This is an answer to all those recruiters asking “How do you explain this gap in your resume?”.
I couldn’t stand pretending to be a healthy human being, so here is the truth.
(born 1986)
- 2004 - 2005, Caen, Normandy. First year of a Physics Measurements degree. Failed spectacularly.
- 2007-10 - 2007-12, Stuttgart, Germany. Wandering in Germany searching for a job.
- 2008-10 - 2009-03, Heidelberg, Germany. Learning japanese at the university hoping to work in Japan. Wow that went well.
- 2009-03 - 2009-10, Germany, Czech Republic. Back-packing speaking esperanto and wwoofing. That one was nice actually.
- 2009-10 - 2010-02, Calais, France. Bachelor degree of industrial engineering. Ended up crying, shaving my head and doing drugs. But hey I discovered Linux.
- 2010-10, Frankfurt. Searching for a job in Germany, ended in intense feelings of depression and worthlessness.
- 2011-01 - 2011-03, Israel & Berlin. Esperanto meetings, visiting Israel, hanging in Berlin and -surprise- doing drugs.
- 2015-01 - 2015-03, Caen, Normandy. Dropped out of university, searched for a job in an unrelated field, feeling miserable and inadequate.
- 2018-09, India. Visiting northern India and losing all my life savings in an elaborate scam.
- 2018-10, Köln, Germany. Trying to make a new life in Germany. Oh hi, worthlessness, I didn’t miss you.
- 2019-01 - 2021-02, Caen, Normandy. Learned programming on my own, living on unemployment benefits, then spent six months looking for a job, facing refusal after refusal. Strong feelings of inadequacy and sadness.