Grateful Graduate Project: Reason to be grateful 11 of 365
Paris Is Top for Quality of Life par tvnportal
Stuck in traffic, on the way to work in yet another two hour daily commute, i made a vow to move to a city that would allow me to have a life and feel human again. I would pick up where I left off with my university studies and work toward a PhD.
Paris has not been disappointing. The quality of life, measured on a completely biased subjective basis, is fabulous (yet another unscientific, difficult to measure term – how does one measure fabulousness?).
While my lax conclusion on Parisian quality of life is questionable at best – the end of 2012 saw more serious rankings of quality of life in different large cities affirm the status of Paris as a large metropolis with an excellent quality of life. This performance seems to hinge largely on the quality of the city’s transport system. (my unscientific perspective agrees with this point on transportantion – when relativised against both London and New York where I’ve had a chance to work – on the part of New York- and where I’m currently alternating in the case of London).
The cost of living does tend to be high – Paris came in 24th according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers 2012 ranking.
Yet, for students there are other factors that sum up to make the experience less stressful than elsewhere: the cost of education is not as high as elsewhere. In some universities, it is almost next to nothing. This gives one more space to focus on their primary reason for being in France, to study, to think, and to do so without much additional stress and strain. It also frees up resources to live in a relatively dignified manner.
The metodologies and studies cited here may be questionable, but once again, from a completely subjective point of view, I am grateful for the experience of being in a city with a great quality of life, certainly one much better than that of the big city that I left to be here! I am thankful that there are a recent ‘studies’ to cite in defense of my love for this city (see video above – click on link- and a link here).
In brief, I am grateful to have found the quality of life – and more precisely, a graduate student quality of life – that i was hoping to have found!
Grateful Graduate is a personal pledge to collect 365 reasons to be grateful for the graduate student experience offered by Paris and London over the course of 2013
Anon's Paris 