à la fac, en première année j’ai étudié l’italien et le mandarin (j’ai arrêté après 3 mois mais là n’est pas le question).

Un de mes modules consiste à faire un stage dans l’emploi où je voudrais travailler quand je serai (plus) grande. C’était seulement lorsque j’ai étais confronté à cette question que j’ai bien noté que je n’avais aucune idée de ce que je voulais faire comme carrière. Traductrice? Professeure? Je ne savais pas.

Pendant longtemps j’ai envisagé de m’inscrire comme médecins sans frontières, et c’est toujours une possibilité mais je suis consciente des risques que cela implique et je ne suis pas sûre d’être prête à cela tout de suite.

En ce qui concerne mon rêve de devenir un auteur, j’ai toujours été intriguée par “National Geographic”. Certains de leurs employés voyagent, ils communiquent avec des gens qui habitent aux quatre coins du monde, ils écrivent des articles vraiment intéressants et ils protègent l’environnement et les minorités en même temps. C’est pour moi le travail idéal, les quatre choses qui me passionnent. J’imagine que j’aurais toujours envie de travailler pour eux.

J’aime beaucoup ce que je fais actuellement; enseigner l’anglais aux enfants français. Je voudrais continuer avec cette carrière, autant ici en france que dans les autres pays francophones. En fait, pas seulement les pays francophones car cette année j’ai commencé à apprendre le néerlandais (ik spreek slechts een klein beetje), et je voudrais bien continuer à améliorer mon portfolio de langues.

Mais pour l’instant, qu’est ce que je vais faire? Et bien…. je ne sais pas. La semaine dernière, j’ai un peu paniqué  car je me suis rendu comptre qu’il restait qu’une année à la fac et après je serai seule dans le monde, avec aucune idée de ce que je veux faire dans la vie. J’avais rencontré ma prof de mon université d’origine et elle m’a apporté du soutien et des conseils à propos de toutes mes options et cela m’a beaucoup aidé. Je n’ai pas fait un choix difinitif mais je suis encore jeune, il me reste une année entière à la fac  et comme ma prof m’a dit; On peut faire n’importe quoi à l’étranger car personne ne parle mieux anglais  qu’une personne anglaise!

 

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When I was little I told my parents “when I grow up I want to be a ballerina” then I changed my mind and told them “when I grow up I want to be an actress”. I don’t know what I was thinking and if I could give five-year-old me a bit of advice, I would tell her that frankly you don’t want to be a “star” because you hate being watched. Sorry to crush your dreams kiddo.

Ten years after that I dreamt of being an author. This ambition still resonates quite a bit, I  have even started writing a few books here and there but I know full well that it is incredibly difficult to become an author without another job to support you or without having lived a little and experienced the world first.

In high school I did a linguistic/cultural exchange in Beaune and it was there that I realised I liked languages. I realised that I liked to to be able to communicate, I liked that I could talk to somebody without needing a dictionary and that made me so proud of myself and the work I had done. So, I started learning sign language to communicate with deaf people, and then, during my first year at uni I learnt Mandarin and Italian (I did stop learning them after three months but that is beside the point).

One of my modules is to do an internship or work placement in a field in which I’d like to work one day. It was only when I was faced with this question that I realised that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do as a career. Translator? Teacher? I had no idea.

For a while I thought about applying to work with Doctors without Borders, this will always be something I’ll consider but I am all too aware of the risks involved and I don’t think I’m ready for that just yet.

Linking back to the author thing though, I have always been intrigued by the work of the National Geographic. Some of their employees travel the world, communicating with people from all four corners of the world, they write vibrant and interesting articles all whilst protecting the environment and protecting minorities and indigenous people. That for me is the ideal job; combining for things I am passionate about. I think that I will always dream of working for National Geographic.

I really like what I’m doing at the minute; teaching English to French kids. I would like to carry on doing this as a career, both here in France and in other French-speaking countries. In fact, not only in French-speaking countries because this year I started learning Dutch (ik spreek slechts een klein beetje), and I’d actually like to carry on expanding my language portfolio.

But, for the time being, what do I want to do? Well……I still don’t know. Last week I panicked a bit because I realised that there is only one year of uni left after which I’ll be alone in the world with no idea what I want to do with my life. I had a meeting with my lecturer at uni and she gave me loads of different ideas about what I can do and it helped me a lot. Saying that, I still haven’t made a definitive choice but I don’t want to stress about it too much for the time being, I am young, theres a whole year of uni left and like my lecturer said; there’ll always be jobs abroad because nobody can speak better English than English people.

 

 

Trop paresseuse pour apprendre le français

Voici le premier blog en Français. Il est bien probable que ce sera le dernier aussi, tant pis mes amis français mais je suis trop paresseuse.

Je suis arrivée à Grenoble il y a six mois et à mon avis ma langue est la chose qui a la plus changé. Bien sûr, même maintenant il est pas parfait mais c’est mieux et d’ameliorer ma langue est un des buts de mon année ici (je dis “un des buts” car mon but est de voyager et de goûter tous les vins français mais je pense que mon prof en Angleterre n’approuverait pas).

