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Published: September 17th 2015
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When I decided to go to grad school in France, I really had no idea what I was getting into. I knew that the French system would be different than my American university experience, but I failed to see how different. As I plunged blindly forward with the application process, I naively assumed that education was just cheaper in France, but that it would otherwise be a similar experience. I would soon learn that socialized education is different on every level: structural, administrative, instructional, and even what constitues a 'campus.'
Allow me to paint a picture. When I arrived in France, the only thing, and I mean the ONLY thing I knew about my upcoming M1 year (that's year 1 of a Master's program), was that I had an appointment for "l'inscription administrative" on September 2nd at 2:30pm. I wasn't even really sure what that meant, but I hoped I would get to pick my classes at least. Not being the kind of person to worry about something prematurely, I enjoyed my first week in Paris. On September 2nd, at roughly 2:20pm, I arrived at the building marked "inscriptions." A long line snaked out of the door to
the left. As I approached the entrance, straining to read the signs posted on the glass doors, I stopped short, confused. The line was for students WITH appointments. Now, this seemed very strange to me. It was, in fact, my first encounter with an "appointment" in a socialized system. I was to quickly learn that the word "appointment" has different meanings in France and in the States. In the States, an appointment is individual. If I have a 2:30pm time slot, I assume that only I have an appointment at that time. Not so in France. So I stood in line to enroll, with the herd of other students who also had 2:30 "appointments." Which, by the way, we do not do in the U.S. Enrollment, scheduling, payment, absolutely everything happens online. I felt like such an anachronism, standing in line to ENROLL, of all things. Like I was going to university in 1975.
Eventually, I made my way through the line, all the way to the last step, where you pay your tuition and social security (AKA healthcare) for the year. For Masters-level tuition, and healthcare at 60% coverage, which is automatic and required, I paid
475 euros. And you could do a PAYMENT PLAN. For LESS THAN 500 EUROS FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR. My two years of tuition and social security in Paris will cost 1/16 of one year's tuition as an in-state student at the University of Michigan. And the person who told me the price seemed apologetic about it, as if it were too expensive. FRANCE IS A MAGICAL PLACE.
Once the rainbows cleared, I realized that an important step had not happened. I had not been given the opportunity to choose my courses. I still had no schedule. Well, "choose" is a strong word for the options I received for this semester, but at that point I was still optimistic about getting to design my own schedule. In any case, I was informed that the schedule would be posted on my department's website. Ok, great. Even if I get no choice in the matter, I still need to at least
see it. As soon as I got home, I eagerly got online. As soon as the schedule was available, I could finally start applying for jobs and stop sucking my savings dry. To my disappointment, the schedule was not posted. In fact, it would not be available until the following Friday, THREE DAYS before the start of classes. I could NOT believe it. In the U.S., you know your schedule MONTHS in advance. Have they no concern for my need to arrange for employment, to organize my life? To prepare anything in advance ever? Apparently not.
The following Tuesday at 9:30am (ew, the earliest I had gotten up in months was 10am) there was an info meeting for all the Applied Foreign Language Masters students. The meeting itself is a blur. Many of the professors and administrators got up and spoke about the courses they taught, or their roles in the department. That part was fine. Then the Director of the UFR (which is something between a department and a college) got up to speak. And as he expounded on examinations and requirements and things that we MUST do and things that we ABSOLUTELY CANNOT do, the nagging worry that I had gotten myself in over my head turned into a full-on panic. This is not not emotion with which I am familiar. I generally exist in a calm, collected state, but that meeting, less than two hours in length, had me completely freaking out. I was beginning to realize how much STUFF was packed into this two-year Master's program, and to top it all off, I STILL didn't have a schedule. I went home, ate everything in sight, and took a nap.
The schedule issue, I begin to understand, is a hallmark of the French education system. The French always do everything at the last minute, and then subsequently have to re-do it over and over because they didn't take the time to do it right the first time. During this first week of classes, we have received multiple conflicting emails on "groups," which divide a course that is too big for one section. We have received no less than three versions of the master schedule, the "final" version of which told us that a class only took place certain weeks, not including this week. WRONG. The class did happen this week, just not many people went. Excuse me for reading the schedule too literally. This morning, two classes changed start times. And then, this afternoon, I experienced perhaps the worst example of socialized education yet. Remember those "groups," which are supposed to keep classes small enough to fit into their assigned classrooms? Well, when I arrived to our economic translation from Spanish class, the computer classroom for 25 students was already almost full. So we pulled over some extra chairs. Then more students arrived. Then more. And still more, until we numbered 40. 40 students. In a classroom for 25. NOT POSSIBLE. We were eventually told to relocate to a larger room without computers. Which had a class in it. So we picked a room at random. The professor informed us that if we were to divide the class, he would have to find the other teacher. Not like that should be an administrator's job or anything. So he said we would just all stay together, but find a different room. Ok, fine. Not one hour later, we received an email moving this
Thursday afternoon class to
Monday morning, at a time when many of us already had a class!
I give up.
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