We've reached that time, folks. The point where "abroad" meets "study" and classes inevitably have to start.
Obviously I knew that taking all of my classes in French was going to be difficult (the fact that I'm in the region of France with one of the thickest accents certainly doesn't help) but I wasn't exactly anticipating the difficulty of navigating the French system of education.
For normal students at L'Université de Lille 3, there is very little flexibility in determining which classes are taken when. After choosing a program of study, students are divided into several different groups, and each of these groups has a different schedule which is chosen for them. There is no option to take a different professor, add a different elective or take a course at a different time. You get what you get. Simple, right?
International students do not have the same experience. They are allowed to take any class, at any time, from any department as long as they score well on the language proficiency exam. They also have the luxury of trying as many classes as they want for the first three weeks and then turning in a final schedule at the end. At first this seemed awesome to me - Total freedom! Well roundedness! Sports classes for credit! (This is a thing here. I could have taken archery if I wanted to.)
The only problem is that the course schedule is not really designed for students to be choosing their own classes. Many end at 10:30 am while another you want to take is beginning at exactly 10:30 am, some have a companion class that must also be taken in order to get credit and others are just impossible to find because the building is a maze and the schedule is in a foreign language (literally).
In other words, I spent most of this week reading and re-reading schedules, attempting to create a combination of classes that didn't put me in two places at once, wandering around the most complicated building on earth and occasionally attending a class or two.
The classes themselves vary drastically in difficulty based mostly on how quickly the professor speaks (refer to post title: French is hard). This week I left some classes feeling practically bilingual, while I left others feeling like I'd learned almost no French in the seven years I've been studying the language. Luckily I've been able to find several that, while challenging, are doable. So far my list of potential courses includes: 17th Century French Theatre, French Grammar, General Linguistics, Theories of Communication, French Literature and one class of English Literature to give myself a bit of a break and gain some credit for my English major. I'll also be doing a program called Tandem in which native English speakers are paired up with native French speakers to practice speaking once a week. Basically I'll get credit for chatting with a French student, and that brings the number of courses I'm taking up to seven.
Seven classes probably seems like a lot to any American students, so I'll explain the credit system briefly as well. At my French university, each class is worth 3 ECTS credits unless it also includes a lecture component (like my English Literature course, which is worth 6). In the US one would normally take 16 credits a quarter/semester, which usually rounds out to four 4 credit classes, but here the normal courseload is between 21 and 30 ECTS credits. This is because each course only meets once per week, so you have room to take between seven and ten. Another benefit of this is that you can orchestrate multiple days off. At the moment I only have class Tuesday through Thursday - four day weekends!
The courses then have to be converted back to US credits for them to be transferred, and each ECTS credit is worth about 0.8 US credits, so by taking 21 UCTS credits I'll be able to transfer a nearly perfect 16.8 credits back to DU. Math. They told me I would need it someday but I never believed them.
Apart from figuring out how this whole school thing actually works, the hardest thing about starting classes is just that pesky little language barrier. Like I said, French is hard. It does get a little bit easier every day, and I'm sure once I get settled in to classes I will start to feel like I'm improving more.
And if it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be worth it. Right?
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