Generation M - 1994 - 1997 - English Version

Generation M - 1994 - 1997 - 45, rue des Saints-Pères

Without doubt a founding moment. September 1994, my high-school diploma in my hand since the beginning of July, eighteen years old the month before. I went through high school without a hitch, and here I am, launching myself into the great bath of college studies. It would be medicine.

Why such a choice which in the end will be quite far from my expectations? Last spring, when it was time to make my post-baccalaureate choices, I was still undecided. I spent my senior year in a new Parisian school, the very chic Lycée Buffon, from where, from my classroom, I can see the Montparnasse tower rising. A change at the very beginning of the year that mixes the excitement of the newness with its share of difficulties. I am the new kid, and I am entering a world of competition where the ambitions, muffled, are already affirmed by most of my fellow students.

I remember that, by some miracle, I managed to get into the top three in my class on a science paper. I was astonished, and my classmates were surprised too. One of them, Marc, slipped me, one day while we were walking back on the boulevard Pasteur, "you are rather gifted for...". I don't know if he meant to refer to my social origin or another one... It made me smile. His father was a doctor, and he was naturally heading for the same career. Like father, like son. There are few outsiders in this business...

If I was a rather good student in my 10th and 11th grades in my suburban high school, which allowed me to get into Buffon at the very beginning of the year, my last two quarters of high school did not open the royal road that is the "classes prépas". I am not ignorant of the different choices that exist: Sciences-Po, business or engineering schools. I can hardly plead ignorance. But this is the direction taken by most of my fellow students. In order not to lose out, I opt for medicine. It is a competitive examination, difficult, excessively difficult, but it is free to enter.

But haven't I spent hours observing living things in the garden, or asked for a microscope as a Christmas present, and even dissected a beef heart when I went to buy it at the butcher's. The mechanics of life and its mysteries inspire me, so studying medicine seems to me a pretty good choice. For the moment...

I remember another memory among others of this last year of high school, and which illustrates well my character at that time. We are sitting side by side in the middle of a math class, François and I; I don't really know what my imagination is inventing, but he tells me straight away: "You are just a victim of your illusions! I am stunned. It was said without brutality and rather with benevolence. Moreover, I must thank him, if it took me some time to take in these few words, they are of a rare accuracy. Because at that time, it was out of the question that reality imposed itself on me! No! My dreams, my desires will be stronger. It will be a little different. But already this will to do only what it wants.

During the month of September, after the summer vacations, I was surprised not to have received anything from my new university. I decided to go to rue des Saints-Pères in the 6th arrondissement. The old majestic building with its heavy stones, a stone's throw from the church of St Germain des Prés, is home to one of the best medical schools in Paris. It's swarming everywhere when I walk in the door, the courses have started since several days, and the aspirants are ready to give and sacrifice everything for

I have to admit that it is a slap in the face that I can hardly get over. In the large lecture hall of 45 rue des Saints-Pères, a professor on a desk is reading a physics course about the composition of the atom. What am I doing here? For me medicine was . Once again, a victim of my own illusions...

It is clear that I will not be a doctor. If I have a completely distorted conception of the profession and the studies that lead to it, I am aware of the sacrifices that it requires. And above all, the numerus clausus procedure, by limiting the number of places after the first preparatory year, only allows two attempts. And after that? Those who have failed twice are left to scrape together to enter university or less prestigious but no less useful courses, such as kiné or nursing. But most of them come out of it washed out, disgusted, with a self-esteem below zero. Anything but that for me!

My lucidity pushed me to make a choice very quickly: why waste two precious years of my life pretending to study for a profession that I would not practice? When I leave high school, I want to live, to be something else than a student, to rub shoulders with the "real world". Even if I have to return to my beloved studies when I need to. This duality, as we shall see, will be a constant in my career: the concept and the real!

I will not return to this old building but the neighborhood inspires me. Just a few steps away are the Café de Flore and the house of Serge Gainsbourg. The intellectual Paris is here! I wander around the Latin Quarter, visiting bookstores, walking along the quays, sitting for hours in cafés.

In my little band of friends, I am not the only one who has chosen the medical path and has some doubts. Nicolas, whom we have known since high school, is also registered in another Parisian university. Like me, he has deserted the lecture halls. He also abandoned his first year. He hasn't told his parents yet. In the morning, he gets up, at the same time as his parents who are getting ready to go to work, he also pretends to go to the university. Then crossed the door, he returns in his bed! We call each other, and we crash at his place or at another one whose studies inspire just as little. It smokes, it drinks. I remember that one afternoon we tried this new beer, the 8/6, that we drank like real teenagers and ended up twisting our guts very quickly!

As for me, I don't intend to hide my disgrace from my family for long. But how can I tell my mother? As a midwife, she is delighted to imagine that the last of her children will be a doctor. To confide in her that I am giving up before I have even fought my battle will undoubtedly be a heartbreak.

