Putting the STUDY in Study Abroad: An Academic Update

Mardi, 26 novembre.

The craziness has officially begun. I can't believe it -- it's not even Thanksgiving yet and already, they're everywhere! No, not Christmas decorations. (Although those are all over the place.) I'm talking about the countdown Facebook statuses from friends studying abroad.

"Less than a month till I'll be back in the USA!" 

"Can't believe I only have three weeks left in France." 

"Can't wait to be back in America!"

And, weirder still are the updates from other friends who are already done with their semester abroad! There's still just under a month until I'll be heading home, so it doesn't feel like I'm quite at the end yet. I still have things I want to do and places I want to see. And, unfortunately, classes to go to and exams to take. It's not that I don't enjoy school: in fact, all the cancellations caused by the recent grèves have made me realize how much I do appreciate having something to occupy my weekdays!

Actually, it's been a while since my last academic post, so I figured I'd give you a little update on the STUDY aspect of this whole study abroad thing.

First up... Culture Générale en Histoire de l'Art. First off, let me remind you that Molly dropped this class at the beginning of the semester because she couldn't deal with the professor's disorganized method of teaching. To Molly: YOU WERE SO RIGHT. The professor is very friendly and I'm still interested by the information, but the whole affair is just so painfully poorly organized. We learn in bursts -- ten minutes of rapid-fire notetaking and jotting down of important vocabulary words, followed by half an hour of repetitive rambling. Additionally, the class has been cancelled a few times -- not by the grèves, but by our professor. Now, William & Mary professors have been known to cancel class from time to time. Sometimes, they've decided to cut their losses and get a jump on a holiday weekend. Sometimes, in the case of one poor professor, they've fallen down the stairs and quite literally cannot come to class. But the number of classes I have had cancelled in the last TWO YEARS at William & Mary pales in comparison to the number cancelled in the last two months at the Université Paul-Valéry.

The first time she cancelled class, I was elated. It was one of those cruel Monday mornings at the beginning of fall (you know, when you're not quite used to the shorter days and your alarm clock suddenly goes off before sunrise?) and I was not feeling like getting out of bed for my 8h15. So getting a personalized email from my professor, letting me know that class had been cancelled, was incredible. Until I realized why the email was personalized: I had emailed my professor a few days previously with a question and, apparently, my email address was the only one she had. So after letting me know that class was cancelled -- and, in other words, that there would be no reason on earth for me to get to school before noon that day -- she asked if I wouldn't mind swinging by campus to inform the other students. And let me tell you: the only thing worse than getting up and walking twenty minutes to school at eight o'clock in the morning to go to class is getting up and walking twenty minutes to school at eight o'clock in the morning NOT to go to class. Class was cancelled for the second time last week. Again, I woke up to an early morning email: class would PROBABLY be cancelled, my professor wanted to let me know, and that if she didn't show up at 8h15, I should tell the other students that she was sick and go home. So I walked (in the rain) to class. And I wanted (in the rain) outside the door. And half an hour later, I walked back (still in the rain) to my house. Because -- guess what? No class. (Hey, at least it's a good story.)

Next up? Histoire régionale, a history course on the medieval history of the Languedoc region. The class is divided into two sections: a cours magistral and a travail dirigé. The CM usually goes pretty well. Our professor's lectures are well-structured and informative and, even better, there's usually a powerpoint to help us pick up on key names! As for the TD ... well, suffice it to say that it's given me a few ideas to pass onto the US government for interrogating prisoners. It. Is. Torture. Each class, a handful of students are called up in front of the class to present (or, rather, to mumble through) their commentaires du texte -- oral analyses of documents that we've been assigned to read and study. I thank God every day that we anglophones were allowed to turn in a written version, because after each student presents, the professor TEARS THEM APART. It's vicious. But however miserable the projects and critiques are to listen to, the class has a tendency to provide some unintentional entertainment. Whether it's the boy who showed up to class yesterday without his project because "... my partner never contacted me to work on it" or the duo that explained away their presentation's lack of cohesion by pointing out that they "live far away from each other" and "would have had to drive to work together." Or, my personal favorite, the inexplicably sassy girl who -- after being told by the professor a dozen times not to read from her notes -- indignantly responded, "But this is the introduction. You have to read the introduction!"

A Word on the French University

Lundi, 18 novembre.

This morning, I woke up to an email from my art history professor. We probably weren't going to be having class, the email (which was sent just to me) explained, because she was sick: if she didn't show up at 8:15, I should tell the other students that class had been cancelled. She also gave me her phone number and told me not to hesitate to text and ask about the status of class. So I did. She responded, telling me class had been cancelled. Except she didn't respond until three hours later -- after I had already walked to campus in the rain, waited outside for half an hour, and walked back home. In the meantime, I had learned that my other integrated course, my regional medieval history TD, had been cancelled for the day by the professor. But of course, I hadn't received the email.

Now that I'm sitting in my nice cozy bed and listening to the rain outside my window (as opposed to on my umbrella), I'm inspired to say a few words about the French university system. Fair warning: they're not going to be particularly charitable ones.

Ever since the very first week of school, when I waited for a 90 minutes for a professor who never showed and sat in on my first lecture class, I've had a relatively negative opinion of the student body at Université de Montpellier III. Students don't have a whole lot of initiative: if the professor doesn't seem to be showing up, they just stand outside the door and wait. And wait. And wait. Inside the classroom, they just don't really seem to care. Sure, they take notes in lecture -- for the most part. But they don't respond to professors' questions and rarely ask any of their own. Even in the few classes that require participation, nobody volunteers. I don't really get it. They're getting a college education, practically for free. (Total cost of attending UPV? Maybe a couple hundred Euros a year. That's right: a couple HUNDRED.) And yet, they always seem to have something to complain about.

