I was standing in the middle of one of Paris’s most Instagrammable streets—a picture-perfect Rue Crémieux moment—when it hit me: I had made a colossal mistake. Not the kind of mistake that makes for a quirky travel story, like ordering bœuf tartare expecting it to be a well-done steak or asking for directions and accidentally telling someone you’re pregnant (French verbs, am I right?). No, this was bigger. I had uprooted my life in Montreal, said “au revoir” to my sense of stability, and leaped across an ocean, only to feel...lost.

Because isn't that what Paris is for? Finding yourself, sipping espresso in chic cafés as life-changing epiphanies fall into your lap like flaky croissant crumbs? Spoiler alert: my adventure was less “Eat, Pray, Love” and more “Panic, Cry, Repeat.”

The Leap (And the Landing)

It started with a bold, romantic idea: spending my semester abroad in Paris. To me, it was less about classes and more about transforming into a 21st-century Françoise Sagan. Montreal had always been home, charming and familiar, but I yearned for something more cinematic. What could be more fitting than Paris? The city of lights, love, and literary icons.

I arrived with an oversized suitcase and equally outsized expectations. Surely, I’d immediately find my place in the winding cobblestone streets, right? Wrong. Just two weeks in, I was bumbling through my French like a bad dub of "Emily in Paris," accidentally mixing up metro lines, and—oh, the irony—feeling more foreign in the land of my own second language than I ever expected.

My First Big Failure

It wasn’t that anything catastrophic happened. There was no single implosion, no Eiffel Tower crumbling-level event. I didn’t flunk my classes or get deported for butchering a Parisian accent. My failure was internal.

I arrived expecting to feel at home in my mother tongue, but instead, I felt like an imposter fumbling through a script I didn’t quite understand. Even the grocery store overwhelmed me. Do you know the emotional turmoil of standing in front of 27 types of cheese, deeply aware of how little you understand about joyfully French things like camembert or how to pair it with wine? Add that to being 20 years old, broke, and perpetually lost, and you get the recipe for what I can only call my baguette-breakdown era.

And yet, it wasn’t just the cheese aisles (okay, it may have been partially the cheese aisles). It was the lingering flicker of doubt every time I tried to open my mouth in French and someone immediately switched to English. Or the way I watched friendships blossom effortlessly around me while I felt stranded behind some invisible linguistic wall. Somewhere along the way, it started to feel like, “Why am I even here if I can’t keep up?”

Spoiler alert: I didn’t leave. I stayed. And whether out of pure stubbornness, pride, or the kind of poetic self-torture every 20-year-old studying literature feels obligated to endure, I found a way forward.

Welcome to Resilience 101 (A Masterclass in Surviving Yourself)

If there’s one thing failure taught me, it’s this: you don’t fail because you’re incapable. You fail because you’re learning something that isn’t packaged neatly into a syllabus or five easy steps. My time in Paris wasn’t about learning French grammar (though my existential war with the subjunctive tense deserves an essay of its own). It was about fumbling, dusting off my ego, and starting again.

Here’s how I slowly managed to eat my metaphorical baguette of resilience, one crumb at a time:

1. Admit That You’re Struggling (Out Loud, If Possible)
Failing isn’t cute when you’re clinging to the false aura of perfection. I tried, for months, to pretend I had a grand Parisian life together when everyone around me could see the cracks in the crepe. Opening up to my classmates was a game-changer. One deep confession later—over cheap rosé, naturally—and I realized no one had it as together as they seemed. Sharing my frustrations not only helped me feel less alone but also turned awkward acquaintances into solid friendships.

2. Find Little Wins (Even in the Snack Aisle)
Not every failure bounce-back has to be a full Hollywood montage. Sometimes, it’s as small as finding the courage to buy a baguette without rehearsing your order a thousand times in your head. Tiny victories pile up, brick by brick, until you’ve got yourself a sturdy little fort of confidence. Mine started with cracking jokes in French, mastering subtle Parisian nods at baristas, and eventually giving directions to a tourist (without sweating through my sweater).

3. Laugh at the Absurdity of It All
The fact that I once gave a five-minute monologue in class where I mixed up the words for “murder” and “cooking”? Hilarious. The day I sat in a café for two hours, too anxious to ask for the check, only to realize I’d forgotten my wallet? Comic gold—eventually. If failure has taught me anything, it’s this: the moments that feel mortifying now will one day become your favorite punchlines. I learned to lean into the absurdity of my struggles and, bizarrely, they grew lighter. Humor is the ultimate hostage negotiator for an overactive inner critic.

4. Embrace the Mess of Becoming (Clichés and All)
Paris was never going to transform me into a perfectly put-together literary heroine, as much as I wanted it to. But what I learned was infinitely more valuable: embracing the discomfort of growth. Growth isn’t chic or effortless—sometimes, it smells like street corner falafel and sounds like awkward French karaoke. But when you stop resisting the mess, you make space for something better: becoming who you really are, not who you thought you should be.

The Takeaway You Didn’t Ask For (But Need Anyway)

So, what did failing in Paris teach me? That failure, strangely enough, is the most reliable sign that you’re moving somewhere new. It’s a good thing, even when it’s wrapped in awkward, confusing, or mildly disastrous moments. My time abroad might not have been the glossy curated version I envisioned, but it gave me something deeper: resilience. It was the kick I needed to take a hard look at the gap between who I thought I should be and who I actually was. And maybe, just maybe, to be a little kinder to the latter.

These days, whenever life throws me into a cheese aisle (literal or metaphorical), I take a deep breath, trust that I’ll find my footing, and maybe even laugh about it someday. Failure, after all, is just the world's way of saying, “Hey, you’re trying. Keep going.”