To study abroad and switch to tech, I invested a great deal of money and effort, including preparing my language skills and finances from as early as 2021, as well as getting up at six every morning to watch videos on computer science and advanced mathematics. In November 2022, I received an offer from a private engineering school in France and enrolled at the end of September 2023.
Things were fine at first, when we only had French and cultural studies classes. But from the third week onward, the number of classes began to increase. By November, the entire month was extremely intense. We often had classes from nine in the morning until seven in the evening, and my planner was packed with a dense schedule of classes. In addition to attending classes, we also had many group presentations and projects, so I often worked on assignments until the early hours of the morning.
At first, many courses started with the basics, including Python, Linux, and SQL. However, there were only five SQL classes, each lasting two hours, so I had studied it for just ten hours in total before I had to take the exam. Since I had never studied it before, had little time to review, and the exam questions were very difficult, I had a breakdown during the exam and could not answer many of the questions.
Another course that pushed me to the breaking point was advanced algorithms. Perhaps I was simply too slow, but I could not understand 90% of what the instructor taught. At one point, I even skipped three or four classes because every minute in the classroom was agonizing.
As if that were not enough, on a Saturday at the end of November, my phone was stolen on my way home after class. It also contained my Hong Kong SIM card, which was linked to my Hong Kong bank account, making its loss especially troublesome. The next day happened to be Sunday, when shops in France were all closed. At the time, life felt utterly bleak, and I could not understand why I had left Hong Kong, where everything had been going so smoothly, to come here and suffer.
Our program had three semesters in total, and I had paid the first semester’s tuition before enrolling. At the time, I thought that if the courses were already this difficult in the first semester, the later ones would probably be even harder. I would also have to start looking for an internship in May, and since I was doing so poorly and my French was not good, I probably would not be able to find one. I thought I might as well save the remaining €7,000 and drop out. This was the first time on my journey into tech that I wanted to give up.
After speaking with the school’s administrative staff and the program director, I spent a long time thinking it over on my own. I knew that I was not someone who gave up easily, and I had already invested so much in this path that it would indeed have been a shame to quit.
So I adjusted my mindset and decided to grit my teeth and keep going. I started attending the advanced algorithms classes again. Although I still could not understand them and the questions I asked were rather foolish, I ultimately failed the course, as expected. Fortunately, the following two semesters were not too difficult. I kept persevering until July, and after successfully finding an internship, I finally breathed a sigh of relief. I knew that, at long last, the hardship was over and better days had arrived.