Logement, la semaine d'accueil et le premier jour des cours à Sciences Po

(Lodging, Welcome Week and the first day of classes at Sciences Po)

Bonjour à tous!

Wow! It's kind of embarrassing how long it has been since my last (and first) blog post. If this rate of posting degenerates further, there will likely only be a half-dozen more before I am back stateside, in which case I'll end up having to explain Paris to y'all again through extended conversations and pictures (something I am planning on doing anyways, fortunately :-] ).


LODGING

Quite a lot has happened since my last post.

I am now no longer living in a hotel, for one thing. I moved into my apartment two weeks ago (that long ago already? time flies here!), so am very well-adjusted to my domestic surroundings. The apartment is more than enough space for a 20-year-old university guy, but not so much that I feel agorophobic; a "two piece" apartment, it contains a bedroom and a sitting room (the two pieces) and a kitchen and a bathroom., each very well equipped.

The apartment's decor ery much something one would expect to find in the proches-banlieus (close suburbs) of Paris, with pastel wallpaper and typically European furnishings - a folding table for dinner for one or for two, smaller wooden chairs, a large wooden "buffet" in the sitting room, and pictures and paintings of the old country all over the walls.

In terms of location, it is located just next to the train line, a short walk from the station, which is great for the morning and evening commutes to and from school, and which also means it is a short walk from those businesses that usually spring up around train stations. It is a couple of minutes walk from a student-priced grocery store, a boulangerie (baker's - the boulangerie is an icon of French daily life, and I can see why now, after having eaten several fresh baguettes since my arrival), a post office, a pharmacie, et cetera.

I have, then, in the course of the past couple of weeks:

     - done laundry (dried in the French manner, on racks in the middle of the sitting room, of course),

     - equipped the fridge in the kitchen with all the necessities (bread? check. lunch meat? check...handy
      dandy, signature pea-green plastic sandwich box? check...) and some of the luxuries (e.g., two
      1-kilogram glass jars of Nutella) of a college student,

     - gotten a haircut (though I know I am advised to be as Roman as a Roman when in Rome, I really could
      care less about fashion even in the city best known for it: I essentially paid 14,50 euro for a rather
       incredulous French hairdresser to give me a buzzcut),

     - and, using the gas range in the kitchen, safely made spaghetti (a veritable culinary feat, for me).

WELCOME WEEK

Sciences Po's Welcome Program for international students took place the week of Friday the 24 August to Friday the 31 August.

That first Friday was a welcome session held in Emile Boutmy (the founder of the institution that became Sciences Po) Amphitheater. It, and, as it turned out, the rest of the week, quickly became a speed-writing session as I frantically took notes on all that was unfamiliar to me.

The French, in my experience thus far and from what I have gleaned from others in conversation, are generally much more strict about form than most other cultures, but most especially more strict about form than Americans. It comes out in the way they dress, the way they eat, the way they furnish their buildings, etc - on one level, it seems to be quite the virtue, but, when taken one level too far, seems insane. Think of the Germans and time, for example.

On the level of methodology at a rather-established Parisian university, then, the French are seemingly obsessed with form. Take the structure of a dissertation (a 4 hour long written exam conducted in some undergraduate courses) or an exposé (an oral presentation lasting exactly 10 minutes, no more, no less)...a plan with two parts must have two subparts per part, each subpart having, naturally, two points, whereas a plan with three parts must have three subparts per part, each subpart having, of course, three points. To write or speak otherwise would create an unbalanced, ugly monstrosity of a work.

I am, perhaps, ridiculing this cultural tendency too harshly, however, for I will admit that I appreciated the challenge of not only trying to express ideas clearly, but, even, elegantly, in French, during the course of the practice exposés and debates of the methodology course. The content of that methodology course and of other various seminars was immensely helpful and well worth the additional fee of the welcome program.

As it turns out, in fact, I have less than a week from today to be fully prepared for my first French presentation for an actual grade - next Monday morning for my class on the transition from war to peace in Africa, I am supposed to have something prepared on the African Union. I hope, however, that the methodology course from last week will help what will probably be a dubious first grade.

Grades, by the way, are likely to be lower than I am used to : in the methodology instructors' loosely-quoted words, "by tradition, the French grade out of 20, where 20 is reserved for God, 19 is reserved for the professor, nobody ever gets 18, and 17 is for the model student...in fact, 13 is a very honest grade." Something else I won't be used to is the system of grading on a strict curve - highest 10% get an A, following 25% B, following 30% (the plurality of the students in a  course) C, etc...all good motivations to work hard, I suppose, but really brutal on the ego.

FIRST DAY OF CLASS

Was today!

Thankfully I only had two classes today (Monday) - one (the transition from war to peace in Africa) in French and the other (Public International Law) in English.

Each class session at Sciences Po is two hours long, which is part of the reason why I am so grateful to have started the week off on a slower pace.

The pace, in general, should be quite amenable, given the commute into universersity; I don't have any classes on Wednesday or Thursday, which should provide me with some solid time to work on homework at my apartment without having to take the train into the city (not that walking around in Paris is ever a bad thing at all). My week ends, however with eight hours of class on Friday, and, with just three fifteen minute breaks, those hours will likely see me cave to a French obsession even more powerful than form: coffee.


In any case, classes so far are interesting, and not too daunting, except for the length and, to an extent, the language. I am signed up to take about 3/8 of my credit hours in English and the other 5/8 in French, and that is the part that is proving the most difficult. For those of you know my academic habits, I learn by writing. Writing notes in French takes up just enough mental concentration, however, to distract me from the lecture in French to the point where I will be unable to understand him/her. I hope, however, that after a few weeks of classes, I will be up to speed and able to understand all that is being said while taking notes.


It seems I have again written too much for this blog post and made it cumbersome to read in one sitting, so I will cut it to an end here. In any case, I need to stop now to plan out transportation to gym class tomorrow (who knew the French had imported Ultimate Frisbee?)

Joseph