• 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,…