Episode 17 - Return to Paris

Post-travel depression, hedgehogs, and the best interview of my life 💪

I recently reread my Iceland blog post, and was taken aback by how different my writing style today is from it. It has just been more than a month, but I feel like my writing is evolving, becoming more dynamic, more representative of the way I want to convey information.

It is all tremendously exciting.

I’m also trying out some new features that Substack seems to have for writers, such as embedding Spotify songs, quotes, and headlines. We shall see how it goes!

Lastly, I recommend downloading the Substack app if y’all would like a better reading experience. Besides the pictures being of higher quality, you can select and look at them all! Plus, my PR agent (Joseph Hall, soon to be a solicitor) told me to recommend y’all download the Substack app.

For all y’all new folks, welcome to this great adventure!

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Monday 11/6/2023

I woke up at 10 am in my nice, warm bed and proceeded to have an existential crisis for the next 2 hours.

I had extreme post-travel depression, where I missed Emma and Joe SO MUCH after being around each other all the time for the past week. Now that I had done my laundry and unpacked, being by myself felt extremely lonesome. The reality of being back from an extremely fun week of traveling everywhere, seeing Europe, and spending time in amazing company was terrible for me, and I felt horrible the entire morning.

Monday was also the day when I needed to catch up on all the work that I had put off during the entire trip since I wanted to enjoy the Interrailing trip without any distractions from school. That meant I had to respond to a lot of emails, write an essay for my history class, and look at housing at UCLA. I also cleaned up my apartment, finished doing laundry, and bought some groceries.

Basically, did chores. While being sad. Not good.

I called my grandma as well to catch up and send her all the lovely pictures from the trip, and it turns out, my aunt had come to visit her as well! So I got to chat with both of them, how lovely. I joked that when they turned on their camera I didn’t recognize them because I saw 2 young models, and they both laughed tremendously at that.

After doing some more work, I decided I had to be proactive about making myself less sad, so I decided to go on an extended bike ride before fencing class. I made it to fencing class on time, and it was a super fun session. We did some running and fencing drills, then proceeded to put on the fancy fencing outfits and fence each other for the next hour. It was a ton of fun, and I seemed to be a natural. I won a few matches, learned the French fencing words for refereeing, and lost a few games to the more experienced fencers.

In my fencing class, there was a Dutch girl, who said I was a natural and thought that I was German. I find it hilarious and great that people don’t think I’m American — my Americanness seems to be moving through the shadows.

However, Emma is still by far my favorite Dutch person. She is wonderful and I like her dad’s climate change blogs. What a dude.

After fencing, I called my sister and she told me about her super fun cross-SF hiking trip and a convertible car she was picked up in. I also got some sushi, then went to Sciences Po to meet with Joe and figured out tickets for Berlin. He, Annabel, and Gibbles are going to Berlin for a concert in two weekends and I decided to join them! I bought the Berlin tickets, talked to Joe, tried to do some work, was super unproductive at the library.

So I left and went home instead.

There, I did another practice case with Micah, though it didn’t go too hot. I need to make sure to get more sleep and just make sure I’m well-rested before my final round interview this Friday.

I then proceeded to spend the next 5 hours writing my history paper that was due at midnight and I decided to start just a few hours before it was due. I could’ve worked on it the entire Interrailing trip, but decided that I wanted to enjoy the train journeys and blog instead. My decision had finally caught up with me. I read the readings for the topics, found some primary sources to write about, and grinded out the paper while listening to Quinn XCII:

Good Either Way, Quinn XCII

Writing the paper was very painful, and it was definitely not the finest quality. Like my dad would say though, it was good enough for government work.

T-1 month until I move out of my apartment! Crazy.

Tuesday 11/7

I woke up extremely exhausted due to a lack of sleep and dragged myself to class while barely staying awake.

Fortunately, we got our grades back from the midterm exam (this is when I accidentally locked Tatiana into my apartment a few weeks ago), and got 18/20, 3 points above the class average and putting me in a great position for the class moving forward.

Afterward, I talked to a couple of my classmates about their breaks and TOEFL exams (these are English language tests required to study on exchange in English-speaking countries). Sciences Po students need to study abroad for their entire 3rd year, so taking the TOEFL is a super important step. They all did well!

