It's Actually Happening

Visa?  Check.

Plane ticket?  Check.

Place to live?  Check.

Packed?  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

How did I get here again?

During my fourth year of college, I spent hours completing job applications to all sorts of organizations with a vague goal of helping to make the world a better place but with no definitive concept of what I wanted to do or what field I wanted to go into. While working in the UVA psychology department that year, I enjoyed scanning through my boss’s copies of The Chronicle of Higher Education, a higher education newspaper, which she would leave on the side table outside her office door. So, when a job was posted for the Department of Education in the Office of Postsecondary Education, I applied on a whim. Several months later, I received an automated email asking me to fill out an extensive questionnaire about myself. Soon after, I submitted my writing sample, an essay that I had written for my Jewish Feminism course at UVA on the need for gender-neutral god language. (I have no idea what possessed me to select that particular essay for a job interview. Honestly. What was I thinking?)  

Miraculously, the hiring panel didn’t immediately toss my application. Instead, after my interview, they offered me a job working in student financial aid policy as a “management/program analyst.” I had no idea what that meant, but I figured that if nothing else, I would stay a few years while I figured out what I wanted to study in graduate school. Plus, I would have health insurance. 

Six years later, I just finished my last day working for OPE, and I’m so fortunate to have had the opportunity to dabble in all kinds of higher education-related issues, both those directly related to the federal financial aid programs and others that I had never considered before. I’ve learned about financial aid, but along the way I’ve also learned about campus safety and law enforcement, privacy laws, immigration laws, civil rights laws, and so much more. I’ve learned critical lessons about how major organizations function – the good and the bad – and about how policy is made at the highest levels of government. But most importantly, I’ve worked with amazing people across the Department of Education who impressed and inspired me every day with their incredible talent, intelligence, passion, kindness, and dedication to ensuring that every student in our country has the means and preparation to access quality higher education. Truly, I’m so grateful for this experience. Thank you to all of my colleagues if you are reading this for your patience and willingness to teach, explain, mentor, and share your lives with me. 

Although I’ve greatly enjoyed my time at the Department of Education, I’ve felt a persistent desire to explore the world and to deeply experience other cultures. Despite trips here and there in the last few years thanks to flex days (best idea ever) and strategically-placed vacation days, I haven’t been able to shake the idea of going abroad and staying there for a while. And with my twenties speeding by, I’ve had a gnawing, if perhaps unfounded, fear that if I don’t satisfy this impulse soon, I might miss my chance altogether.

After lots of encouragement from friends, I finally began inching toward making this notion a reality. First, I had to pick a place to go. Let me tell you, this is a gargantuan task for someone who is prone to paralysis when making decisions. No joke—I’ve left CVS without buying toothpaste after being overwhelmed with the options. (Apparently I’m not alone. There is research on this!) All I was sure of was that I wanted to become fluent in a foreign language. Although I could have started learning a new language, I figured my best bet for gaining fluency was to keep working on a language I previously studied. I took French in middle school and high school, picked up some Italian during my semester abroad in Siena, Italy, and experimented with Japanese through the global language network in DC. 

If fluency was my goal, French was the clear winner. I considered going to Canada or a French-speaking country in Africa but, lured by the thought of freshly-baked baguettes and cheeses I've never tasted, after learning about a program sponsored by the French embassy for recent and recent-ish college graduates to work as English teacher assistants, I decided on France. That opportunity didn’t pan out, but I found another route to achieving my goal: going as a student. 

I spent this past summer pulling together documents for my visa (hello, French bureaucracy), and it finally arrived in the mail at the very end of August. Once I received my visa, I went ahead and bought my plane ticket over Labor Day weekend. Starting October 1, I’ll be enrolled in the French language and culture studies program at the Université Catholique de Lyon, in the Rhône-Alpes region of France! 

I’m incredibly excited, but also somewhat nervous. Although most people were supportive of my decision, it was hard to push aside the totally valid concerns that others have raised… taking a detour from my career, leaving my close friends in DC, missing milestone family events, spending money that could instead go towards a down payment on a house, returning to a weak job market, and others. Trust me, I've agonized about all of these. I get why some of my family and friends think this is just a crazy, irresponsible idea. But I really believe that it’s an adventure worth having, and I’m just going to trust that everything will fall into place when I get back to the States.

I really just can't believe that after so many years of thinking about it, I'm actually doing this! And I leave next week!