Before I left there was the barrage of questions. As I arrived, there was the hits-you-in-the-face heat as the plane doors opened. When I left, there was a strange kind of emptiness, a sad reality that things had come to an end, a sense of achievement and loss, many bisoux, a calin or two, and enough confiture, nougat, chocolate, soap, lavender and cheese to see me through the next few months. Much happened in the middle. Over the course of ten months, I lived out my year abroad in the south of France, Aix-en-Provence. Whilst I hate to be the ‘Did I mention I did a year abroad?’ student, I also relish any opportunity to talk about my time abroad! Since we’re in the season of deciding whether a year abroad is for you, and for others, settling into their year abroad, now seems as appropriate time as any to write about it. Why do a year abroad? I knew that a year abroad was something I wanted to do, even when I applied to university. I hoped to study French law as part of my degree, but applied for a mixture of straight law and year abroad courses. The year abroad aspect, if not a hard sell to my parents, was at the very least something they prompted me to think long and hard about and justify, to myself and to them. Having fought to persuade them that it was a good idea and come out the other side of it convinced that it was a great idea, here’s my non-exhaustive list of why to consider a year abroad. Language skills Not only do languages open up gateways to more easily work internationally, but languages are an insanely good way to develop transferable skills which are going to be applicable to any job you do. I think foreign languages get too little recognition in UK education, but they’re well worth investing in! They’re a fun and fruitful way to grow in cultural awareness, confidence, communication and lateral thinking as you wander markets, explore cafes, museums, parks, books, music and restaurants. Whilst you learn to converse, flirt, interview, study and explore in a foreign language you’re growing in confidence and interpersonal skills, constantly falling short of perfect grammar and the range of vocabulary you dream of. You have to be confident to be willing to fail, dust yourself off when it happens, get up and go again. This is a daily, hourly process you have to go through and improves resilience, patient endurance, problem-solvingand lateral thinking as you have to think of alternative ways to find the words to express yourself. Language-learning was my primary aim for doing a year abroad, to completely immerse myself in a foreign culture and language and meet French people, seeing how food, attitudes and culture were different across the channel. But language skills are not the only reason to do a year abroad! You can go to an English-speaking country, or study in English, and still gain a wonderful experience and skills useful for whatever your future holds. Experience The experience of living in another country for a prolonged period of time is, in itself, a good reason to consider a year abroad. I (alongside my parents!) was keen that my year abroad was not to be a holiday. Sure, I travelled and study was a lot less burdensome. I spent many hours reading in parks or trying to master hitting a tennis ball over the net, wandering markets or taking photos. I explored beaches, museums, cafes and bookshops. But in all this, it was more than just a holiday. On a holiday, we tend to switch off from everything around us, on a year abroad, I’d encourage you to tune into the culture around you. Get to know and understand different cultures, what do they think about politics, what’s their historical heritage, how do they view work, family, food, free time…? This makes your year abroad a year of adventure and discovery, whether you realise it or not, and that’s very exciting! It leads to openness, a less judgmental attitude and critical thinking of your own culture’s approaches to these areas. Aside from the every day, there are the stand-out novelties that you take advantage of because you’re a resident tourist for a year. When the Rugby Six Nations came to Marseille, a group of us went to watch it. When the Open Treize and women’s US v France Fed Cup tennis matches came to Marseille and Aix, I went to watch. I saw the French Open – more tennis! A friend and I spent an evening watching the most brutal exhilarating ice hockey race in Marseille before Christmas. I visited Paris and Nice, costal towns and friends in Germany. All of this was part of the stand-out, carpe diem approach to a year abroad, stepping outside your comfort zone and making the most of the opportunities which come your way. All these novelties do bear some challenges though. For all their cheese, sunshine, beaches and markets, the French haven’t quite mastered their administration yet. It’s a bureaucratic muddle of paperwork and navigating systems to find the relevant person to give the relevant document to is impossible. “Who’d have thought paperwork could make you cry?!” said one of my English flatmates over dinner one night. It