I biked home quickly and took a 3-hour nap because I would not be able to function otherwise. I kinda slept the whole time but mostly just enjoyed the warmth of the bed.

Paris is super cold now for literally no reason.

I woke up around 1:30, made lunch, and wrote the blog for the Lyon trip. It was really sad to write it because I was remembering how nice that trip was, and really poured my heart out in the reflection. Being by myself in the apartment most of the day and not talking to anyone made me quite sad, especially after being around close friends for the last week.

I have come to the realization that living by myself (at least at this point in my life) is not the ideal move for me. I was really missing the companionship that I felt from the Interrailing trip, and being by myself in my apartment was not exactly helping. I think the ideal situation would be to have my own room but a shared living space/room, similar to what I had when living with Aidan in Chicago. That was amazing!

I did watch Gibbs’s blog and felt a lot better about that.

I decided that I needed to get my shit together about my loneliness and decided to call Emma. She was studying with Anna, so I met with them at a coffee shop and it was absolutely amazing. I felt so much better hanging out with them. I got a cappuccino that was made from oat milk (how do you milk an oat??) and made a joke that if you combine whole milk with 2% milk, you get 102% milk.

Anna being the maths student and academic weapon that she is, laughed. Emma, being an academic weapon as well but not in maths, did not.

Moral of the story: Me time is important for me, but too much of it in a confined space for prolonged periods of time makes me real sad, real quick.

I headed over to French class and turns out, I did surprisingly well on the exam. Aggregate score of 13/20. That is passing! Now that is what I am talking about.

This week we are presenting about our hometowns, so it was cool to hear about where my classmates are from (in French, of course). I’m excited to present about Antioch on Thursday!

I did a bit of fun reading after class before doing another practice case with Micah. Honestly, it’s not gonna get much better at this point, so I just need to make sure that I get my sleep beforehand and practice my behavioral questions.

I read some more in the language department room I was in, and then sang some because the acoustics in the room were really good. Like really good.

I sang opera and had a great time. Good thing I was the only one in the room, because it probably would not have gone too well if someone else was there lol.

I walked to a gyro store I had been to before near Notre Dame while calling Papa and Maxim. They were on the way to In-n-Out! I’m super sad that I won’t be home this year for Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday and the first time without my family :( ), but I’m having a Friendsgiving with the gang and will call my family on Thanksgiving to say hi. I must go with the best option given the current situation. :)

We take what life gives us, and move forward the best we can!

I ate the yummy gyro and called Mama while walking to a pub near the Pantheon. I saw a cool mural and loved talking to Mama. I finally made it the pub, with the

BEST.

COMPANY.

EVER!

Everyone was there! Everyone that I had missed so much! Joe, Emma, Harry, Annabel, Gibbles, Ben, Anna. Joe’s friend Iris (from Twickenham!! Hi Iris!! She’s so British, I love it) was there as well, along with Anna’s Swiss friend Sara who speaks 4 languages (German, English, French, and Finnish) and was super interesting and fun to talk to.

We were outside at the pub, so I was freezing within 30 minutes, at which point Ben offered me his beanie (so now I had 2) and Harry offered his jacket (so now I had 2 jackets as well). Warmth was experienced by me, and all was well!

Apparently, everyone loved the Lyon blog, and it made me so happy that everyone enjoyed it so much. Writing this blog has been such a great experience so far. Everyone, it is wonderful to have you along on this journey!

After the pub, about half the group left and the rest of us went to get crêpes! They were absolutely delicious, and it was a lovely time.

I headed home after and vélibed there in record time, took a super hot shower, then off to bed.

An absolutely amazing end to the day with even more amazing company. I love my friends so much! Thank you all for being in my life :)

Wednesday 11/8

I woke up at 10:30 and did a bit of work before heading to my favorite cafe in Paris (Le Pain Quotidien) to try their yummy soup of the day!

The soup of the day was delicious as always!

I was supposed to do some more work but ended up just reading Jack Raines for an hour before heading to northern Paris to tutor Eliana in English.

Jack Raines is an amazing writer, and is actually who inspired this blog. I read his work when I first moved to Paris and thought it was incredibly engaging and interesting to read.

Plus, he made a career out of being a writer. Maybe that will be me in a couple years?

The piece I loved in particular was about friendships, and how friendships tend to be a casualty of growing up. Basically, he describes how as we get older, we grow apart from our friends as we focus on our families and careers, and that doesn’t need to be the case.

