There! It’s done. I have finally finished studying, for the moment at least. When I finished my Grand O this morning, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. Finally! Now, I can take a good few days of well-deserved vacation. It feels amazing not to have anything to study after years of studying. I think I will take time to get used to it though. I am a post-graduate again! Yay!!

It has been a crazy week. For the first time in two years, I am thinking about how stressful it is to be at Sciences Po. To tell you the truth, I have never felt this kind of stress until now. Not even when I was forced to sit through 5 exams in 4 days at the end of the first semester. Maybe it stems from the fact that I am at the end of my tether when it concerns grad school, or that I am simply terrified of the future and wish I could turn the clock back a couple of years. Whatever be the reason, the fact remains that I have been stressed, depressed and generally unpleasant to talk to over the last few days. Especially for those outside of Sciences Po. People in the same situation as me know exactly where the problem lies. They are as stressed and a little bit of ranting is expected. But, everyone else thinks I am going pretty much insane.

Nicola and I must be the rant queens of Sciences Po. Maybe we are too influenced by the French and see the negative side of everything. But, trust me, it is a therapeutic experience. Ranting about the unrealistic expectations professors seem to have about our term papers, about how stupid we were to leave the writing to the last 5 days, about how the coffee in the cafeteria absolutely sucks…name it and we have ranted about it. It is nice to know that there is someone who likes to rant almost as much as I do, maybe even more. On the whole, both of us enjoy our Wednesday afternoon rant time. 🙂

But why exactly do I feel like ranting all the time? For the first time in life, I really feel the pressure to find a job. Of course, I can always find something I like to do. But, the question is, will I find a job that corresponds to my level of education? Why do all organisations ask for people with advanced university degrees and at least 2 years of experience? Where do I go for that experience if nobody will give me a job in the first place? To put it mildly, it is frustrating. Maybe I am just pampered. Maybe I am used to getting everything on a silver platter and expect the same this time. Maybe I just need to grow up. At least, when I was finishing my BA, I knew it was only a matter of time before I started teaching at the Alliance Francaise. Two years later, at the end of my MA French, I knew I was coming to Paris. But now? What is the future? What am I going to do? How am I going to cope? Anand tells me I am being paranoid. Maybe he is right. I don’t know.

In any case, I know one thing. I am fed up of university. I have been in it for 7 years. It’s time I get out and start working in the real world. And I also know that I will come back to school some day. Maybe in a year, maybe in ten. But, I know that I will never really leave school for good. I will come back, either to study, or to teach. I love school too much to let go completely.

Here I am, this beautiful evening of May, alternating between freaking out over term papers to finish and stressing over the rest of my life. After a solid seven years of university education, I am finally finishing in three weeks’ time. I feel a sense of elation and accomplishment at having come so far. When I stepped into WCC in June 2000, I was a timid and entirely unsure 17-year old. Over the next three years, I made friends, learnt my way around college, had my share of disappointments and failures, drove our beloved head of department up the wall with every rule broken, and above all, learnt the importance of humility. And, I said I learnt the importance of humility, not that I learnt to be humble. I am still struggling with that one. Then came my days at the University of Madras, as a post-graduate student of French literature. I learnt more than just French. I learnt to walk on eggshells around fragile egos, and to juggle work with school. At the end of it, I was happy to leave. I will not pretend to feel sorry about it. It seems like yesterday I landed in Paris, armed only with my knowledge of French and 200 euros in cash. Yes, you read that right. 200 euros. Every minute until I finally got into the Egide office here was an adventure. There, I got my scholarship money and my accommodation. It was scary.

Suddenly, I find myself nearing the end of my stay in Paris. I still have trouble believing that in three weeks, I will no longer be a student. That I step out of student life forever and into the world of work. It is both exhilarating and terrifying; exhilarating because it is a new way of life and a new world, and terrifying because I have never been anything other than a student in my life, even when I was a teacher at the Alliance Française. It is extremely difficult to imagine myself in a position of responsibility. And, as I said before, it is positively terrifying. At this point, half drowning in the interminable exposes and term papers, I find that I am on the threshold. I am at the threshold of a different life. And this is a life I will be living for the next 40 years. All this makes me wonder if I should have taken the plunge into the world of work at age 20 when I was young, naïve and idealistic. Four years later, I am more pragmatic, and as a result, more pessimistic. I retain none of the post-teen idealism of the perfect job. And that is not very reassuring. At this point in my life, I simply wait. I wait because I don’t know what else I can do. And I hope everything will turn out fine.