2) Is it the first time that you have come to France ?
No, actually I’ve been quite lucky because I’ve been able to go to and from France since the start of my first year, so since about 2022. It’s nice when the university pays for your Eurostar ticket. I’ve been able to get to Paris quite a lot. And I’ve got a lot of family who live around there, which is also why I live there, because it’s just to be close to the family. I’ve been to the South of France, I’ve been to Marseilles and Nice, and I really enjoyed it, so hopefully I will get to go down there again. I would like to keep going to the South of France because it’s really lovely.

3) What do you like or dislike about France ?
I really like the culture in France, I like that it’s quite different, there’s like a sort of etiquette that London doesn’t have. Like when I go in public and I hold the door for someone and they say like “Merci’’. When I leave my studio and I see my neighbors and they say to me “Bonjour” or “Bonsoir”, “Bonne journée”. I think it’s really cute. And I love saying that whenever I leave a shop. I love the French accent, I really want to have a French accent ! I guess that I like the fact that France and the French language is kind of new to me in a way that English isn’t, because it is not my native language. The one thing I don’t like about France, well, it is me being very annoying, but the buses are so just unreliable ! It’s a bit of a shock because I feel like when you are in London you have no sense of patience…The metro is fine, the metro comes every 2 or 3 minutes, so I can work with that, but if I have to take the bus to go somewhere, and I am going to wait for more than 5 minutes, we actually have a problem. It’s been quite humbling having to wait for the bus quite a few times. That’s just the one thing I try and avoid doing, but when you’re in Paris it’s quite simple not to take the bus.

4) Have you noticed any differences between the French and the English school systems ?
It’s so different ! So, the first thing I have noted is that languages are taught better in France, I think, which comes as a shock to some students here... but you do not want to learn languages in the UK, you just don’t. I feel like our schools are built to teach people languages in a way that’s not effective, so people get really bored, so you have to love the language you’re doing to keep on going and do it as a degree. In the UK, you only ideally study one language in a state school, and I guess this is also a state school in France, so that’s why I’m sort of comparing, but I understand that you learn at least two languages which is good for you ! I would have loved to have learnt Spanish and Portuguese… well I’ve got family that speaks Portuguese, so it would have been nice to talk to them in Portuguese, but I’ll leave that for another day. Another thing is that in my school all throughout, from nursery to when I was eighteen, we wore school uniforms, and so, I was wearing the same clothes five days a week, not the same shirt, but the same clothes five days a week which killed all sense of creativity ! So that was difficult, and I went to a Catholic school, so I guess that religious element is like really different from what I get from here. It’s been really interesting to not work in a Catholic school because it’s kind of all that I’ve known. So, it’s quite nice to see people from a mix of different religions and cultures. But I guess the main difference is also the length of time that we are in school, which is so much shorter. The longest I have been in school would be six and a half hours, so I’d be in school from quarter to nine and leave at three fifty at the latest. I can’t believe you leave at six… Couldn’t be me ! And we have school five days a week and we don’t have school on Saturdays unless you have detention ! So, really really different school systems, and quite interesting to sort of compare them.

5) What inspired you to become an activist ?
So, I was one of those kids who got really angry at things when they were younger because I didn’t understand why the world was the way it was…why couldn’t we just fix things ? Let’s be serious, I understand why it is what it is now, but I always had something to say about something, and I kind of wanted to divert my frustration and anger into something a bit more productive. It started off with writing. I was journaling since the age of nine and then I stopped in university because it got too stressful and I didn’t want to remember my university days, but I’m starting again, because the lovely teachers here got me a notebook for Christmas, which is nice, because I’m using it to journal my days here. So, I kind of wanted to find something that I really cared about, and I really cared a lot about the environment. I think that everyone’s affected by the climate, and when I was around 13-14, I got a bit existential and started realising if we did nothing we might not live to see 50. And so, I managed to connect to lots of climate groups in the UK, really not far from London, because everything is around London.
I got really lucky that I got recruited to start a campaign. I have been able to express my stress and worries in a productive way. I am speaking with politicians and I am doing speeches. But I am also working in schools, doing poetry with 8-year-olds. It is really enriching and really fun. But it is really tiring, so it is nice to have a break, because you know I am not in the UK. That is what inspired me. I wanted to do something that felt bigger than myself…Getting into working with communities because you never know the change you can make.

Congratulations on your commitment !

Thank you very much, Destiny !