CLASSES!

Classes Parisian-style started today. I was super-nervous about both my classes because of language issues and because they were both extremely long (by my standards). I got home from school at nine p.m. I figure I can deal with this, because the classes don't start until one, and it's the only time both classes meet all week.

My first class was The European Union, a poly sci class taught at the Centre Madeleine by a professor from Sciences Po. The prof seems totally great - she is relatively young, but nice, on top of things, and an interesting lecturer. She even treated us to a plan for the class (French universities don't do syllabi or outlines, so a list of the weekly lecture titles was a huge treat). Our work consists of 3 quizzes (45 minutes each) on the lecture material, one press review, and a final exam. We do the press review in groups, and naturally all the Midd kids flocked together but we had an uneven number, so I wound up in a group with three strangers, all from the Hamilton program. This class is one of the Consortium classes that includes Middlebury, Smith, and Hamilton students. When we walked into the class before it started, two Midd friends and I were slightly shocked to see it filled with girls. Aside from 4 Midd boys, there is only one other guy in either of the other groups out of a total of twenty-two students. Paris is definitely a study abroad location that is ridiculously female (all the students we met at registration, twenty plus of them, were also all female). Anyhow, I'm really excited about this class: the material seems extremely interesting, and a bit difficult, but I think I'll definitely get a lot out of the class.

Thus educational experience number one was quite similar to Middlebury...it seems like a nice balance between American and French teaching styles (definitely on the French side though). My second class was a very different experience. Paris III is a public university, and in France anyone who graduates high school essentially (gets a baccalaureate, which is actually a bit more difficult) can attend. Our Midd language prof reminded us that as far as education goes, you get what you pay for, and a university education in France costs a few hundred euros per year. The Paris III building looks like an enormous urban high school, both on the outside and inside. There are clusters of students smoking outside and huge groups chilling on the hallway floors. Paris III is also way way more diverse than anywhere else I've seen in Paris, which is exciting for me. There certainly won't be nearly as much pressure to dress to the nines for class.

My class itself went really went. I wasn’t super-enthused about the subject – History of Cinema – but the prof seems great and it doesn’t seem very hard. The classes has only 13 people (the prof said there should be more next week) and seven are American students, six of them from Midd. I’m excited that there are Middkids in my class, and that we can struggle to understand together, but it’s a group of kids who were also in my EU class, and who I haven’t seen separate since we got here. They are the captains of Team Partying and Team English-Only, which is kind of annoying for me, since I’m making an effort to stick to the Language Pledge for a while, and I’d rather not stick out entirely at the Paris school. During the break we spent the entire time babbling in English, and when class started again, the prof said, “I noticed during the break that we have some foreign students here.” Apparently, to our great surprise, he didn’t guess immediately that we were American, though he did notice throughout his lecturing that we often looked a bit confused. He was actually totally excited about it b/c America apparently invented cinema and today we talked about only American film history and watched American film clips. A third of the movies screened are American ones as well. I’m excited that the professor seems so excited to have us there; he thinks it will be a great opportunity for cross-cultural discussion. He also said after class that if we need him to slow down or to explain something, we should just ask. That’s excellent, since he talks super-fast and was sometimes hard to understand. I hope all my French professors are this nice and understanding. The class work doesn’t seem bad at all – he said we have only two grades, a midterm and a paper. None of us understand if it is understood that we have a final, or if we actually don’t have one. Hopefully the prior…then I’d be done with work for this class on April 2nd. The paper doesn’t seem too bad – we have to write about one of the movies on a list he gave us. They are all being screened at some university cinema places – I think it’s suggested we attend but not required, and since I have class at the same time as the screenings, I guess I won’t go? One of the films we can potentially write about I’ve already seen, and since the Midd profs told us to use any advantages and resources we have for the French classes, I think I’ll write my paper on that one. Perhaps I’ll compare it to another one, which is in English. The class is a first-year class, so it seems like the expectations are not super-high. The professor repeated a million times that this is a university-level course, and that the paper must have a bibliography. Seems like this class will be another good experience.