It All Begins Again

So this is it: the end of winter vacation. Tomorrow begins the spring (and final) semester of my master’s degree with a bucket of ice cold reality being poured over us in the form of last semester’s grades in the morning. I should have been more academically productive with my time over break, but life got in the way. I’m not sorry, it just means I’ve got more reading to do this semester; c’est la vie. It might have been unproductive, but it certainly was fun! I got to see most of my friends back in the States, visit with my family, spend loads of time with Donna (and her cute friend with the curly hair), finally really talk to and befriend krazy Kate Billingsley, and to actually enjoy Paris for a week without the same feeling of the Sword of Damacles (or Paoli as the case may be) hanging over my head.

I don’t have anything particularly deep to say tonight, so I’ll keep this brief, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do when June rolls around, and I’m sort of at a loss. Do I move to Boston to be near my family and friends on the East Coast? Do I move to NYC and try my hand in the Paris of the West now that I’ve become accustomed to life in the big city and want to keep it going? Do I move to California in preparation for a Ph.D. program at Berkeley? Maybe I just move back to Burlington where you can rent a fantastic apartment at unreasonably low prices. Or should I go really crazy and move to Puerto Rico so I can work on my Spanish in an organic way?

More importantly than where I move, what will I do when I get there? With the economy on shaky foundations that have been ravaged by financial earthquakes and which could be toppled by future aftershocks, what will I do with my M.A. French? Naturally I could teach at a private school or perhaps as an assistant or adjunct professor, but will that provide sufficient remuneration? No, probably not, but it’s still an option. Does anybody have any suggestions as to go about finding a good school to teach at? If I skip the teaching, do I go back to hospital administration which pays well and which I know fairly well, but which gives tedium new and more Hellish meaning? These decisions are not easy, my friends, and applying for jobs is not precisely what I wanted to do while working on my thesis. Le ugh.

Maybe I should just stay here in Paris. Sure it’s expensive and far away from home, but it’s still pretty great! Naw. After all my friends head back to the US or to whatever new and exotic place they might be going, Paris might be a pretty boring place. Besides, I miss my friends back home and as most of them are young professionals in their 20′s just starting out, they probably won’t be taking too many European vacations to come visit me. Add to that aging grandparents and it seems like living in North America might be a better option. That is, of course, assuming a high paying job doesn’t fall in my lap. If that happens, all bets are off and Paris could easily become chez moi.

Life would be boring if it were straightforward, right?

Oh! Before I forget, I wanted to mention Le lustre noir (The Black Chandelier) which is a lesser known club that Donna and I got to visit over the weekend in the Third. It’s kind of a neat little place that had German punk pop blaring when we got there, and whose eclectic East meets West decor, Woody Allen movies playing from plasma TV’s, and good selection of wine and pizza make it a must see for a low-key evening on the town with friends. I hear they even serve spaghetti dinners with sauce and garlic bread faits maison (homemade sauce) on Saturdays. It’s worth checking out if you can get past the doorman!

Tags: Boston, Burlinton, California, Europe, French, future, jobs, le lustre noir, masters, North America, NYC, Paris, Puerto Rico, school, US, work

“You Shoulda Been an Actuary”

If you’ve talked to me in the last decade or so, you know that I’ve dreamed of going to live in Paris. I talk about French language and culture all the time, idolizing their witty, nihilistic, existential oeuvres and proselytizing about how fantastic their cooking is while virtually ignoring their flaws or the virtues of other cultures. What can I say? I became enamored with my family’s history when I was young, and since a good portion of that is French, I quickly became enamored with the French. Dear friends, I must make a confession. I should have spilled the beans a little earlier, but you know how hard it is to reveal these deep dark secrets. Good people, the French aren’t perfect. I have to admit that, while I like their language, I sometimes don’t always really understand or agree with the point of view presented in their literature, and while I believe it is ingenious at times, sometimes I find it entirely too serious and emotionally taxing. This is why, when I was really starting to wonder if I could handle a Master’s in French a few years ago, I was so relieved to discover, with the help of Professor André Sénécal, the wonderful literature of Québec. These people don’t take themselves so seriously, and, hallelujah, their books are, in my experience, considerably easier to digest.

Don’t get me wrong; I still love the French (si tu liras ce passage, Julien, sache que je ne crois pas que tu es comme la litérature de ton pays et je parle en généralités, pas de quelqu’un spécifique). I love their language and many aspects of their culture, but I sometimes feel like I pretend to love French culture more than I actually do. I think this might be to be consistent, since I’ve extolled their greatness for so long, or perhaps because, like all love, I’m past the puppy-dog stage and moving into reality. I love chatting with my French penpals and speaking French whenever I can, but as for the books, well, I’m kind of done with them.

As you may have guessed, I’m wondering about how reasonable it is, feeling this way, for me to go to Paris right now. I really would like to go, but I’m wondering if it’s a good idea. After all, what DOES one do with a Master’s in French? I guess I could be a lecturer at a college (woot) or a linguist for one of the federal agencies (that would be cool), or I could write, which would be really nice too (P.S. Meieli, if you read this and have tips for breaking into freelance writing for print or the web, I’d love to hear them). My fear is that I’ll get off the plane freshly back from Paris with my beret nicely lopsided on my head, a long crunchy baguette in each arm, smelling of Jean Paul Gauthier’s new musky fragrance that comes in some hopelessly campy erotic bottle, only to end up with no job prospects. I’ll have tens of thousands of dollars to pay back, to the tune of as much as $500/month, AND I’ll be starting over again. In a FREAKIN’ beret! I’ll have sold all of my furniture since I can’t afford to store it and could use the extra cash, I’ll have sold my car, my movies, and have long since used up any savings for a security deposit on a new apartment, and I’ll need to buy all that stuff back. Besides, unless I miraculously find a job near some of my friends (i.e. in Boston or San Francisco) that uses my degree, I’ll have to find all new roommates!! That’s a lot to ask a person who only has six months before the crippling weight of student loans squashes him into jelly.

After reflecting on this possibility off and on since I was accepted into Middlebury, I thought that the Master’s in Teaching from UVM might be the more stable, fiscally responsible way to go, but thanks to a plethora of irresponsible borrowers, some avaricious shitheads on Wall Street, and the wonderful deregulation-crazy Republicans, it looks like that might not be true. While the federal government isn’t required to balance its books, the states are, and since they pay the teachers’ salaries along with all other state-based services, when their budgets need balancing, they take out the axe and start making cuts. Do you know which programs are cut first from schools? Well, there’s that silly art which makes kids smarter and more creative, along with that music that has been proven to help kids excel, but they also have a thing against foreign language teachers despite most colleges requiring three years of foreign language for admittance. So, isn’t that a kick in the teeth, like fate just bitch slapped me and said “you shoulda been an actuary.”

The long and short of it is that I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I think I know what I NEED to do. In order to make French work, I’m going to have to gamble it all to make it happen. It’s Paris for French or chose a different line of work, baby; those are the options. There’s no conclusion, no neat wrapping up and tying with a bow to this post, but I think that’s appropriate. After all, that’s life, n’est-ce pas?

Tags: career, France, future, Grad School, Paris