the Consequences of Inaction

I am a great coward; fear is my driving force. Every thought I have, every decision I make, is based ultimately in fear. Essentially, the only time I ever do anything brave or daring is when the consequences of inaction are worse. That is, of course, why I’m here. The fear of finding myself too dependent on my mother and unable to cope with the adult world is what forced me to uproot myself in such a dramatic fashion. At 24 and a half years old I’d never lived outside of my parents’ sphere, and instead of moving into a college dorm (as my sister so firmly advised) or into a shared apartment, I chose to move to a foreign country across the world.

This was a great source of amusement for my sister, my disdain for baby steps.

It’s been very tough for me, as you can probably infer from my six-month silence. Having come out of my best semester ever, academically as well as personally, I pretty much cracked immediately upon arriving in Paris. I couldn’t pinpoint why; I’d expected it to be difficult, I’d known I would be unhappy....what I did not expect was to have my drive, my motivation, disappear like a puff of smoke.

It made no sense. The previous semester I was so driven, so focused, and far more organized than is usual for me, I assure you. I could not understand what had happened to make all that drive just....leech away. The mystery occupied my brain for days, until I realized—I am in Paris. Success had been achieved. My goal had been reached, and I had not a clue what to do with the “afterwards” part. I had imagined that I would be stimulated in my university classes, and I relished the anticipated challenge.

But that’s not what I found. I was confronted with a system that is bogged down by antiquated conventions and that stifles any curiosity or independent thought the students have left. I think I begin to realize why the French love their vacations so much—it seems they treat their academic and business careers not as something to stimulate the mind or feed the spirit (as a great many Americans try to do), but as simply....business.

In any case, I was quite let down by the university system, which has frustrated and enraged me to the point where I can no longer dismiss it with equanimity, nor do I feel I am judging it from an ethnocentric standpoint. Quite simply, the French U system is breathtakingly disorganized, to the point where I now completely understand why most French students complain about it, disdain it, and—if they can afford to—forgo it entirely in favor of private schools. I find this highly ironic, as the public universities are bogged down with protests and strikes with students handing out fliers defiantly declaring that they will not be “americanized” and that their universities are not “enslaved to money”. Perhaps if they weren't so militantly disdainful of paying for public university as Americans do, the system would be more highly regarded.

I have quite a few colorful things to say on the matter, but since my imagination for profanity is poor, I’m sure it would quickly become repetitive.

None of this bothered me too much last semester. Things went just as badly, but I didn’t really care, locked as I was in that fog of numbness. Sadly, now I do care, and the problems I created for myself by my actions (or inaction) last semester have, coupled with the chaos of the French non-system, put me in a very difficult situation. I am, at this point, relying on nothing more substantial than luck.