I highly recommend giving it a read here.

At 1, I biked to Elaina’s for 5 hours of playing in English. As I was walking up to their apartment, she waved to meet out the window and yelled “Hi, Dennis!!”. It was so sweet and heartwarming. :)

We proceeded to play for 5 hours in English. My mental energy was gone after about 3, but I pulled through to the finish. I taught her how to play checkers, we built some pillow forts, played lots of board games, and ate some yogurt.

We also drew the board game Chutes and Ladders, but she was slightly cheating during the game.

That, or she doesn’t know how to count. I will need to make sure she grows up into an honest young adult.

It was raining quite a bit while I was there, and it got really windy at some point. She kept describing the wind to me in French, but it took us about 15 minutes to decipher what she was saying by using lots of dramatic hand gestures and drawing pictures. It was quite funny. We also blew bubbles outside!

I will miss her when I go back to California.

The bike ride home was smooth sailing, and I called Gilbert to catch up (hi Gilbert!). I was quite motivated to catch up with friends back home after reading Raines’ piece about friendship in the morning and wanted to make sure Gilbert and I stayed in touch.

I made my tried-and-tested pasta dinner while calling Gloria. Turns out, neither of us really knows what we are doing with our lives in the future lol. We will see how this great adventure plays out!

It was a great bike ride to volleyball practice, and there were only 8 of us there. We did a lot of serving of hitting drills and then scrimmaged 4-on-4, and I played some of my finest volleyball to date. Amazing digging, didn’t miss a single serve, and I was passing like a legend. It was so much fun!

On the way back home, I decided to bike a different way and came across a statue of Louis Pasteur. He was basically a goated French chemist who made a bunch of discoveries, most importantly how to pasteurize alcohol and dairy. What a legend. He even got the process named after him.

It’s interesting how coming home in a different way made me encounter such a new thing. Oftentimes, it seems, we can find exciting things where we least expect them.

It is a reminder to bike home a different way more often!

While biking, I called Emma to hear about her day because apparently she was near a subway knifing this morning, and fortunately, she was ok.

Don’t take Metro Line 8 unless absolutely needed!

I called Mama until my phone died, then made it home and finished up my French presentation about Antioch tomorrow.

What a long but productive day!

Thursday 11/9

I woke up and barely made it to French class.

However.

The class was very interesting today! We learned about French body parts (regular body parts, but in French, that is) and characteristics of people. It was super interesting and fun!

Apparently, both Hebrew and French have a specific word for the back of the neck. In English and Russian, we just say “back of the neck”.

Crazy, innit?

We then had to describe another person in class using the characteristics we learned, and it was hilarious. Someone described a class as being short but with big arms (meaning he worked out at the gym) and he was both flattered at being called big and thrown off at being called short. Needless to say, we laughed a ton in that class!

Another great piece of news was that Guy is back in class after being gone for a few weeks. He headed home to Israel to make sure his family was alright, and I was super happy that they were all doing ok. Guy is such an amazing and friendly person, and I find myself enjoying French class so much more when he is sitting next to me. Today, it took us about 15 minutes to figure out the difference between “someone” and “others” in French in the context of an observer looking at 2 different groups (ie. There is someone working there and others working over there.).

Languages are weird.

After class, Guy and I walked to his next class and basically were just laughing a ton.

Then, I saw Amelia walking out of her class and we chatted for a bit.

THEN!

Annabel was walking to the same building and said hi too.

AND THEN!

Annabel and Amelia recognized each other from my blog, and talked about how it was nice to meet each other after reading about the other! Annabel said it was cool to meet the characters she reads about each week.

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!

I am so happy that my blog is bringing people together. What an absolutely amazing start to the morning.

I went to the St. Thomas campus to get some cheap food, then did my history readings about environmental acclimatization in the British and French empires. Turns out there was a huge focus on botanical gardens around this time and figuring out which colonies were most productive for growing different cash crops. Quite interesting!

Thursday lunch means lunch with Magdalena, so it was off to the 27 campus to meet up with her. It had been more than a week since I’d seen her before the break, and it was so lovely to catch up. We went to a home goods store where they sold lots of candles and strange doorstoppers. There was one of hedgehogs!

