Salut YouTube it's Rosie here again and today I'm doing my much requested Q&A
video on my experiences studying abroad in Paris if you guys haven't already
seen the video you may want to go and check out the first video I did on this
topic which I'll link up here where I explained how I came to study in France
to do my master's degree here for free and not only was it free actually but it
was in English as well it was absolutely essential for me at the time I didn't
speak a word of French so I love to do Q&A videos anyway where I answer your
questions that you send me using my Ask me Anything form which I'll leave down
below in the description box and I noticed a big trend around study abroad
what did you study how did you get to where you are in terms of your
professional career etc so I hope to address all of those in today's video so
let's get into the first question from Charlou who's asked me what I studied as
a bachelor's degree so before I even came to study in France to do my
Master's here what was my academic background so for you guys to know I did
all of my studies in New Zealand until the final year of my masters where I
came to France so just so you know that all of this is happening in New Zealand
so I did two bachelor's degrees in New Zealand the first was a Bachelor of
Science where I majored in psychology so I did chemistry biology etc but I had a
psychology major really kind of focused on more so neuroscience and how what's
going on and the brain can impact people's behavior I was doing
simultaneously my other bachelors degree which was a Bachelor of business
majoring in general management and human resources through doing this I realized
that understanding the psychology of people what makes people tick how to
motivate people how to make people happier in general how to make people
more confident in general all of these kinds of topics were so crucial to what
I was studying in my other degree which is the workplace so we spend a huge
amount of time at work and it would be really useful if we could understand how
to make people happier at work more engaged at work able to give their best
every day able to perform in ways and reach the career goals in ways that they
weren't sure how to do alone all of these kinds of things and just the
overlap of these two worlds led me to a pretty obvious direction which was Human
Resources after my bachelor's degrees I actually started working for a few years
in Human Resources I did a Human Resources graduate program where every
six months I was assigned to a different human resources related mission while I
was working full-time because I'm a little bit of a crazy person I was also
studying the first year of my Master's by distance part-time in the evenings
and weekends which I did an organizational psychology which is the
psychology of the workplace which won't surprise any of you and then of course I
applied and got into my International Human Resources Management Master here
in Paris in English which was effectively free because my company paid
my school fees and I was able to do internships which are paid for my cost
of living over here so it was an amazing experience but I really detail
everything you need to know in the video that I mentioned earlier the next
question is from Bri who's asked me what it's like to have a career in HR
and what I like about it and what I find more difficult about it that's a really
good question I honestly think that human resource management is one of the
most underrated professional areas of business I think people have an idea of
human resources that you're just recruiting people or firing people or
doing kind of administration related to people matters so writing contracts or
approving holidays or paying people and that kind of thing while I've done but
some pieces that resemble that just to get some experience when I was starting
out over the last four years I don't think I've done anything that even
resembles that in the slightest the thing I would love about HR is that
it's a strategic business topic so it's very business oriented you can't achieve
your business strategy without the people that are going to
get you there pretty much every company you can dream of has an HR department so
if you want to work more in tech fields Facebook Apple Google they have HR
departments if you want to work in luxury cosmetics they have HR
departments and the salary is good it's a it's comparable to what you would find
in communications marketing this kind of thing something that really excites me
about HR as well as the sense of service like you are doing something good for
other people every day and I really think that my number one mission at work
and the role that I'm in today is making people happy at work and making people
feel more confident at work and making people feel like they belong in the
workplace that they're currently in if you're the kind of person that likes to
build others up and see other people do better and help and serve others you
could be really happy in HR something that I did find quite difficult at first
which I have gotten more used to is that I did over emphasize in my mind the
contact with people on a day to day basis and as I said in some positions
you do but some positions you don't in my role at the moment I don't have a
population of people that I look after intimately for example I'm not in close
proximity with any given population because I'm designing solutions for
employees that will touch the employees and they'll be rolled out worldwide but
it's not me actually in the room with the employees of their make sense and so
I think I over exaggerated how much daily contact I would have personally
with employees the next question coming in is from an Australian, Brooke, and she's
asked me if I would recommend the International Human Resources Management
Masters that I did and she's a little bit worried because she wonders if the
culture shock would be too huge with the tiny Parisian apartment and stuff coming
from Australia and has also asked me if it's easy to make friends so yeah I
would absolutely recommend it I think it's a wonderful life experience yes
you're gonna come over here and things are different the food of different the
language is different the people are different and the apartments are tiny
when you're on a student budget but it's all part of the experience it makes it
what it is and that's something to look back on and be like wow that was crazy
