- I was born and bred in France and moved to LA at 17.
- The ambition I saw in Americans attracted me to the US and helped me achieve my goals in life.
- The French attitude of my classmates was the opposite of ambitious when I graduated high school.
When I was 15, my dad and I took a trip to Los Angeles that changed my life. We didn’t have a set agenda, and since we were staying down the road from the University of California, we took a campus tour.
Up to that point, attending university in France, where I grew up, was the only option I’d ever considered, and it had always felt like just another mundane box to check. The general attitude among my classmates and the adults around us was that there were no jobs anyway, so what was the point of trying? The culture was stifling.
That first day visiting UCLA’s campus opened my eyes to a new world of possibility. The tour guide and the prospective applicants in the group made me feel like anything was possible and my dreams of becoming an editor at a women’s magazine and writing a bestselling novel were within reach.
That American ambition is what drew me and ultimately led me to swap France for the US at 17.
I wouldn’t have become who I am if I hadn’t lived in the US
I didn’t go to a proper international high school that offered IB exams or SAT guidance, and my French schooling hours made it difficult to carve out time for extracurriculars or volunteering.
For the next two years, I prepared to polish my application to UCLA as much as possible. I pored over SAT prep books during school vacation. I remember my dad asking how I became so ambitious.
I applied to UCLA in 2011 and was accepted in the Spring of 2012.
Throughout my four years at UCLA and my five total in the US, the ambition, drive, and hopefulness I saw in my peers continuously inspired me to dream big and achieve more. As an undergrad, I founded a club, interned at my dream publication, and was an editor for an online magazine.
Reflecting on it now, I believe I owe many of the successes I have achieved to this day — such as writing for some of my dream publications and winning a short story competition — to the example set by my UCLA classmates, floormates, and sorority sisters.
I had to reassess my life and who I was outside my career
In 2017, a year after graduating, I moved to the UK because I could not get a work visa to remain in the US. Since I left the US, I’ve noticed a shift.
American ambition is alive and well, and I still admire it enormously, but it has also led to an epidemic of burnout. I’ve felt this myself, after internalizing the “girlboss” mentality.
I built up a career I was proud of, thinking it would always continue on an upward trend. However, due to shifts in the publishing industry, I lost a lot of my freelance work and experienced a personal crisis of purpose.
I’ve had to work hard to figure out who I am outside of my career.
Meanwhile, I see my French classmates on LinkedIn crushing it: getting promoted, building companies, and landing cool, creative jobs. They found their ambition after all and did it their own way, in their own time.
All that is to say, it’s not as black and white as I thought it was at 17. Ambition isn’t all good, and going with the flow isn’t all bad — there’s a happy medium to be found, and I’m so grateful that my time in France and the US can help guide me toward that greater balance.
