SKEMA

During my time at NC State I lived in a small house relatively close to the college campus. We lived about halfway up quite a steep hill, with a large apartment complex at the cul-de-sac at the bottom of the hill. In September 2010, the beginning of my sophomore year at school, I began to notice large groups of unusually-dressed students walking up and down the hill at all times of the day. Even so close to a large college campus, the surrounding areas of Raleigh are distinctly suburban, so this pedestrian behavior was perplexing. In the suburban United States, walking usually signifies that someone is too poor to afford a car, while these people were obviously not. They sported dark, stylish clothes and accessories seldom seen in a medium-sized city in the American South known for its historically agricultural and technical university. Something was afoot.

I asked around until finally one of my friends told me, "Oh yeah, I think there's some sort of French school here now! They've got a ton of new exchange students." As soon as I heard this, making friends with the new French students became an all-consuming goal. I think my interest was a combination of several factors. I regretted not having made any French friends during my time in Paris. At the time, if I had returned to Paris I would not have even known anyone to stay with. How disappointing to have to say that after nearly 7 months there. I also had not found very many potential friends during my first year at NC State, due in part to its historically agricultural and technical status and the students this tended to attract. I suspected that I might be able to find friends among the French who held more similar worldviews to mine. Lastly, a great deal of it was due simply to my, as much as I might not want to identify it as such, Francophilia. 

Through a friend of a friend we soon garnered an invitation to a party held by some of the French students living in the apartments down the street. It turned out that a French business school, SKEMA, had chosen NC State as the partner university for its satellite campus. More than just a study abroad exchange program, SKEMA had leased a building on our engineering campus with facilities for several hundred students to study in the United States while directly enrolled in SKEMA. This was the first satellite campus partnership of this sort by a French business school on American soil. The students were mostly housed in large apartment complexes within walking distance of their school building. 

Thanks to both proximity and to my continued persistence, as the semester wore on I grew closer to the same group of students who hosted that first party (and many more after that). I had been quite lucky in finding what I had hoped for: friends who thought about and saw the world in a similar way to myself. These students would leave after just one semester, so I decided to become more deeply involved with the SKEMA/NC State partnership while I remained in Raleigh. During my junior year I committed to be an orientation guide and unofficial "welcome buddy" for the incoming students. Through this position I was able to again meet a friendly and open-minded group of people. 

It was almost entirely due to these positive experiences with the SKEMA students that I considered returning to France again upon graduation. As we'll see later, the French education system has many fundamental differences from the American system, but these SKEMA students I was meeting were graduate students in both my perspective and theirs. Why shouldn't I go to SKEMA myself after undergraduate? I'd certainly have a good chance of being accepted, with a long track record of working with the school and its students. And my economics degree would be perfect as a basis for further business studies. In the summer of 2012, I began to look into the application process.

Background

I'm a North Carolina native, having grown up in Charlotte and Asheville. I still couldn't tell you what the catalyst was for my love affair with France, but after a school trip to Paris and Asheville's sister city, Saumur, in 11th grade, I decided that I'd like to spend a gap year there after high school. Thanks to a mutual tourist visa agreement, any American citizen can travel to France and stay there with no reason for up to 90 days, but they are not allowed to work or study during this time. Any stay longer than 90 days requires an application and visit to a consulate in the US for a visa. After much research, I decided to sign up for the Cours de Civilisation Française de la Sorbonne, or CCFS. This was, and I believe still is, the go-to excuse for anyone who is interested in spending at least several months in France and needs an official reason to obtain a visa. 

My parents were decidedly not thrilled about my choice to take a gap year, mostly because they feared that it meant I would end up not attending college at all. They also did not approve of my at-the-time girlfriend, who would be accompanying me to Paris. For these two reasons, they chose to not financially support me during my time in Paris, so I worked and saved up for many months beforehand. I won't focus too much on my experiences with obtaining a visa at this time, as it was in mid-2008 and much has changed since then. I will, however, say that we chose to find an furnished apartment through an agency (NY Habitat, I believe) that caters specifically to foreigners. Initially I opposed the idea on the principle of not wanting to pay an agency fee, but looking back on it now, the agency fee was well worth it.

Once I arrived, I realized only the first registration session at the Sorbonne before I realized that the amount of money I had saved up would not be sufficient to carry me through another 6 months in Paris. I decided to skip out on the CCFS and to find a job instead. Not so easy with only mediocre language skills. Let's backtrack a few years to see how I eventually found employment.

The same high school French teacher that brought our class to France in 11th grade had been a flight attendant before 9/11, when he was laid off and reduced to teaching high school French. After I graduated high school, he was called up again by Delta and rehired on what I imagine is a relatively prestigious route reserved for those with seniority: Atlanta-Paris. When I found this out, I got in touch with him and mentioned that we could meet up for lunch or dinner sometime while he was on a layover in Paris. He responded that he'd love to, and if I remembered the falafel restaurant (Chez Hanna, 54 rue des Rosiers) he had brought our class to a couple years back, he'd be happy to meet me there the next week. It was a favorite of his, and he had seemed to be a regular there. When we met that next week for dinner, I mentioned to him that I was searching for just about any job I could find, and he called over the patron, Guy. After a quick back-and-forth, Guy asked me if I could start the week after that. 

I was officially limited by my student visa to working 20 hours a week, but Guy had different plans in store for me. At first he needed me weekends only, starting Friday nights. The restaurant is open from noon to midnight every day except Monday, so I would work 7 hours on Friday night and 12 each on Saturday and Sunday. Guy was under the impression that I was actually enrolled in and attending the CCFS courses during the week, and because this weekend work schedule was already more than enough for my tastes, I didn't bother informing him otherwise. Eventually though, I had to "come clean" and pretend that my courses had ended and I had graduated, after the Christmas holidays in 2008. From here began my full-time work weeks, at more than twice the mandated 35-hour work week in France and nearly four times the limit my student visa imposed on me. The best thing I can say about that time is that I was able to save absolutely everything I made, having no time to spend money. I didn't even have to buy food, eating all my meals at the restaurant six days a week. 

Here we see the namesake of half of the title of this blog. Philosophy is yet to come. 

It was during this time that I applied to and was accepted at North Carolina State University, with plans of attending in the fall of 2009, after returning to the US. This is where I would start and finish my undergraduate career, with little knowledge of what lay in future after that. 

Introduction

Hello!

I'm an American student studying in Paris at a French business school called ESCP. When I began the application process I did a good bit of Googling to see if I could find a blog or website put together by someone else who had gone through the same process. I had tons of questions, and a firsthand account would have been immensely valuable at the time. 

There are plenty of blogs by American students who are studying abroad in Paris for a semester or two and who are looking to share their experiences and observations with their friends and family back home; the Tour Eiffel lit up at night, ice cream at Berthillon, exploring the tombs at Père Lachaise, etc. However, I was applying after graduating with a Bachelor's degree from an American university. This meant I would not be studying abroad, but would be a full-time student directly admitted into a two-year program in the French school. 

What I was lacking, then, were the blogs about financial aid options, how the French education system is set up, or how to get a new life started in Paris. My plans are longer-term than a semester abroad; optimistically, I'll be here for at least the next five to ten years, perhaps permanently. This is the niche I aim to write for, in the hopes that I can help at least one other person out there who has the same questions I did. 

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, this doesn't mean I'm 100% settled in Paris and have everything in my life figured out! There's no telling how many more obstacles lay ahead. Let's start from the beginning.