that was amazing that was many many different things and it doesn't last
forever I mean it's one year of your life and when I look at where I am now
and I'm working in a great job and an awesome company and I've got my much
nicer one-bedroom apartment and really happy so I would definitely recommend it
and yet it is easy to make friends because you've got heaps of
international people and exactly the same situation as you so you
automatically bond over there and you automatically become quite close another
question from Brooke is what did I write my master's thesis on and did I get to
pick my own topic so the way it worked with my particular masters is that I
wrote my master's thesis for the company that I was interning at and I actually
worked with them to decide what I would write my thesis on because I wrote my
thesis to solve one of their business problems or in my case HR problems and
the problem that I tackled was the use of executive coaching throughout the
group executive coaching is when you have top executive coaches who work with
the most senior people in the organization to help them do loads of
different things to help them become more self-aware to help them become
better leaders better people managers to help them be more strategic and their
thinking whatever the executives individual problematic is or something
that they would like to work on and prove an executive coach as a certified
coach who has the tools and methodologies to be able to get them
there so my whole master's thesis was really on how to leverage this practice
of executive coaching how to scale it and
customize it globally so that it's working and I created a framework for
the group so that any division in a country that wanted to roll out the
practice of executive coaching locally they could use my framework my
guidelines my policies so they knew from steps 1 2 3 4 5 how to use executive
coaching for their most senior leaders in the company I've got another question
coming in from Linda who's asked me you know how to get to France to study for a
one-year are there any scholarships available etc etc I'd say the best
resource you can check out as Campus France I can obviously talk about my
program in my experience but it depends what you want to study it depends on
your areas of expertise etc so I'll link that website down in the description box
below because it has all of the english-speaking masters so you can look
through that website there's also another website I think it's called
masters portal dot-eu which is another great resource so I'll link that down
below as well so you can start doing your own research and figure out where
you want to go my next question is from Sarah who's asking if I can make a video
around studying for those who are over the age of 26 because I think I
mentioned in my last video that the maximum age for the apprentissage system
or apprenticeship system is 26 years old so firstly what you need to know is that
they have raised the age of the system to 30 so that's quite interesting
however what they've changed is that people who aren't from European
countries are going to have to do internships instead of apprenticeships
so the main difference is that internships are only six months long and
apprenticeships are for the full year terms of studying after 30 I'm not
actually an expert sorry because I haven't done it and I don't know anyone
that has but again I would recommend checking out the links that I put down
below Campus France master's portal da da de you and having a look on there to
see what you can find the next question coming in is from Merve from Turkey hello
they've asked me more about the money side of things so how much money did I
arrive in Paris with I I'm guessing you'd like to know how I
paid my bills and how much the cost of living was generally and that kind of
thing and the second part of the question is how to find accommodation so
I came to Paris with around 1,500 euros that was my security nest in case I had
any emergencies or anything went wrong luckily as I said because of the
particular program I did the school fees were paid for and I received a monthly
salary so that 1,500 euros that I came with was really really crucial because I
didn't get paid for the first month so I needed to live off that pay the bond to
the apartment etc so that was a little bit
tighter but then once I started getting my monthly salary I was earning minimum
wage which was around 1,500 gross or 1200 euros net in the pocket my rent
was 500 years per month and then I think I was spending around 40 euros per week
on food and yeah I mean it's quite tight especially if you want to save to go
travelling you know go to Barcelona for the weekend or what that kind of thing
but you can definitely live on minimum wage here I would say it depends on your
budget but I'd say you'd need at least say 900 euros per month to survive here
that's just a general figure but it depends obviously if you share a house
with six other people or have your own apartment or whatever it is that that
would maybe give you a rough indication to find apartments I'd say the best
thing is through word-of-mouth so look on Facebook for any groups that you can
find on students in Paris study abroad in Paris maybe your school has a
dedicated Facebook group for its students that kind of thing and asking
those I think that's just differently the number one best way otherwise the
site solutio fair is actually quite useful so I'll link that down below as
well I know a couple of people who have found apartments through there as well I
think campus France as well actually offers loads of information on finding
cheap student accommodation in Paris so definitely check out the campus France
website down below as well cool so that's all the questions I had for my
study abroad Q&A hope that you guys found that useful if you'd like any
further details if you any other questions just ask me down in
the comment section below and I can definitely try and get back to you I do
have a video coming out soon on some of my surprises that I found in the French
education system in terms of the way you're graded and that kind of thing so
don't forget to subscribe and turn the notifications on if you want to be
notified when videos like that come out on my channel but until then I'll see
you guys in the next video à bientôt!
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