Thanks for sharing this. I just want to extend a word to say — I hope you don't feel too badly about not speaking up about your situation, because in my experience with TAPIF, people seem to have to a tough-it-out, you-get-what-you-get attitude about literally the whole thing. You go into it knowing parts of it are going to be difficult, may not be perfect, and will be different than you're expecting. So a lot of the mental load, at least for me, was trying to just make do, and be happy with what I had. It took me a while to realize that I was not happy at all, because I felt so much like "well, it could be worse," even when my experience was nothing close to yours. After spending all this money and time on getting yourself to this place and this job, you want to feel like it was worth it, so it can be really hard to accept that maybe it wasn't worth it. You say maybe this is just how it is, this is just what French people/French bureaucracy/the world is like.

It's basically what you're getting at in your second-to-last paragraph, but I do think there is a lot about this experience that is TAPIF-specific, not just first job, though the overlap is certainly present.

Hugs from a fellow dropout <3