STUDY ABROAD : PARIS 2011

Senior year is about to start, but I'm a whole ocean away from Princeton...why, you ask?

Because I've decided to spend my senior fall in Paris! Making this decision now is a bit unusual by Princeton's standards, I'll admit - the most popular time to study abroad being junior year. I certainly considered studying abroad - first sophomore spring, then junior spring - but something always held me back, or else I admitted to myself that I was leaving for the wrong reasons.

Now those of you who know me well know that I am not a huge francophile by any means...I study French colonial history, which doesn't exactly paint the French in the most flattering light. Furthermore, I own no Eiffel Tower memorabilia, have never seen "Moulin Rouge", and the idea of eating a croissant for breakfast disgusts me! The time that I have spent in France was mostly in Basse Normandie, during a two-month internship the summer after my freshman year with L'Association Culture et Patrimoine du Pays d'Auge, which instilled in me a Norman pride, but certain mistrust of Parisians.

So why have I chosen this moment to throw myself headlong into the heart of Paris for the next five months?

* I love Princeton so much, maybe too much - it was starting to get a little too comfortable. I know that two more semesters there are not going to change me profoundly in the same way that a semester abroad will.

* Every one of my recently graduated friends who studied abroad says it was the best decision they ever made. Every one of my recently graduated friends who did not study abroad says it is their biggest regret.

* I'm a historian to the core - this means that I know quite a bit about France's past, but embarrassingly little about its present. Time to change that!

* Given the very focused nature of my research interests (my thesis is on education policy in French colonial Madagascar), there are only so many courses at Princeton that relate to them. I've spent the last three years learning about French colonialism at an American university (from both American and French professors), but now I'm anxious to see how the French teach their own past: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I won't pretend I'm not worried about some things - okay, maybe a lot of things - but rather than freaking out about them, I've decided to accept them:

1) Finding an apartment will be difficult. It will be frustrating. There will be dead-ends, and lots of French paper-work-filled bureaucracy (my favorite!)

2) I will get lost at least once. I will have to ask for directions probably more than once.

3) I will say something embarrassing without realizing it at least once.

4) I will step in dog poop at least once.

5) I will get pooped on by a pigeon at least once.

6) I will be lonely sometimes, even often.

7) There's no avoiding it: I will breathe in a lot of second-hand smoke. I will also have to watch people with babies in strollers smoke.

But that's the beauty of pushing oneself out of the comfort zone, right? I know that I am supposed to be here, because it's the next thing I have to do to become the me I want to be.

So, bienvenue à mon nouveau blog, mes amis, and keep checking in for more news of my new Parisian life!

Bises,

M