David Rauch is a Northern Star employee studying abroad. “An American In Paris” will chronicle his studies and adventures in France.

There are frustrations, to be sure.

I’ve been told they are normal and that they might come and go. But they will last for the rest of our lives.

I’d say they mainly stem from either fear or boredom, or the fear of boredom — whichever comes first. Being born and raised, schooled and nurtured in the suburbs can do this to people. It can turn them wild when they reach a certain boiling point, usually college. It can turn them into party animals. The fact is, when they leave home they want to be where things happen — big parties, huge crowds, bright lights.

I’ve been told it’s called “overcompensating,” and I’ve heard it’s not just a symptom of suburbia. I’ve heard it’s a pandemic.

In Paris, there is no other way to explain why people pay the outlandishly high real-estate prices to live here. They have been told Paris is the place to be.

But for a newbie in Paris — a city where things, important things — are supposed to happen, it takes a while get into the thick of it.

I can think of no better example of what this first quarter in Paris felt like than my first awkwardly joyful year at NIU. The infinite grasping. The desperate hoping that “this is not all there is to this place?” And the, “How are these supposed to be the years that I ‘find myself?” The questions started three years ago.

Those questions had to be posed again two months ago, and I think it goes to show how far I’ve come toward answering them. I often have to ask the questions. That is one of the frustrations.

However, I’m getting ready for a sophomore effort this next quarter; this first one felt like an incredibly rapid freshman year. But all of it was rolled in a fourth.

This is one of the benefits of studying abroad — if you could call it that. How potent time is, how long since you left, how long until you get back, how long since you’ve seen so-and-so, how long since you’ve heard your language, how long between e-mails, etc.

People’s characters are changed, marred and scrambled when they study abroad. Sometimes they’re affirmed, but otherwise they come back shaken but victorious — like veterans. Their personality changes in ways that make a suburban social life feel like a glacial movement, and it is without any effort of their own.

I left because I could not have handled one more fall in DeKalb — not one more layered memory. I couldn’t handle one more day judging myself by what I had done up to that moment. The trip was an overcompensation, and I got in way over my head.

That is a frustration.

I was not clear-minded when I left for Paris. After all, what did I expect? Leaving my friends, all my instruments, the U.S. dollar, big hamburgers and my own language for a city and culture I know very little about — where a dollar is worth 70 cents.

In fact, I expected very little and thought of it very little. It was to my advantage, because if studying abroad can be sold as one thing, it is condensed unpredictability. And there is a lot of it, more of it than I know what to do with.

That is also a frustration.

But I’m a lazy person, and if I don’t get frustrated, I float by comfortably. In these years that I’m supposedly finding myself, there are one million ways I can float on. I heard DeKalb can play a hand in that, but the alternative is a lot of constant discomfort and frustration.

And to be honest, maybe as a mixed blessing, I have never been more frustrated in my whole life than since I arrived in this crazy, foreign country.

But they’re the kind of frustrations that make you change.