Episode 11 - Interviews and Exams
Biking to a strange orb sphere dome auditorium, more museums, and pretty clouds in Paris!
This was the last week before a week long fall break, during which I’m headed around Europe with a bullet train season pass and the great company of Joe and Emma! Lots of work, lots of exams, and lots of interviews, but congratulations, we all made it.
Let’s dive in :)
Tuesday 10/24/2023
Tuesday means my 8 a.m. trade and international finance class, so I biked over to Sciences Po while it was still pitch black outside.
Lovely.
Today, we reviewed material from the last lecture on the trade component of the course. Basically, one professor teaches trade topics the first half of the class, then we take our midterm exam on the trade topics. That exam was the previous Saturday.
As a result, there wasn’t much incentive to pay attention today, as the material we reviewed had already been tested and we would never be evaluated on it ever again. In terms of priorities, the TA may not have had them exactly straight.
I did plan some of my UCLA classes in class, however. It’s crazy. I’ll be back in California before I know it.
After class, I got food at Sciences Po, then walked over to the Apple Store to do my class readings, work, and a bit of my blog. It was smooth sailing as usual. The Apple Store is a lovely place to be!
Around 1, I biked toward the Eiffel Tower to check out a museum that has been on my bucket list for quite a while, ever since João (from the Iceland trip, hi João!!) told me about it a few weeks ago. The museum is called the Musée du quai Branly, and it is a super cool museum about native art from Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
Along the way there, I called my Aunt Natasha from Belarus as well! It had been a while :)
The museum was very modern and had really cool architecture, with a lovely garden at the base as well. When I walked it and scanned my (free) tickets, the docent told me “Bon visite!” I found it terribly funny.
The museum is organized around the 4 regions of indigenous populations, and it was interesting to see that nearly all the cultures had some sort of masks that are very important ritual and custom features from the Inuit to Africa to the Americas, super cool!
I also saw some Benin bronzes, these little bronze statues from the Kingdom of Benin (in modern-day Nigeria). They were taken from palaces by the British when they sacked the kingdom a couple of centuries ago, and there is currently a big push to return them to the Nigerian government.
It was quite the experience to see them in person!
The museum also had a really neat temporary exhibition on Bollywood and how it developed over the last century. I thought of my roommate Aryaman from last year when looking at the section. I Shazamed a couple Bollywood songs and proceeded to listen to them the rest of the day.
My favorite part of the museum was this exhibit of paintings by an LA artist, Kehinde Wiley. His paintings are of modern African leaders, and he painted them as if they were European royalty. There was a mini-documentary about his work being shown, and he basically discussed how African leaders have been barbarized in artwork, and he wanted to switch the dynamic by painting them in a European fashion. It was extremely interesting and made me ponder how artwork portrays power.
I would love to meet Wiley one day.
The museum also had its own library, so I did some work there before heading back to Sciences Po for class. The bike ride was beautiful, with lovely poofy clouds along the way. Of course, I got a baguette before class.
My last class of the day was French, where the professor literally told us that French makes no logical sense.
Nice!
To be fair, English doesn’t make any logical sense either. My favorite sentence to show this is “English can be weird. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.“ Amazing.
I biked home while calling Mama, then cased with Tatiana to prepare for my BCG interview on Wednesday. My brain wasn’t working at the time so it didn’t go too well, but it was good enough for government work. I will nail that BCG interview!!
I made dinner, then called Papa. Around 9, I biked over to the Grand Opera to meet my friend Amelia (the fake British person from the Normandy trip a few weeks ago) for a stroll along the Seine. We had planned to go out for a pint, but I had 2 interviews tomorrow and didn’t want to feel sluggish the next day. Great decision, Dennis!
The walk was absolutely lovely, with us walking all the way to Notre Dame. I even dressed up nicer than normal. It was super fun to talk to Amelia, especially when she gave me her updates about her German man Tim, who she really likes. Unfortunately, the weekend prior, Amelia met his super hot Swiss friend, and now she can’t stop thinking about him. That is quite the dilemma!