Turns out the Russian and Czech words for hedgehogs are very similar. Ежик vs. ježek. How cool!

We went to a café we had been to before for lunch and I got my beloved onion soup. Unfortunately, Magdalena did not celebrate Halloween this year because she was at her friend’s birthday, though we planned to carve pumpkins sometime next week. I can’t wait!

Somehow, we started talking about her pets. I felt quite bad because I couldn’t stop laughing when she was explaining her rabbits:

“I had a rabbit, then it died. I had another rabbit, and it died. I think I might have had another rabbit, but it died as well.”

I could not stop laughing.

Magdalena is also an amazing journalist and writes for a top newspaper in Prague already, and applied to film school so that she can become a screenwriter. She is incredibly interesting and it’s crazy how randomly we met.

Unfortunately, the lunch had to end as I had class, though I saw my Romanian friend Iorgus in the hallway and we planned to get coffee on Monday. How exciting!

International Finance was pretty interesting today. Learning about exchange rates and how they affect countries was cool, but the graphs made me reconsider (again) why I was studying economics in the first place.

Between classes, I had an espresso and pain au chocolat that I had bought earlier in the day.

Borat would say, “Very nice!”

Today’s history class was my absolute favorite because we talked about plants and forests and how the two empires dealt with them. I was participating even more than usual, though my jokes were not laughed at, as per usual.

I am one of the few Americans in that class (the most vocal one, at least), so the professor loves to direct all of his insults against America at me as if I am the personification of America herself.

I am his American punching bag, if you will.

For example, when I roast him by saying France lost another war, he brings up the few failed American military efforts and talks about them for the next 5 minutes.

I find the whole situation utterly hilarious and find myself laughing so hard each time he directs an insult at America. He is clearly trying to make up for the fact that he wishes he lived in America, but is stuck here in Europe.

I love being his American punching bag!

I then went to my corporate governance class and was so well-rested that even that class was interesting.

Crazy, I know!

I paid attention the entire time and even got the number of Sara, the cute Swiss girl I met on Tuesday who happens to be in 2 of my classes.

Borat would say, “Great success!”

After, I walked over to Amelia’s class because we planned for a kebab outing.

Along the way, I called Harry to tell him the good news about Sara and Mama about the fact that I am applying for UCLA Housing tomorrow.

In terms of productivity, we have productivity.

I picked up Amelia from her class and we headed to the metro.

We proceeded to have a hilarious and very interesting conversation about her situationship Tim, milking cows (unrelated to Tim), and even saw Bel-Air at one of the metro stations.

Long story short, I gave Amelia dating advice regarding Tim and hopefully, she will take it with a grain of salt.

I am very curious about how the entire situation will play out.

Tim apparently had too much work to do so he wasn’t able to make it to his and Amelia’s trip to Lille (in northern France) this weekend. As a result, Amelia invited me in his stead.

Looks like I’m going to Lille this weekend!

We eventually made it to my beloved Urban Grill kebab shop and shared the wonders of the kebab special with Amelia.

Hasen, my Tunisian homie who works there, made some Tunisian food for himself and invited me to try it with him. He said it was just like his mum makes back home, and I felt so special and appreciated that he wanted to share his culture with me. :)

After kebabs (Amelia said they were life-changing, as they are), Amelia and I went to my apartment and had some tea while chatting about life. It had been a while since I had a guest over, so it was quite lovely.

Amelia said the apartment was nice, but she couldn’t live there because there is no oven. Good thing Emma is already moving in there next semester!

After the conversation, I walked Amelia back to the Bastille metro station, and biked to Joe’s to drop off his duffel and clothes from the Interrailing trip. He helped me send a text to Sara, I talked with his (100% British) friend Iris (hi Iris!!) (she’s from Twickenham oh my!!) and confirmed that at long last…

I FINALLY HAVE MORE VELIB KILOMETERS THAN JOE!!

At long last!

After weeks of trying to catch up!

Wait. Do you smell that? What is that?

That’s right, the sweet sweet smell of victory. How sweet the glory is!

I biked home while calling Papa and went to bed early. Big interview tomorrow!

Friday 11/10

Friday! Big day! The day of my final round BCG interview! Perhaps the most important interview of my life so far! It is finally here!

I woke up at 10 and did some work at my apartment — it was my return to UCLA preparation day. I applied for housing at the UCLA dorms and prepared for my enrollment later in the evening.

