is a French philosopher who teaches in high school and college, and the founder of several Montessori schools. She regularly speaks on French radio stations France Inter and RTL, as well as on the podcast she started in 2020, “Philosophy is sexy”. She's also the author of When You Kant Figure It Out, Ask a Philosopher: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Dilemmas (Little, Brown Spark, 2019).
Picture © Simon Lambert/Haytham-REA
For the following youngsters, aged 20 to 23, the pandemic has posed a range of professional difficulties. How has this multifaceted crisis affected their ambition? Were they ever forced to give up, adapt, or did it only strengthen their resolve... Philosopher Marie Robert reacts to their stories. Gaëlle explains how, in the midst of the chaos, she decided to start her own graphic design business.
Find the other testimonies and Marie Robert’s thoughts here:
➤ Laurie, 22, nursing student.
➤ Paméla, 22, business student.
➤ Mathias, 20, wildlife protection student.
➤ Justine, 21, social and economic administration student.
Testimony collected by Tom Jacques
Commentary collected by Anne-Sophie Moreau
Gaëlle, 23, graphic designer:
“The conditions will never be perfect – you might as well give it a go!”
“I'm 23, I finished my graphic design studies a year and a half ago. Even before Covid came along, job prospects were pretty grim: there's a lot of national, even international competition, and so many applicants... So much so that when I completed my studies, I took the first job that came along which was more or less in my field, telling myself that I'd figure something else out later. For one year, I worked for a printing press, doing desktop publishing. It wasn't great.
Then Covid came along, and with it, lockdown! I was secretly happy when my boss told me I'd be put on partial unemployment. Sunshine, gardening, personal rather than commercial creation, and of course, thoughts about the future... One thing became clear: work that has meaning, where I'm not selling my soul to the devil, is absolutely necessary. It was a total turnaround: I swapped my full-time job with a fairly decent salary for civic service work in a printing house run by an association. There I found meaning and kindness to give back. Yes, there were difficulties
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