I thank her for not putting too much pressure on me. Her disappointment was obvious but she didn't show it too much. She tried to understand my motives for quitting without pressuring me. As is often the case, she finds my justifications mysterious without making me "guilty" of my choices. She already trusts me in my ability to assume my decisions. But, if she tolerates that I spend a year of idleness to find myself, it will not be the same next year. There's no way it will drag on if I stay at home. That's a wise move on her part.

What will I do now? I'm going to go from party to party for the most part in these last months of the year with the little gang. Partying, but not just partying; I'm slowly recovering from my summer and fall slumber.

My lucidity pushed me to make a choice very quickly: why waste two precious years of my life pretending to study for a profession that I would not practice? When I leave high school, I want to live, to be something else than a student, to rub shoulders with the "real world". Even if I have to return to my beloved studies when I need to. This duality, as we shall see, will be a constant in my career: the concept and the real!

I will not return to this old building but the neighborhood inspires me. Just a few steps away are the Café de Flore and the house of Serge Gainsbourg. The intellectual Paris is here! I wander around the Latin Quarter, visiting bookstores, walking along the quays, sitting for hours in cafés.

In my little band of friends, I am not the only one who has chosen the medical path and has some doubts. Nicolas, whom we have known since high school, is also registered in another Parisian university. Like me, he has deserted the lecture halls. He also abandoned his first year. He hasn't told his parents yet. In the morning, he gets up, at the same time as his parents who are getting ready to go to work, he also pretends to go to the university. Then crossed the door, he returns in his bed! We call each other, and we crash at his place or at another one whose studies inspire just as little. It smokes, it drinks. I remember that one afternoon we tried this new beer, the 8/6, that we drank like real teenagers and ended up twisting our guts very quickly!

As for me, I don't intend to hide my disgrace from my family for long. But how can I tell my mother? As a midwife, she is delighted to imagine that the last of her children will be a doctor. To confide in her that I am giving up before I have even fought my battle will undoubtedly be a heartbreak.

I thank her for not putting too much pressure on me. Her disappointment was obvious but she didn't show it too much. She tried to understand my motives for quitting without pressuring me. As is often the case, she finds my justifications mysterious without making me "guilty" of my choices. She already trusts me in my ability to assume my decisions. But, if she tolerates that I spend a year of idleness to find myself, it will not be the same next year. There's no way it will drag on if I stay at home. That's a wise move on her part.

What will I do now? I'm going to go from party to party for the most part in these last months of the year with the little gang. Partying, but not just partying; I'm slowly recovering from my summer and fall slumber.

Long walks in the streets of Paris, a lot of reading, disordered but fruitful for the future. It was at this time that my passion for literature and writing was affirmed, although I still had no precise idea of what I wanted to write. In fact, I have dreams, a little vain, of glory as one can have them at twenty years old.

I don't know how I got the idea, but I decided in the winter to prepare another baccalaureate. I had a scientific background, so that I could enter political science more easily. I would have this second literary baccalaureate that I prepared alone and at a distance, for which I obtained quite good grades, but I failed to obtain the mention très bien which would have allowed me to enter an institute of political studies on the basis of my file. But during the summer, I prepared for the exam. In July and August 1995, I went back to Seine et Marne to stay with family friends who were very patient and tender towards me. But in wanting to play it solo, once again, I fail. Another failure!

So all I have to do is go back to college for the new school year. But in what discipline? I would like to do philosophy, it corresponds to my temperament. And then do what? Teaching? I don't really know yet, but I want to go into philosophy. I remember this discussion with my six-year-old brother who was studying economics at the time. He advised me to go his way. If you don't study science but you have the aptitude, he said, studying economics, which is general, opens many more doors than philosophy. I find the reasoning a bit cynical but I take it into consideration. I will be very thrifty next year after a year of chaos, but rich in experience.

I thank my brother for this advice, which I have taken. That's probably one of my strengths, listening to the right advice at the right time. I am not completely disconnected from reality, I will come back to that.

At the beginning of the school year 1995, I started my studies in economics, which I will complete. However, the first year was difficult. I had to assimilate reasoning that was not my own. My grades for the first semester are fair. I get by thanks to mathematics and statistics. Like a nice leftover from my high school science education! But microeconomics, macroeconomics, and accounting are still mysteries to me that are esoteric. This time, however, I decided to stick with it.

1995, the great winter strikes of a France struggling to emerge from an interminable fin de siècle crisis. At the same time, it will be, among others, the generation "La haine", or NTM, I will miss... But a generation of talented French people is rising. A colored France is also asserting itself (black, white, beur and the 98 world cup) as well as a French electro touch ready to conquer the world.

France does not know then, as I do, that it will be happy again, at the turn of the third millennium. But for the moment, I still have to get through 1996 and 1997 !