- I wanted to go back to school for my master’s but didn’t want to go into enormous debt.
- I decided to go abroad and study at the Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès in France.
- It was the best decision I ever made. I now live in Paris and have no plans to return to the US.
I never had a big plan to move to France.
I grew up in a pretty well-to-do New England town and was lucky enough to go to a quality high school where I was a straight-A honors student, yearbook editor, junior varsity field hockey captain — the works.
But sitting one weekday evening in a local neighborhood bar that I didn’t love but chose because it’d be empty, I didn’t feel fulfilled.
At the time, I was 22 years old and had been working a desk job in public relations for about two and a half years. It was a great gig. I was fresh out of college but had a decent salary, the green VW Beetle of my dreams, and plenty of time to travel and be with my friends.
Despite the fullness of my life, I felt like I was missing something. Although I had recently completed a triple major summa cum laude in four years, I felt like that something might be college.
I didn’t love my first college experience
Meredith Shubel
I wanted a college do-over but going back to school in the US was not worth the expense, in my opinion.
Intellectually, I didn’t feel stimulated. The suburban campus was boring and too far away from any big-city opportunities.
Besides feeling like college was academically unfulfilling and professionally stifling, it was also socially drab.
I lived at my parents’ house, a 40-minute car ride from campus — hardly the setting for a movie-montage college experience.
The local state university I attended wasn’t my first choice, but I went there because it was in my parents’ budget, who paid for my tuition plus other expenses.
I am extremely lucky to have had my parents pay, but I knew it was a strain on them since I was the youngest of three, and they had also paid for my older siblings’ college tuition.
So years later, when I was feeling depressed and wondering what jigsaw piece was missing from my life, I thought: Maybe what I need is a college do-over — but this time, out of the suburbs where I can get some real intellectual and social stimulation.
However, the prospect of returning to school in the US was too expensive. So, I started to consider school abroad.
Doing a master’s in a foreign language in a foreign country was a challenge
Meredith Shubel
At the time, I knew a friend who was doing her master’s in France.
“Maybe I’ll do that, too,” I told my mom over the phone during that boring weekday evening in the neighborhood bar. And that was it.
I ended up attending school in Toulouse.
There were difficult moments, embarrassing happenings, loneliness, and even a few tears. But it intellectually challenged me and opened my eyes to new mentalities.
So when I finished a master’s in creative writing at Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès in September 2024, I knew I had made the right decision.
When I had the original idea to do a master’s program in France, it wasn’t because I had always dreamt of living in France or wanted to leave my own country.
Truthfully, it was because I wanted to finally live the college experience I felt like I didn’t get the first time around.
For me, it was the most reasonable way to pursue a professionally superfluous graduate degree without taking on tens of thousands of dollars of debt.
I now live in Paris
Meredith Shubel
Settling permanently in France was never my original intent. But I’ve been in France for over three years and have also gotten married.
And while I never say never, I have no immediately foreseeable plans to move back to the US.
While nothing is perfect, and I miss things from back home, my standard of living is simply higher here.
This isn’t the right path for everyone, but it was the right one for me. I was able to pursue higher education for personal experience and fulfillment, not career advancement, and I didn’t have to go into debt for it.
