• Simone au Havre

    Segments of white glaring light seep past the grey shutters of my apartment. My phone hangs on to its finite battery. Reverberating, it slowly glides past my pillow onto the edge of the bed, crying out the 15 songs I have set as my wake up greetings. With the guffawing bellows of my fifth consecutive alarm simmering the living soul out of my phone, I am finally awake. Tip tap, Tip tap. Yawns subside as the alarm changes its tone. I stand up only to fall back again, these are sad efforts of a sleep-deprived student. I crisscross across the…

  • 15 things one should know about Latvia

    There are not many Latvians in Sciences Po. At least not in the bachelor courses and not in Paris. At least not that I know of. During my first month here, many students that I meet have asked me endless questions about the country where I come from – what language do we speak, what’s our religion, what’s our history and why should people recognize us. If you ever meet me or any other Latvian, be prepared and know these facts about Latvia in advance! 1. The middle one of the three Baltic countries As many of you already know,…

  • Opinion column – Sciences Po exchange students, let’s reinvent travelling!

    What do you, as a Sciences Po exchange student, see if you scroll through your social media feeds? Instagram stories of the weekend’s latest city getaway. And what seems to be the most popular distraction during the less exciting lectures? Chasing cheap flight tickets on Skyscanner, or looking up “Top 10 Things to Do in Budapest”. Air travel is representing a larger and larger share of the rich population’s carbon footprint, and with the 1.5-degree climate goal getting more and more out of reach, something seems clear to us. We need to challenge our generation’s unhealthy obsession with traveling, which…

  • Comings and Goings

    “I’d love to go to California,” a French classmate confided to me one Friday afternoon, over coffee at Le Basile. It was a few days before D-Day—February 13—when all Sciences Po second-years would learn which university they’d be shipped off to for their third year abroad. “But it’s always possible for the results to be released a bit before,” she added, gripping her mug in feigned nonchalance. As far as I could tell, it was a weekend defined by the anxious exchanging of rumors and by the feverish refreshing of emails. Though I had only second-hand knowledge of the process,…

  • A-t-on oublié la circulaire Guéant ?

    Bonne question. Il est vrai qu’à part la crise de fin octobre, quand l’UNEF a organisé une rencontre avec les représentants des étudiants étrangers et que Laurent Wauquiez a bien précisé (à voir sur mctv) qu’on ne retirerait pas la circulaire, on a finalement assez peu entendu parler de ce serrage de vis qui empêche des milliers d’étudiants de se faire embaucher à la sortie de leurs études – diplôme français – à cause de leurs origines – étrangères -. A moins bien sur d’être resté branché 24/24 sur les fils d’info du pouvoir et de ses critiques. Entendons-nous bien,…