One of the things that always nagged at me while I was in Boston was the thought that – although it was the right decision – I would throw myself off the momentum I had gathered during my M.A. and my M2. This may or may not have contributed to my bouts of imposter syndrome (which I’ll probably bring up again at some point), but needless to say, a lot of my mental energy was spent trying to snap myself out of whatever rut I was stuck in.
Thankfully, what with the number of meetings I was running to and from yesterday and today, I think I might be starting to get back into ‘research mode’. Student card : check. Health insurance : check (with a side of confusion trying to explain to the really nice girl at the uni helping me that yes, I have EU citizenship. No, I do not have an EU health card because my primary residence was in the US. No, even though I also have US citizenship, I do not have a visa/titre de séjour because of the aforementioned EU citizenship, etc). Library card : check.
This last one was the one I was worried about most, since the hoops I had to jump through to get my original card to access the research library – as opposed to just the public section of the library – back in 2012 were prime examples of gatekeeping at its finest (to give an idea: part of it involved proving that access to the BNF – The Bibliothèque Nationale de France – was indispensable for my work as a mere first year master student by providing a list of works we needed to consult that could only be found in the research centers. On the advice of my thesis director, I…embellished my list a bit). Thankfully, renewing my card did not involve as much nonsense as the initial inscription (and honestly, being a doctoral student helps a lot). It remains to be seen how long it takes me to fully get back into the swing of things, but at least now that the majority of the administrative work I had to take care of is done, I’ll have one less thing weighing on me.
Scènes sur Seine 