He enrolled at the University of Bucharest's literature and philosophy faculty,[1] but did not graduate due to a lack of funds that led him to become a prolific but poorly paid journalist.

[1][2] Although he was a good science student in high school, he was more interested in literature, gaining fluency in French, German, and English and keeping current with contemporary European writers.

[2] In spite of his perpetual poverty, Petică's omnivorous intellect led him to Greek and Roman classics, a commentary on the Quran, verses by Ferdowsi in German, Copernican astronomy, Spanish romances, Franz Miklosich's study of Romanian philology, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's aesthetics; works by Wilhelm Wundt, Arthur Schopenhauer, Arthur de Gobineau and Spencer's First Principles; the archaeological findings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Stefan George's magazine Blätter für die Kunst [de].

Others who entered his radius include Théodore Aubanel, Frédéric Mistral, Stendhal, Ernest Renan, Ugo Foscolo, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy and Alexander Herzen.

His critical references from 1900 to 1903 show that he not only knew Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, Jean Moréas, Albert Samain, Emile Verhaeren, and Maurice Maeterlinck, but was also serious about art history.

[1] Following a split in the movement, he joined the group led by V. A. Urechia, vocally renouncing his former ideas and between 1898 and 1903, writing a series of articles with anti-socialist declarations.

He sometimes signed with the pen names Caton, Erics, Mușat, Narcis, Sapho, Senez, Sentino, Sergiu, Step, Stiopca, Ștefan, and Trubadur, or with the initials Șt.