[Alumni Story] - Romain Dardel

15 March 2024 Portrait

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I followed a very classic track: two years of ECE French preparatory classes before joining Rennes School of Business in 2015 (which was still called ESC Rennes at the time). My entrance interview was about Brexit, and it's funny to think that at the time it was still just speculation.

Having repeated my first year, I was lucky enough to get to know two associations: the BDA and Warlock. Warlock still holds a special place in my heart !

I did my Erasmus in the ‘eternal city’, Rome. In a way, my name must have predestined me. Then I graduated from the MSc in Creative Project Management in 2021 (P26), right in the middle of COVID.

Can you tell us about your job?

I'm an editorial project manager in a consultancy/communications agency in the field of cancer/haematology. Quite simply, I oversee the production of magazines on therapeutic advances in these different pathologies, as well as a digital platform offering content for healthcare professionals.

Your 2nd book, Une autre année (Another year), has just been published. Can you tell us about it?

Yes, it's the sequel-not the complete sequel-to "Une année en France" (A year in France), my first book published in 2022. The structure is the same (a collection of texts) but the tone is very different. The first was rather juvenile and carefree, while the second is more mature and disillusioned.

At the end of my final year internship, in 2021, I felt the need to write, to put into words what I was feeling. "That's how it started and today I have over 180 texts on my website and two books published. It's pretty crazy when I think about it. But to come back to the book, it's a collection of texts that create a mosaic with a particular atmosphere, something mixing absurdity, humour and at the same time sensitivity, doubt and revolt, with themes like solitude, the impossibility of romance and melancholy. From my point of view, it's something quite original in the French literary landscape and I'm very happy with the result.

What have you gained from your time at Rennes School of Business and the alumni network?

In response, a lot of revelations about myself. Landing at school meant that you could no longer hide: I had the feeling that we were on our own and that we now had to act with full awareness, because we were no longer teenagers, but adults. And that each act would define who we were, right up to the potentially radical decision to leave school and do something else, because having had a chaotic first year I had to ask myself the question. For me, this pathway was indirectly an existential awakening.