I’ve noticed this really funny thing about myself — I talk a ton to girls that I don’t find attractive, but don’t have the guts to actually talk to girls I do find attractive. As a result, I have a bunch of girl homies that I hang out with, and outsiders think I have a bunch going on. In reality, the complete opposite is true :)
Whenever I tell Joe about these walks I go on, he always gets super excited on my behalf. But I have to remind him that if I’m talking to the girl a ton, it means that I don’t see them that way lol.
Story of my life.
Wednesday 10/25
Slept in until 10:30 today, feeling great!
I drafted my letter to break my lease in early December, then met with my study abroad advisor, Shelby, to review it and make sure all the things I legally needed to say were included. They were.
Am I becoming a legal scholar?
Not quite. Shelby provided a template for me, but I can dream. For her break, Shelby is going to the south of France with her friends to go country line dancing. Now that’s what I’m talking about!!
I did some more work before hopping on a Velib to northern Paris for my tutoring session with Eliana. Since it’s quite the uphill ride, I got a blue (electric) bike for smoother sailing that had a full battery.
Unfortunately for me, that complete piece of shit would not provide any electrical power assist despite showing full battery, so I had to maximum engage my UCLA Cycling legs to make it to the session on time. Call me Wout van Aert.
“Fine, I’ll do it myself.” —Thanos
On the bright side, today I finally hit 600 km on the Velib! I am going to pass Joe soon.
It was a great time with Eliana today, but it was only a 2-hour session in this case. We played a lot of Uno and I learned that Eliana is one sneaky, clever child. She would sneakingly hide cards underneath the table, and then laugh mischievously when I picked them up off the ground. I was very annoyed but also very proud. She reminds me of myself when I was a wee little lad.
*sighs nostalgically*
We also made a ton of paper airplanes and threw them at each other. Each time I hit her, I’d yell “Gotcha!” The next throw, I missed, and she yelled, “No gotcha!!”
Clearly, her English is improving!
We were also listening to music throughout our playing, and I put on some light American pop. She switched it to 70s death metal and began singing the lyrics.
She is quite the child. I love it!
After the session, I biked home quickly, nailed the online robot case for BCG, and proceeded with a behavioral interview for another consulting club. It went great! There was a case interview afterward that I slightly struggled with, but it was still super interesting. I basically had to evaluate if a credit card company partnering with Apple Pay would increase its profits.
I then had a behavioral interview with BCG and felt I did really well. At this point, I have done my best and there’s not much more that I can do. If it doesn't work out, I’ve literally done all that I can do.
It will work out though.
At 8, I met with Manon (my orientation leader) to make pelmeni! We had been trying to hang out for weeks, but she’s taking a ton of classes and is super involved at Sciences Po so it had been hard to find a time that worked for both of us. Today was the day!
We had to use gluten-free dough (Manon is unfortunately allergic), and it was my first time doing so. I didn’t think the pelmeni were that good today, but Manon loved them. Hooray!
She is so fun to hang out with, too! She is really funny and super happy about life. She has to study abroad for the next year and is torn between Vancouver, Chilé, and Sydney (literally completely opposite sides of the world, lol). I’m probably gonna visit her wherever she ends up going.
She has her TOEFL (English fluency exam) test on Saturday, and I jokingly offered to take it for her if she takes my French A1 exam tomorrow morning. She accepted!
Just kidding.
The joke was on me, though. I took a practice reading section of the TOEFL after she left and failed it. My excuse is that I wasn’t actually trying and was exhausted.
I walked Manon back to the metro, and found that my street had set up Christmas lights already.
Thursday 10/26
I woke up early to prepare for my A1 exam. It was brutally challenging to wake up, and I briefly considered skipping the class to not have to take the exam.
I eventually got my shit together and made it to class on time. Now that’s what I’m talking about! I even got there before the professor.
I overheard my 2 classmates talking about a paper they needed to write for another class, and one guy asked the other if he did citations. The dude responded, “if he requires citations, there’s no chance”. Lol
I honestly felt pretty good about my exam. I even wrote about the yummy kebab shop across the street when one of the writing questions asked me to describe my neighborhood. I forgot the study the possessive adjectives for the exam, so I wrote in the Spanish ones and hoped for the best. Joe later said that I conjugated one of the verbs in my writing by using a Spanish verb with French conjugation, but hey, there’s only so much I can do.
The listening comprehension went pretty poorly for the entire class. We all were stumped when the YouTube video of a news interview ended and we had to answer some questions about it, and were looking around each other with a “wtf just happened” expression.