Which brings me to my next point of discussion ... the grèves.

As the droit de manifester is apparently the primary right in the French Constitution, it's not particularly surprising that there have been small protests all semester. It hasn't been too extreme: just groups of students passing out flyers and marching around with megaphones. There were even some half-hearted signs posted on the buildings, like this one that I pass every day...

Sorry, French students. I would take you seriously but your appropriation and subsequent conjugation of the verb "stop" is too ridiculous to accept. Also, do you really want to compare your movement to those in SPAIN and GREECE? Like ... please. Maybe try picking a country whose economy isn't completely in the toilet.

But things started to get serious a few weeks ago. With the university in some serious financial trouble, the administration announced that they would have to make some cutbacks -- including, as I understand it, closing a satellite campus in a nearby town and requiring applications for admission to the overcrowded university. Applications?! For admission?! To a university?! The idea seems pretty obvious. In America, students spend years building up an academic resume and work for countless hours to find the right college and craft the perfect admission essays.

In France ... not so much.

Needless to say ... I did not take this picture. I'm staying far away from the protests!

Although some schools require applications for admissions, the average university is much less selective. As long as students have taken and passed the bac (a standardized exam taken at the end of high school), they can enroll in university courses. This system has its positives: namely, everyone who passes high school gets to go to college. And traditionally, that's not easy to do -- the bac is a notoriously difficult exam. At least, it was. According to my French civilization professor, the exam's passing rate is now over 85% nationally. And that's not because the students suddenly got smarter; rather, it's a conscious effort by a government trying to reduce unemployment among young adults by encouraging them to stay in school.

Unfortunately, they DON'T stay in school. They come to university, spend a year taking classes, and then quit. For some, university is too hard. (Public universities like UPV aren't bringing in the sharpest knives in the drawer. I'm sure there are some smart cookies. Just not a whole ton.) For others, it's a poor choice of major: since students are not even required to study the subjects in which they took their high school exams, a student could pass a bac in science and then enroll at Paul-Valéry to major in literature! As a result, apparently around two-thirds of students at Paul-Valery drop out after their first year of college. TWO THIRDS. That's over SIXTY percent. Do you know what percentage of students drop out of William and Mary after their first year? FIVE.

So the idea of requiring applications to go to Paul-Valéry? Well, you might as well tell the French population that the country has run out of baguettes.

The actual timeline of events is a little blurred in my head and I'm afraid that I don't care enough to get it all straightened out. But basically, ever since returning from fall break, the students have spent the past few weeks on strike. Some days, they go to class. Some days, they have giant assembly meetings to air their grievances and vote about what to do next. And some days, they do this:

That's right. In what they call un blocage total de la fac, they blockade the entrances to academic buildings, the mindset being to physically prevent professors and students from having class. Some of the blockades are a litttle on the pathetic side -- a few chairs stacked on top of a desk is hardly a concrete barrier -- but they've been getting a little more creative as of late.

This is what I arrived to last Thursday morning, when I came to campus for my German class:

Looks like nobody's going to German class today... (Not even a surprise, to be honest: I've been to exactly THREE German classes all semester. The rest have been cancelled, thanks to three weeks of teacher absence and two weeks of blockaded doors. Only in France...)

At first, it was exciting. The very first blockade happened right after we came back from fall break: students blocked the doors to my history class and our RI course was forced to relocate to the campus of Université de Montpellier II (where the math and science kids are too smart to strike). That day, the students paraded around waving a giant red flag and it was pretty much a real-life version of Les Misérables. We received "IMPORTANT" emails from university faculty, including our program coordinators -- who enthusiastically assured us that these sorts of demonstrations were exceedingly rare. (However, the last time one occured, it lasted three months. Students had to take their final exams at home and send them in their professors.)

Unfortunately, the reality of the grève has since sunk in and it's all become a lot less exciting. There's nothing fun about walking to campus, only to find out your classroom is blocked and your professor is gone, or having to make up missed classes on the weekends. Additionally, because the study abroad program directors are never sure when the classrooms on campus will be blocked, we're currently meeting for our RI classes at another building, about a 15 minute walk from the main campus. I didn't think anything could be less glamorous than UPV, but this little compound has proved me wrong.

The rooms don't have chalkboards or projectors, which is proving a little difficult in classes that require a lot of writing on the board and giving exposés, but at least they're not blocked by furniture! (Well, at least not yet.) Also the bathroom is mega sketch: I've been in once and it was one time too many.

Will the grèves continue? Will the French students ever be satisfied? Stay tuned to hear more.

C'est la Vie Universitaire: Classes

Mercredi, 2 octobre.

When I started writing this post, I began to type, "I'm almost done with my ... " and then realized that I actually had no idea how many weeks ago I started classes! Time is absolutely FLYING by here: I honestly cannot believe it's already October. (Although I'm loving the slightly cooler temperatures.)

After some quick planner checking, I've realized that this is my FOURTH week of school ... and it feels like the first day of class was yesterday! The semester is twelve weeks long, so I'm already one third of the way through. (I know, right?! Incroyable.)

Since the add/drop period is over, I've finally finalized my schedule for the semester. It was really tough picking my classes and even harder deciding which of them to drop, but I've got it all figured out and happy with the final product. I'm taking six classes; although that's a little bit on the heavier end of the spectrum, it's nothing crazy! I ended up keeping all of my Relations Internationales classes (the ones designed for American students) as well as three integrated courses.