But I’m finding that maybe we don’t know, or maybe we don’t try to know, how true this actually is. I was asked the other night if I miss Australia. Yes, I miss Australia. I always will. But what I also miss is the quality of life, liberty and education that we have and take for granted, those securities, rights and privileges that don’t exist even in a first-world country like France.
Take, for example, social security. I’ve written before about the beggars and the homeless that seem to populate Paris. People who have no security, no certainty in their lives from one day to the next. I feel lucky not to be one of them. I know that were I to wind up homeless, kinless, friendless and penniless in the street, the Australian government would take care of me. The Salvation Army would take care of me. There would be someone to give me food, shelter, clothes, until I could earn those things for myself again. Even on a slightly less drastic level, we have Centrelink, annoying though it is, providing financial support to those who need it until they can support themselves again. I’m not sure what I would have done without Youth Allowance. If I had to work to support myself, I probably wouldn’t have had time for extra-curriculars, maybe not even time to overload to finish my Diploma, and moving to the other side of the world would have been out of my budget and time constraints. I’d be a different person, one who still lived in Australia, who didn’t sail, never served as secretary in so many uni clubs, who never did anything but work and study.
Education’s
another thing. The university I go to,
l’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III, often shortened to Paris 3, is one
of the Sorbonne-group universities that are known all over the world. Now, maybe Sorbonne Pantheon, which is
Sorbonne No 1, has actually earned that global recognition and that
reputation that makes people go, “The Sorbonne?
Wow! You’re so lucky!” Paris III
definitely hasn’t. The quality of the
teaching has actually been pretty good – the linguistics teachers are all
really knowledgeable and interesting, and each semester I’ve had a really good
lit professor, too. You know the kind –
strict, expects you to follow the rules closely, but really nice and willing to
help if you stay on her good side. It’s
everything outside of the actual teaching that’s been a problem. There’s not much in the way of student
life. There’s even less in the way of
student support. In the Monash Arts Faculty
there’s a department devoted to helping students with academia – essay writing
support, proofreading, preparing for an oral presentation, etc. – so last year
I went searching for the Sorbonne equivalent to get help on writing a
commentaire composé, since I’ve written like a zillion since I got here and I
figured I should learn how to write them properly. Couldn’t find one. No-one could help the poor exchange student
correct her homework. I can’t even drop
by the teacher’s office in their designated hour to ask questions and
stuff. They don’t have offices, or
hours. It’s all do-it-yourself. Little things like that, but it’s just made
me so much more grateful for Monash and the fact that I chose to do the
majority of my degree at such a good university in Australia. I had a wonderful time there, got the full
‘uni experience’, as it’s called, and enjoyed most of my degree. I wouldn’t have in France. Incidentally, Monash remains one of the best
unis in the world, top 100 (top 70).
Paris 3 doesn’t even make the top 400.
So many
other ways, too. Bureaucracy – we all
complain about Centrelink, I know, and I haven’t applied for a resident’s or
immigrant’s visa in Australia before, so I can’t be sure what it’s like, but
I’m pretty sure it’s not as bad as all the bureaucracy in France, be it opening
a bank account, or getting a visa (“Come on, hurry up, girl!” “But I still don’t understand what you want
me to do…oh, stick my breasts up against the X-ray machine?” “Yes!
What did you think we were doing, for heaven’s sake?” “I don’t know, no-one’s told me anything!”),
or enrolling in classes, or sorting out social security, or doing electricity
bill paperwork, or government funding paperwork, or whatever else red-tapey
these obstacle-happy people can come up with.
Seriously, Centrelink might be bad by Australian standards, but by
everyone else’s it’s a totally top-notch organisation. You just don’t appreciate this principle until
you’re afraid to go to the doctor even when you have flu for the third time in
a row because you don’t understand how to do the paperwork to manage it.
The
attitude, too, and the freedoms we get are different. In France the military patrol airports and
train stations, rifles in hand. We’re
lucky to see two cops with guns at airports here. I baffled a Belgian recently by pulling out
my learner’s permit and explaining that this is perfectly valid ID in Australia
and if, God forbid, the cops were to stop me on the street and ask for proof of
identity (not that I can ever, ever
imagine that happening) then my learner’s would be totally acceptable. They have to carry a national ID card or
passport just to take a train. I think,
technically, I can be stopped on the street here in France and demanded to
produce my visa and passport, which I’m technically meant to carry at all
times. The law feels more present here,
the government’s involvement in people’s lives deeper than in Australia, where
the cops and pollies are inclined to leave everyone alone. Here, I’m much more conscious of the military
and police presence everywhere.
There
are just so many little things I find myself noticing around here, things that
we take for granted in Australia. I find
myself more and more appreciative of the way we do things back in Australia,
comparing life to back home and thinking, “If I was in Melbourne now…” with a
self-righteous attitude born of the knowledge that we ARE better. We ARE happier, we ARE safer (I refer you to
the rubbish bins designed to not be conducive to terrorist attacks), we ARE
more economically secure and better educated and more equal; in so many ways we
really ARE the lucky country.
**
Editor’s note: we’re also about to reach our 23 millionth citizen. Read this guy’s letter to the little baby who
will be No. 23,000,000 describing the wonders of the lucky country into which
they’ve just been born.
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