a word of introduction

My name is Julie, and as the title suggests, I'm about to tell you a story, my story.

I'm French, I was born in Mantes-la-Jolie, about forty miles away from Paris, nearly 22 years ago. As a lot of girls, I wanted to be a hairdresser, a policeman, a lawyer, a writer, a singer, a beauty maker and so on. I finally ended up studying cinema when I was in high school. The teacher, who was also a director, made me want to be a screeplay writer.

After I graduated, I planned to go to preparatory school, a kind of university with less than 25 people per class (in my case) which has the reputation of being very hard. I was expecting to spend two years in this school and then to go to the university to study cinema, again. I don't know if they wanted to keep me, to ruin my life or if they misunderstood me, but the fact is that the professors told me at the beginning of the first year that it was possible for me to study cinema after preparatory school. The truth is that I could not. I chose to study English during the second year, so I had to study English at the university as well. I must confess I didn't appreciate the fact that they lied to me, but it seems to be usual with that kind of people... no comment.

After those two awful years of hard work during which I had to speak fluently English, German and Latin ( I'm still good at Latin... though I don't use it everyday), I went to the university. I decided to go to Nanterre and to study English and American Literature and Civilization. I didn't feel at ease in this new place, new atmosphere, with new methods of work. I felt incredibly weak ( also because I had lost my grandmother the day before the university started), and I will always remember the very first professor I had: a history teacher, who asked me a question about what the others did last year. Obviously, I was not able to answer, so she said in front of the whole class: 'Julie comes from preparatory school, so, obviously, she does not know anything'! (you bitch, this is not sarcasm, this is... nastyness!).

November came with some good news. I was a bit ( understand = a lot!) disappointed by the university, so I decided to stay alone, not to make friend with anybody because I did not wanted to be in touch with someone from there or to fake a friendship. But then, a really nice young woman called Pauline invited me to a party and to sleep at her place, I said 'yes' (by the way, you may think it's silly, but the movie Yes Man changed my life!), and that's the moment when I started talking to the other girls of the prom, to be given phone numbers, added on Face Book... That's the moment when I started enjoying the university, not for the lessons and the staff, but for the friends I had... Something else happened, something that changed my life. One day, the literature professor I had told us that we could go abroad after this year to become a French language assistant in a British school. 'Those who want to leave uni next year, put your hand up!' Hahaha, I did! And that is when the story began...