Extremely jetlagged, I ran out the door with one of my roommates to the over crowded restaurant down the street to catch the last 10 minutes of the UEFA Champions League soccer tournament. Paris’s PSG is tied against North London’s Arsenal and the game suddenly goes into a shoot out. The crowd grows larger as the game nears its end, spilling into an iconic Huessmann lined street.
The fans shout out chants. Suddenly, it's the last shot.
Silence.
Silence.
Gasps.
Ahhhh!!!! ON GAGNE!! [WE WON!] ICI C’EST…. PARIS!!! [HERE WE ARE ….PARIS!] ICI C’EST ….PARIS!! [HERE WE ARE…. PARIS!]
I’m suddenly picked up and spun in a circle by a stranger, fireworks are shot into the sky, red and blue smoke bombs are thrown into the street, deafening soccer plastic horns and revving motorcycles outcompete the cheers of excitement.
PSG won the champions league!
We follow the crowd to Trocodero, where, with the Eiffel Tower looming, rambunctious fans have set cars on fire to celebrate their team’s win and handheld fireworks are shot as high as the tower is tall. In pure chaos, Paris welcomes me to its city for the summer.
My internship with UNESCO Headquarter’s Higher education division began the following Monday. I was kindly greeted by a team of interns who unbeknownst to me at the time, would become my best friends. After a quick tour and a coffee from UNESCO’s 7th floor cafe, I met the rest of the team. Truly an international workspace, my team represents over 10 countries and just as many languages. When working, we dance between English and French.
Eating lunch with the best view of the Eiffel tower in the city, I met even more interns and learned that there are about 30 of us in the education sector.
This summer I have so far been working on research for two separate projects: the upcoming Global Higher Education Report 2027 and Education in Emergencies.
For the Global Higher Education Report, I arrived in Paris at the beginning of the project in which the topics for the report are still being finalized. Because of this, my first week was spent largely understanding our divisions most recent publications as well as researching trends, news, and policy changes that are happening across all higher education systems across all the world. As the topics for the publication are getting more narrowed, I have been assigned the task of researching how public institutions are financed and how students afford university (specifically, how do public scholarships, grants, loans systems work and who receives them and why). Early in my research, it became clear that most countries had their own unique financial systems in place and that many regions did not share one particular method. With this finding, my research has switched to become more focused on case studies.
For the Education in Emergencies project, I have been compiling notes on policies UNESCO should recommend to help universities be prepared before an emergency happens. These policy ideas come from backwards engineering academic journals that discuss the successes and failures of universities who are recovering from an emergency and what they wish they had done before it occurred.
Outside of my independent research, I am also learning a lot about the work culture of being in a multilateral organization as well as the logistics of working on publications that are largely huge group work projects. One of the biggest challenges so far with our projects is the lack of hard and consistent data present for Higher Education. As the Higher Education division is relatively new at UNESCO, working with countries to collect data has been a large and complex project that many of the specialists are working on.
After work ends around 6pm, several times a week there are dinners, “aperos”, picnics, and other events with my team, interns and the “cool kids.”
In addition to soccer defining the atmosphere of the city this summer: with the PSG win and the World Cup (with France having large prospects to win) the summer has also been greatly defined by the, “Canicules” [heatwaves]. Never again will I take air conditioning for granted. Despite the heat, I still got to enjoy Fête de la musique, which is a nationwide music festival that takes place on the summer solstice. And when the heat becomes to much, I take advantage of Paris’s many air conditioned museums and cafes.
Outside of my professional goals for this summer, I hope to continue improving my French by practicing with my coworkers and host family. Additionally, as a way to explore more of the city, I have made it a goal to find the best Pain au Chocolate in Paris.
Megan Blackman is a Graduating M.A. Student in International Education at the George Washington University. Her area of focus is on global citizenship education in secondary and higher education, Teacher Professional Development, and education policy.