It was almost as if the interview was in another language.
Oh wait, it was.
I talked to my classmate Mika after class. It was her friend’s birthday back home in San Diego. He had turned 21 and was already super drunk. He also had a kitten on his chest that he was petting lovingly.
Apparently, his friends got him a surprise baby cat for his birthday.
That is America at its finest!
I met up with Joe around 11 at a coffee shop, and he got a present — a ginger shot (no alcohol in it). It was terrible, but Joe insisted that it was good for my health. He finally sent over the train schedule for our trip literally in 2 days, and it looks super exciting!
We were laughing so much that absolutely no work got done.
To be fair, the WiFi at the coffee shop was worse than dropping your phone down a storm drain, so after 10 minutes of persuasion, I finally convinced Joe to come with me to my favorite place to study with me there. Can you guess where it is?
If you guessed another cafe, congratulations!
You’re wrong.
It was the APPLE STORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG!! JOE AT THE APPLE STORE! Who would’ve thought this day would finally come?
Joe loved it so much he pulled an apple out of his bag and started munching it.
That didn’t happen, but he was super excited about the Apple Store. I had to try so hard not to laugh when he whipped out his Windows laptop and charger in the middle of the Apple Store and started working.
He was applying to some legal internships and had to list his classes. One of them was called Land Law.
Me: “Joe, what the hell is land law?”
Joe: “It’s the law of the land, mate.”
Stupid me. I thought all laws were the law of the land. Clearly, I’m not a legal genius like Joe.
In his application, he described in tremendous detail his current job working at a cafe, and I was like “Dude, it’s just a cafe.”
He responded with, “No, it’s a multilateral business.”
I am no stranger to polishing up resumes, so I understood the sentiment. Joe is going to get that job!
Later, Emma Verbeek (cue me saying Emma Verbeek in a Dutch accent) made a guest appearance at the Apple Store as well. Seems that I have converted an entire group of my minions.
MWAHAHAHAHAHA!
She is apparently going to a Gala in the Netherlands in early December. She’s gonna ask around and see if anyone needs a date so that I can finesse my way into a Dutch Gala. I will keep y’all posted.
International finance lecture was right after and was pretty decent, but I got lost halfway through and didn’t really know what was happening. I was sitting in the very back of the class, kicked off my shoes, and was munching on some Russian crackers. It was a great time!
Afterward, I said hi to some chaps from my discussion section (2 French, one from Atlanta) and they thought I was super interested in the material because I kept asking questions.
I was asking questions because I had no idea what was happening in that class. But I wasn’t gonna correct them, though.
We laughed a lot and had a great time!
I headed over to my history class and it was quite interesting. The professor shared some personal stories (always fun) about when his wife became French and they offered her to change her name (in the name of “assimilation”) from Victoria to something more French.
She declined.
Apparently, people named Muhammad that become French citizens are offered the name “Morris” if they like it, so that they can become more French. Based on the 2 different Muhammads working at Urban Grill (my amazing kebab shop), they declined the opportunity to become Morris.
I showed up a bit late to my corporate governance class because I was talking late to my history professor about the Mongols. I know where my priorities lie!
We had our exam in corporate governance today, and it was a pop dissertation paper. I wrote my heart out. Let’s go! I found the hallway pretty funny, because you can see the exact most efficient way to walk through it:
I biked home, then met Norma (my landlord) for a lovely pint and conversation about studying abroad. She told me more about her family and her abroad experiences, and recommended a fun trip down Iberia to Morocco when I have the chance! I need to look into that planning soon, and try to head down there after my classes end in early December.
I walked home in the rain (and my First Republic umbrella) while calling Simon and read another chapter of When McKinsey Comes to Town when I got home. This chapter was about how the company helped ICE (the American Immigration Agency) separate a bunch of families and crack down on immigration.
Absolutely brutal.
I did some more work before heading to bed and calling Mama. What a great day!
Friday 10/27
I woke up at 10 this morning and started off with another chapter of When McKinsey Comes to Town.
Nice.
I had a very productive 2 hours following this writing, doing schoolwork, and knocking things off my to-do list. Today is the last day before fall break, when I’m taking the Interrail train system all over Europe with Emma and Joe.