sounds silly but none of us laughed at her, because what she said was true! Living somewhere new means adapting to challenges and change. I arrived alone with two suitcases on a Sunday (top tip: don’t move to France on a Sunday, nothing is open and the administration is even worse than it usually is!). I had to set up a bank account, insurance, my university documents, my accommodation documents, Erasmus loan documents, documents for a French bursary (top tip #2: if you’re going to France get the CAF – google and you tube will help, because the French website certainly won’t!), documents for health insurance, documents to join a sports society… I didn’t get a part-time job, something which is yet still more complicated and bureaucratically burdensome in France! In the exams week, students from one of the other faculties went on strike… a classic French problem (we’d already dealt with trains being cancelled every Tuesday for months) and so some of my friends has exams in the library… How do you deal with all of these day-to-day differences, potentially in another language, potentially when receptionists and workers seem uncooperative and rude? You learn, and you develop resilience and patience and tact. You watch and learn and you see gradual improvements. Then there are the times when life really goes wrong. When you find yourself trying to explain to a police officer that someone drop-kicked your swimming pool locker and stole all of your valuables (though thankfully not your clothes!) – true story. What about when you get pickpocketed in Paris and have no phone to contact friends and loved ones? – also true. Suddenly, in all of the adventure, you learn that you have problems to overcome and you have to independently think rationally and clearly, act quickly and find solutions. You have to have courage to speak to the right people quickly. You have to have humility to suck up your pride and go and get help, to know your limits. So, living abroad is a massive adventure, and you’ll learn lots through the exciting explorations as well as the difficult dilemmas. I left France with a much better grasp of French, a deeper understanding of French culture and cuisine, and a canny party trick of cancelling my bank card in under 4 minutes! (My dad’s particularly unimpressed with that skill ;)!) Legal and Professional Opportunities Legal and professional opportunities should feature in a list of why to consider a year abroad. It may not be your primary priority, but it’s important to think about why you want to do a year abroad and how it fits into your broader aspirations, personally and professionally. The opportunity to experience another legal system is one to take up and relish. Seeing how law is taught and practiced somewhere else can help your form some opinions on our own system and theirs. Not only this, but if you want to practice internationally, a year abroad could open the door, giving you a flavour of a different legal system and helping you ascertain the quickest way to practice in that country. Is it a case of sitting an exam, which you could do after university, or is the quickest way to go back to train in the UK and do a secondment later? You may be surprised what opportunities can come of a year abroad. In Sheffield, one of my lecturers led an international research project, selecting five applicants on years abroad to conduct research in, or close to, the jurisdiction in which they were based. After an application, an interview, skype briefings and group planning, I found myself on a train from Marseille to Milan, watching the côte d’Azur sail past my window, on my way to a few days in Cleary Gottlieb’s offices. The project meant my main purpose for being there was to interview people on the role of technology in their experience of legal practice. Whilst I found answers to my questions, I got so much more from the experience. I met people who encouraged and inspired me, I saw a new culture and language in action. I saw the value of language; the associate I was sharing an office with seemed slightly stern and harsh, perhaps even a little reluctant to do an interview. I’d sat in near silence for a few days, listening in to her phone calls in different languages, saying ‘hi’ and making morning small talk. At the end of our interview she asked how come I’d been sent to Italy and I explained about my year abroad in Aix. Instantly she started speaking French, and the walls were broken down just that little bit. I felt like I’d earned some respect when she turned with a smile, “Tu parles bien français.” Though I disagree with her, in the moment I was happy to accept the complement and listen to her launch into a more personal conversation in French about wanting to empower and inspire young people (her one-year-old daughter was the focus, but I’m pretty sure I featured in the conversation too) to travel, experience different cultures thoughts, sights, sounds… to be open, knowledgeable, humble people who don’t think the way their culture does things has to automatically be the best or only