People and Self-Made

I was expelled from engineering school when I was about to turn 19. My grades weren’t good enough to pass.

I decided to run away. One month in China to perform an internship. Sleeping my days away and living for the weekend. I would spend each Friday and Saturday in nightclubs with my engineer schoolmates from France and get drunk. One night, I was so drunk I had two friends carry me unconscious all across Shanghai on their shoulders to our hostel. 

I started smoking for the hell of it. Nothing had any meaning anymore. I didn’t know what to do. Becoming a software engineer had been my dream since I was 13, and it was being denied by reality.

I was angry at everyone. My professors, my classmates, my parents. Everyone except me. Truth is, I was the one at fault. I wasn’t enough. I didn’t have the necessary skills and know-how to succeed.

Pain is a fascinating thing. It teaches you what’s right and what’s wrong. I was in a lot of pain when I came back to France. 

I wish I could tell you I pushed through and overcame all odds by sheer will, but it wasn’t like that. I wanted to give up on everything. If it wasn’t for my parents, my brother, and the close friendships I developed throughout my first year in college, I would have quit, back to square one.

My parents convinced me to apply for a computer science program at Bordeaux University. I got in and went straight to the second year of the undergraduate program. I gained back some confidence and started grinding. 

My friends motivated me. I wanted to see them again, and I needed excellent academic results to have the opportunity to do so.

I’m not a very self-driven person. I do things because they open myself up to new opportunities to interact with others. I’m an introvert capable of withstanding great solitude, but ultimately I live for my people.

Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to rank among the best students of my promotion. I wouldn’t have been accepted back to the institution that expelled me a year earlier, and I wouldn’t be an engineer today.

It was all my doing. Nobody put in the work for me, but I still owe this success to the people who met my path, from childhood till now. There is no such thing as a self-made man, only encounters and experiences that forge us.