My mom would call it the “home stretch”.
I went over to a cafe I’ve frequented before that has yummy, relatively cheap soups that’s down the street from my apartment. The soup of the day was split pea soup — not as yummy as the tomato soup there was there last time, but still great. (I may have been watching Jo Koy while slurping up the soup)
I had planned to meet Joe around 3 to go for a bike ride, and you will not believe where he was working.
The Apple Store.
He has officially been converted. My study abroad experience has been successful from just that. That is my good service to society. Everyone should work at Apple Stores when they can. Even if they use a Windows laptop.
Joe and I proceeded to get blue velib bikes and bike 10 kilometers southwest of Paris to this orb dome structure thingy that I had seen a picture of online.
Joe described the location as “woop woop”. Even I had to agree that it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The bike ride was amazing though, with extremely smooth sailing.
Of course, Joe’s bike ran out of battery halfway through because he doesn’t check the battery when renting the electric bike. Being on the UCLA Cycling team, I volunteered to switch, and he “grudgingly” agreed. It wasn’t even his birthday this time!
There was also a golden statue of a big toe (or perhaps a thumb?? They’re the same word in French apparently). There was also a lovely garden at the top of the building near where the orb structure building sphere thingy construction monument was.
Joe was hungry, so I gave him some crackers. Those crackers were the ones the AirBnB host from Aubervilliers gave me 2 months ago that I never ate, but Joe didn’t even notice. I also learned that his dad used to work at HP. Joe also said the motivating quote of «Even if there’s a goalie, you can still score». Don’t give up on your dreams, even if there’s opposition.
Wise words, Joe.
Did I mention his dad worked at HP?
We flew back to Paris, and found this cool abstract statue along the way. The bike lane was amazing and we were making great speed (25 km/hr) on the way back. Joe and I split up around the Eiffel Tower, him to go home and get burst fade haircuts with Ben, me to the Musee d’Orsay to meet up with Amelia for a bit.
The visit to d’Orsay was a huge success, with Amelia (the fake British person) being shocked that I was wearing shorts. I inherited that from my dad. He always wears shorts. Amelia is going to Amsterdam and London for break, so I’m super excited to hear about those trips!
She is planning on going to the Columbia Street Flower Market because of “something she read in a blog somewhere.”
Seems that my writing has a use after all!
There was a special Van Gogh (I read that with the Dutch pronunciation oh my, I’ve been spending too much time around Emma) exhibit that talked about the last few months of his life when he cut off his ear, lived in a nice town and painted a lot, then died in a field. I saw his pretty famous self portrait too!
I did a self portrait (selfie) with it to honor the self portraitdedness of it all.
Afterward, I got a baguette and walked with Amelia for a bit before it started “spitting” (people from the Northeast have a million words for rain), the I biked home for a Zoom interview with Deloitte. This being an online interview, this was the fit:
Of course, I was wearing Ben’s amazing jacket. If it’s good enough for BNP Paribas, it’s good enough for me.
The interview went well, though the case was unlike any I’ve done before. I still think I did well, though. Afterward, I cleaned out my fridge, cleaned the entire apartment, and packed for my weeklong trip across Europe. I’m so excited!
I biked over to Joe’s and had a *lovely* dinner with him, Ben, Anna, Lara, Emma, and myself. I was sitting across from Ben, so I had the pleasure and privilege to stare lovingly into his eyes for 30 minutes.
Those opportunities come very rarely. When they do, we must seize them with all we got!
We then watched The Nice Guys on Ben’s mom’s Amazon Prime, though he had to confirm it was him by reciting his grandma’s home address. Cybersecurity is very important in Europe.
I fell asleep halfway through the movie, then repacked my stuff for tomorrow. There were 6 of us on one couch, so it was pretty crowded. If anyone had farted, we’d start dropping like flies. Anna, Lara, and Ben dipped back home after the movie, and now I am finishing up this blog on Joe’s kitchen table at 2 a.m.
Emma is asleep. Joe is asleep. And I am halfway there. I need to be up in 4 hours to catch the train to Germany.
Adventure awaits!
And so another great week ends. Thanks to everyone that made it so great, and huge shoutout to my self-proclaimed #1 fans, Gibbles and Annabel!!