Je dirais que je comprends tout ce qui est dit à moi (à l’exception de verlan… je ne comprendrai jamais le verlan…comment est-ce que le mot meuf viens du mot femme?). Il y a cinq ans, j’étais à Beaune et je ne comprenais à peu près rien. Je me souviens que j’étais dans la voiture avec ma famille d’accueil et ils disaient le mot truc beaucoup, j’ai pensé que cela signifiait “truck” (camion) et je me suis demandé «pourquoi ils ne cessent pas de parler des camions?». Si je compare cela à combien je comprends aujourd’hui je suis tellement fière de moi. Mais en même temps je me compare à d’autres étudiants internationaux et je ne peux pas m’empêcher de penser que je suis stupide. J’ai appris le français pour la première fois à l’âge de quatre ans mais il y a des étudiants ici qui ont seulement appris le français pendant un an et ont déjà des conversations complètes. Est-ce parce que je l’ai appris en Angleterre où les langues ne sont généralement pas bien enseignées? Ou est-ce parce que je suis lente à apprendre? Il m’a fallu environ un an pour comprendre que les verbes devaient être conjugués donc ce dernier est plus probable.

En ce qui concerne la parole je peux m’exprimer mais il y a toujours d’autres choses que je voudrais dire et c’est très frustrant. Bizarrement, je parle plus vite en francais qu’en anglais et je pense que si quelqu’un m’entend parlent très vite il pense que je parle courrament. Mais en fait ce n’est pas du tout le cas, je fais des erreurs, je fais trop des erreurs en fait (comme maintenant). Je sais jamais si un mot est masculin ou feminin et je sais jamais si une verbe utilise avoir ou être. Mais je sais que c’est difficile pour moi en particulière parce que ma langue maternelle ne fait pas de distinction entre les deux, ce n’est pas parce que je suis stupide, mais c’est un petit peu parce que je suis trop paresseuse pour apprendre les règles.

Je dirais que je suis devenue tellement plus confiante depuis que je suis arrivée en France. Je n’ai pas peur de faire des erreurs. Je n’ai pas peur de paraître stupide parce que je sais que je vais apprendre de mes erreurs. Mais une chose que j’ai toujours peur, est si les gens pensent que je suis malpolie ou irrespectueuse. Surtout si je les appelle «tu» ou «vous» dans le mauvais contexte ou si je dis accidentellement merde au lieu de monde ou connard au lieu de canard (j’ai fait toutes ces choses et je n’ai toujours pas appris encore).

Cette semaine j’ai fait trois choses pour la première fois: J’ai offert une réponse en classe et j’ai participé à la discussion en classe (une chose que j’ai jamais fait, même pas en Angleterre). Je suis sortie le soir avec quelques amis français et j’ai suivi toute la conversation, même avec leurs accents et leurs phrases regionaux comme “on se nachav”. Et j’ai fait un entretien pour mon travail, entièrement en français, et je l’ai appelé “tu” à la place de “vous” qu’une seule fois. C’était humiliant quand même mais je pense (je l’espère) qu’il comprenait.

(Je suis sûr qu’il y a des erreurs dans ce texte, merci de me dire, bisous!)

Thoughts upon leaving York

It feels like just yesterday I first arrived in York. I had actually kind of dreaded moving here as I had never lived in a city before and having grown-up relatively near to two very large cities (and one little one) I had imagined York to have lots of grey skyscrapers and loud taxis just like Manchester and Liverpool did. I had been to York a few times before and I knew full well that it wasn’t like that but nonetheless, it didn’t stop me from thinking that it was.

When I first started uni here it took me a little while to come out of my shell. There were a few reasons for that; I’m a bit of a lightweight so I avoided drinking when I first got here which meant I felt completely lost during freshers week; aka the worst week for anyone who isn’t big on drinking! I also found that nearly everyone I came across during freshers was from York or Leeds, which meant that they either knew one another from college or they had no idea where I was from and why my accent was so weird (I ask myself that question too tbh).

When I first got here and didn’t really know anyone, I had kind of hoped it would stay that way, because then when I would leave at the end of the year, it wouldn’t be too hard on me or the people I was leaving for a year. That plan went out of the window when I joined mountaineering and made myself a little happy family of climbers.  Nevertheless, I was pretty content with the climbing lot and actually ended up becoming an adoptive flatmate to one of them.

Initially we’d planned to go out on the last night, but silly me packed all her going out clothes so instead we played Pokémon Go in York at 1am. Bizarrely enough, the night ended the same as it would have done either way; go to McDonalds, get carried upside down by your tall friends, bump into people you know and end the night being dragged through your student halls in a trolley. Obviously it wasn’t what we’d planned but it was fun and it’s better for your liver too I guess?

I took quite a few things for granted in York, how I could walk to my friends houses, at any time of the day or night and it would not only be convenient but it would be (kind of) socially acceptable. In fact I could walk anywhere I wanted to, whenever I wanted to! Especially good was how I could leave for work 10 minutes before my shift started and still be there on time! So now I’ve left York and come back to Cheshire and I can’t walk to my friends houses, in fact, I can’t walk to anything really and thats sad, but at the same time I’ve kind of missed it here. I’ve missed how you can get to about 5 national parks in an hour. I’ve missed my dog (even if I’m now allergic to her). I’ve missed my books, my car, my candles and my family. And I’ll miss both York and Cheshire next year but it’s inevitable that I’ll miss Grenoble when I get back so I guess you just can’t win!