approach to an issue. That project was a great opportunity to see something from start to end. To work out a project, scope and questions to facilitate primary research. To work with an international team where the only people in the same jurisdiction (most of the time at least) were the lecturers! To work collaboratively in spite of different commitments, ideas of what end products we wanted and to watch the multitude of editing comments my lecturer added (which were appreciated and learned from!) slowly dwindle as the piece became more lucid, eloquent and focussed. There’s no guarantee that similar projects will be available at your own institutions, or that you’ll be successful on projects, but look for opportunities and take those that come your way, you never know what skills, contacts and experience you might gain. I had friends who did legal work experience in France, so don’t be afraid to make enquiries and see what comes of them. What should you expect from a year abroad? After a very lengthy account of why students should consider a year abroad, what can you actually expect from time abroad? If you’ve landed in the last month, you’re probably settling in, perhaps by now you’re craving strange things you didn’t even realise you loved but which aren’t available anymore and have realised that there are cupboard necessities you can’t find in your new home. Whenever a friend flew back to the UK, they inevitably returned to France with Lemsip, potentially some Yorkshire Tea, paracetamol and ibuprofen (we weren’t addicts but the pharmacy-culture in Europe makes medication more expensive and hard to get in any regular supermarket). Baked beans. Toast. I did ten months without an oven which was an interesting experience. In all that time of explaining this to people, my pronunciation of ‘oven’ in French still wasn’t quite right my flatmate told me, trying to repeat various sounds to show me the distinctions between ‘cours,’ ‘court,’ ‘four,’ ‘course,’ ‘amour,’ ‘mort’ … the list went on but I can’t tell you I heard the difference lots of the time. Many omelettes and much pasta were consumed in the process of finding oven-free meals. The joy of European supermarkets is the insane pasta variety they have, for a whole ten months, I never bought the same type of pasta twice! University is the main excuse a law student is abroad, since there’s generally no option to work for a law student on a year abroad, unlike a foreign languages student. Generally, university hours and exams are less demanding than studies in the UK. Rote learning seems to be the order of the day in France and that means that no matter how interesting the content is (normally not very), learning is a dull and arduous process of slowly falling asleep memorising articles in the Code Civil. Three of my modules bucked this trend – the globalisation of economics which I found very interesting, geopolitics, which was also very interesting, and EU law, which was taught by a youngish lecturer who was so modern and forward-thinking that she used limited notes and even went so far as to use a PowerPoint most weeks! This was the only power point I ever saw in a French law lecture, a wonderful change from some lecturers who literally sat and read their pre-prepared notes in front of 300 students for three hours! Studying abroad can be different in terms of learning style, demands, support staff and modules. Often you won’t quite know what to expect until you get there. The best thing to do is to make a native friend, awkward and challenging as it may be, they can hopefully explain the processes and expectations to you. As you’ve probably gathered, free time can be more abundant, since you’re probably studying less. This opens up doors for sport, reading, travel and anything else you enjoy. Make the most of it, because going into your final year will be tough, so savour the break and make sure you can come back refreshed if possible! Applications Make the most of the extra time to make applications. If you’re successful, large city firms will happily pay to fly you back to the UK for a test centre and/or interview, so don’t let the distance or prospective cost of travel deter you. It may have become evident that some skills are marked in this post. These are intended to be key skills that you’re possibly going to gain from your time abroad, and which could be transferrable to a career in law. They’ll be transferrable to lots of other things if you don’t feel there’s a budding legal career in the pipeline for you, but think on the skills you’re improving, the challenges you’re facing and the way you’re overcoming them, and utilise those experiences in applications. By all means, if you have other examples of skills, through societies, responsibilities you have taken on, volunteering, paid work or pro bono, utilise those, but don’t be afraid to reflect on and use your time abroad as an example for lots of key skills too. Begin to start thinking in a skills-orientated, example-based way, and apply his to your applications and interviews. Bon courage!
