My exchange in Paris was hardly a fairytale. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat

Sometimes, when the drudgery of adult life becomes a little too much, I like to fantasise about the time I spent living in Paris in my early 20s. I will never be as young or as free or as unbothered as I was then. The six months I spent there on exchange studying art history at the Sorbonne were some of the best of my life, but they were a far cry from a scene out of Emily in Paris.

The fact that it is an immense privilege to study in another country is not lost on me. I was lucky enough to be living at home in Australia beforehand, which enabled me to save as much money as possible while working part-time to finance the expensive endeavour.

On exchange in Paris in 2019.Credit: Lauren Ironmonger

All in all, I estimate I saved about $10,000 – which covered airfares, living expenses and enough money to travel around Europe both before and during my studies. This amount enabled me to live comfortably, but modestly – how much you need to save will depend on where you’re going and what you want to do when you’re there.

On top of this, I received a scholarship from my university of about $5000. I would urge anyone going on exchange to apply for scholarships and financial aid, even if you don’t think you’re eligible. I received mine based on academic merit – I was hardly the top student in my classes, but qualified because my grade average reached a certain threshold.

Finally, I continued working while I was there. My boss at my job in Sydney, where I worked as the manager of an online store, allowed me to work remotely, doing a few hours of copywriting per week for some extra pocket money.

Here are five things I learnt from my experience.

Be prepared for things to go wrong – and embrace the mess

There’s a high chance your exchange experience won’t be perfect, and that’s OK. For me, a lot went wrong, to the point where it sometimes felt like I was the protagonist in my own comedy of errors. I learnt to embrace it.

To begin with, my student visa application was bungled. I’ll spare you the details, but this essentially meant doing everything short of bribery to make my case to remain in France.

It also meant I was unable to apply for a rental as I had planned, and ended up rooming with a chain-smoking, short-tempered retiree who rarely left the house and his wife. Located in the 13th arrondissement – a newer area of Paris mainly populated with high-rise concrete buildings – the apartment didn’t exactly fit the fairytale picture of the city I had envisioned for myself.

A snapshot of the apartment complex in which I lived. Credit: Lauren Ironmonger

But living in the 13th opened my eyes to a different side of Paris, one that over time I grew to love. Home to the largest concentration of Asian immigrants in the city, I was grateful for the smells, sounds and sights that reminded me of my childhood. When I grew sick of eating jambon beurre or pain au chocolat (which was often), a wealth of Asian supermarkets were at my doorstep, enabling me to make the food I loved most. And, as May Ngo writes in The Lifted Brow, the fantastical image of Paris most of us hold is at odds with the reality of a city still heavily stratified by race and class – one I may never have otherwise encountered.

“The archetypal Parisien is still imagined to be a white person,” Ngo says. “Even when the reality of Paris includes high levels of immigration, diverse ethnic quarters and a working class you can see immediately once in certain areas of the city.”

The French, famously, love to protest. It’s not uncommon to encounter train delays or cordoned-off streets due to protests, but my time in Paris happened to coincide with two of the city’s biggest demonstrations: a city-wide train strike – at the time, Paris’ longest in three decades – and the end of the first phase of the Yellow Vest protests. This was pre-COVID, and there was no such thing as online learning, so my classes simply stopped. Yet I was still expected to turn in assignments, making the 45-minute trek on foot several times to hand in printed copies of my work (if there are two things the French love, it’s paperwork and making things harder than they need to be).

A Gilet Jaune, or Yellow Vest, holds a French flag as protestors and French riot police clash in Paris in 2019.Credit: Getty Images

To top it all off, my laptop was stolen (at a cinema during a screening of Joker – those two things will be forever intertwined for me), something that taught me two vital life lessons: a) tote bags are not appropriate vessels for expensive electronics, especially when left under cinema seats, and b), always buy travel insurance. The whole ordeal saw me bumble my way through an interview with a rather amused police officer and several hundred Euros poorer, but I didn’t let it get in the way of the rest of my trip.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

Probably the biggest regret I have from my exchange is that I didn’t ask for help enough – especially when it came to my university classes. I wasn’t expecting to have my hand held, but I also wasn’t prepared for the level of indifference shown to me by my teachers and classmates. While friends on exchange in other countries were welcomed by parties and local buddies, I found student support to be virtually non-existent. I was emailed a time and a place to be for class, and that was that. I’ll never forget my first day walking into a lecture hall of 100 French students, all swivelling around in their chairs at once to stare at me.

I quickly learned that the French approach to education is very traditional – a 180-degree flip from the “no such thing as a wrong answer” approach at my art school in Sydney. Rote learning was the norm, and there was definitely such a thing as a wrong answer. Add to this the fact that all my classes were in French, and I struggled.

My teachers seemed to have little sympathy for the fact I was a foreign student, marking my essays with the same discerning eye they would apply to any other student. I was lucky to have a friend and native French speaker look over my essays, but looking back now, I wish I had been able to set my ego aside and ask one of my teachers for help.

Outside my university building in Paris.Credit: Lauren Ironmonger

Put yourself out there

One of the best things I did was enrol in a few language classes at my university. It’s where, alongside various Erasmus nights out and excursions, I met most of my friends. These were people from all over the world – Afghanistan, Spain, England – who had come to Paris for the same reasons as me. But their friendship didn’t come as a given. If you’re not living in student housing, where potential friends are everywhere, turning acquaintances into friends takes a bit of work.

My advice? Be clingy! Be annoying! Ask that classmate out for coffee! Exchange is not the time for timidity. I promise you, most people will be in the same boat as you and welcome the enthusiasm.

One of several climate strikes in Paris, in September 2019.Credit: Lauren Ironmonger

Technology is also your friend when it comes to forging connections in a big city. I found local Facebook groups and dating apps with options to match with friends, rather than romantic partners, particularly helpful.

Finally, I joined a book club, held at a well-known English bookstore in Paris, where I met a bunch of like-minded women who loved reading as much as I did.

Don’t take your time for granted

For me, time was one of the greatest gifts of going on exchange. The older I get, the more I appreciate what a luxury time is. Paris, as it happens, is the perfect city for someone with plenty of time and nowhere to be. Loitering, a hobby of mine, is practically a national pastime for the French. Many an hour was spent sitting on a park bench or looking out to the street from a bistro – sometimes reading, sometimes listening to a podcast, or sometimes just watching the world go by.

Undoubtedly, one of the best things about studying art history in Paris was, of course, the art. Being under 26 in most parts of Europe comes with a host of benefits, including free access to most galleries and museums – something I made sure to take full advantage of. I’d spend a morning studying a famous painting, and find myself standing centimetres from that very painting that same afternoon. I know this might not be everyone’s idea of an afternoon well spent, but to me, it was pretty close to magic.

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