In 2014 I was living in Los Angeles. I had just dropped out of a Ph.D. program and was on my way to South Korea to work as an English teacher. Then, I met a French teacher. We fell in love, I dropped everything, and six months later I followed her to Paris with nothing but two suitcases.
As exciting as this new life was, looking for work and struggling with everyday life in a language I didn't speak started to chip away at my confidence. I could see that people back home had been steadily building towards something: finishing...