Returning to UCLA. What a depressing thought. Not because I’m not excited to return to UCLA, but because I am very much not excited to leave Paris. I have made myself a life here, full of adventure, exciting new things, and the most wonderful friends and company I could ask for. I will terribly sad to leave it all.

Anyways.

After all that, I biked to Sciences Po.

You: “Wait what?! On a Friday?! You don’t have class on Fridays, Dennis!”

Correct, astute reader of my blog! I don’t have classes on Friday.

Typically.

Today there was a make-up session for one of my classes because the professor cancelled a class a few weeks ago. How great.

The class material was absolutely useless today, but I spent pretty much the entire class doing background research about my BCG interviewers. One of them did his MBA at MIT and wrote a bunch of articles during that period, so I read them all so that I could ask a bunch of questions about them.

They were super interesting, and I found myself being super excited to meet the interviewer so that I could pick his brain. That is foreshadowing for the wonderful interview to happen later that day!

After class, I successfully confirmed lunch with Sara on Tuesday. Dennis, I am so proud of you. We shall see how the lunch goes!

Afterward, I got a baguette at the local boulangerie. The lady working there recognized me, how lovely. I find such happiness in local shopowners recognizing me. In Chicago. In Paris. In Antioch.

Amazing!

I met up with Joe after class for a planned bike ride, though the weather was “turning a bit for the worse”. There was a whole fiasco we had to diagnose and fix about me pausing my bike ride by locking it to another bike. We had to use all of our combined brain cells to fix that problem.

Joe was strongly urging that we not go on the bike ride to not jeopardize my BCG interview later that afternoon. I reluctantly agreed, and we headed to a café where he works at.

Turns out it was blocked by a huge police force near the old stock exchange, so we went across the street and got some delicious hot chocolate. I will really miss Joe when I leave in a few weeks :(

And I have to admit that when the rain started pouring 30 minutes later, not going on that bike ride was a great decision.

Sometimes, Joe, you are the voice of reason.

We worked for about 2 hours — me on this blog (writing this takes much longer than you would think) and Joe on his ethics of AI paper that is due in 3 weeks. If only I was that proactive.

Update about the Lille trip: I got kicked off the trip because Tim decided to go last minute. Needless to say, I was quite annoyed since I was supposed to leave the next day, but Tim did buy the train tickets so I respected Amelia’s decision. However, I am very excited about the prospect of a recovery weekend in Paris!

I headed home around 5 to get mentally prepared for my BCG interview at 6.

Me post-interview: HOLY SHIT! THAT WENT SO WELL!

I mean it literally couldn’t have gone better. Perfect cases, great banter with the interviewers, and lots of smiles and laughter.

And that conversation with the interviewer about his MIT articles went even better than expected!

It honestly could not have gone any better. We shall wait and see if I get an offer. At this point, there is literally nothing more I could’ve done.

I made my tried and tested pasta dinner before heading to a pub crawl with the gang and Emma’s controversial Dutch friend whom we were all super excited to meet!

The pub crawl was amazing.

However, as Annabel dully noted, it was more of a pub sit because we spent the entire time at the same pub.

Emma’s controversial friend was not controversial at all, but rather just a classic UCLA eco-bro that studies finance and is all business-broey. His perfect English and outfit literally made me think I was at a coffee chat in America. And he was Dutch!

We all ordered a bunch of drinks before happy hour ended and I met Gibbles’s friend, Molly, who works at Christie’s in London! Christie’s is the auction house that sells billions in art a year, and Molly works with the auctioneer who sold Salvator Mundi, the Da Vinci painting, for $400 million dollars a few years ago.

*Quick pause while I dramatically say “And the piece is… sold!”*

Molly, it was so lovely to meet you!

Emma’s not-so-controversial friend was quite a character, and I quite enjoyed speaking with him. He did mansplain a lot, but Gibs put on the performance of the century when she pretended to not know what inflation was while Emma’s friend mansplained it to her for 15 minutes.

His face when she revealed to him that she worked at UBS for investment banking was priceless. Gibbles, that performance deserves an Oscar. I was in awe.

We left the pub around 1:30 am and dispersed home. Now that is what I call a successful Friday!

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And so the first week back from Interrailing has come to an end. Thank you everyone for being part of it :)