ceci, c'est paris

One of the most difficult parts of adjusting to the difficulties of the study abroad experience has been learning to differentiate between my fantasy of such experience and the reality of it. Not that I am by any means disappointed with NYU in Paris, or with the people I have met, it has just been an interesting adjustment of thought processing.

This whole idea started when I began to tack these quite lovely replicas of Victorian shadow puppet cards onto my wall for some much needed decoration. I started thinking about shadows, and the concept of the real vs. the illusion, and how different the illusion is from its reality. Furthermore, when put in the context of myself, I thought of my expectations of Paris as a kind of shadow, and the reality of it as the card itself.

I can never choose a favorite, but the turtle is always up there. 

I started this semester with what one could call a certain fantasy, just as I started last year with a certain idea about NYU in New York, and similarly to the fall of 2009, the fall of 2010 was quick to spit in my fantasy’s face. I realized that I had this glamorous, and even by definition romantic, vision of what Paris would be like, and when I found myself alone in a room above a street clustered with whores, I felt nothing but sheer disappointment. Then there was a moment where I thought to myself, “what am I doing”?

From this point on, I shook this fantasy out of my mind, embraced reality, and ventured onward. I have begun to meet the most incredible people and have recently become part of the most real, down to earth group of people, and could not be happier. Just as René Magritte’s “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” is truly not a pipe, my fantasy of Paris is not realistic, but that does not mean the reality of it cannot be just as fantastic.

When we hold on to such high expectations, we are often the greatest contributing factors to our own disappointment. After I thought about some of the times I had been disappointed most, I came up with a rather disturbing conclusion: I was most disappointed by the failure of promises coming from myself, not from others. I was my greatest weakness. I was the key contributor to my own unhappiness. In just a short week, I have come to realize that one of the steps to overall satisfaction is to avoid focusing solely on the shadow, or fantasy, of life, and learn to appreciate the quite lovely qualities of the card from which the shadow comes. 

  

My surprisingly comfy futon

My cluttered desk and full closet, expected