Enfin, un étudiant étranger

Between this post and last week's post, I became a French student. I've been looking forward to my studies in a French university since I was a junior in high school, and given all that anticipation, French classes are turning out to be just okay. After all, school is school. A student has to go to class, listen, read, absorb, work hard; for the most part it's neither exciting nor novel, two words that aptly describe all the other aspects of my trip so far.

I think part of the let-down stems from the general indifference of French students and even professors. Most (or perhaps all?) French students go to university with significant financial support from the government. While this may help university enrollment numbers, it also means that a lot of French students don't care all that much about their studies. (I suppose the same phenomenon of indifference happens in the US, but it seems to occur even when the students' or the students' families are paying for college from their own pockets. I've never been able to understand how someone could pay 15, 20, or 30 grand a year just to slack off, party, and drop out.) People show up late pretty regularly, and only the students near the front of the class listen attentively to the professor; the ones in the back feel free to talk to one another, occasionally even picking up a cell phone call as if class were taking place at a bus stop. The weirdest thing is that most professors don't do anything about it. They simply keep on talking, apparently unperturbed by the many conversations going on among the audience members. Of course I take the students' talking as a sign of disrespect, but based on the professors' reactions, it's completely normal.


All that to say, I have not entered into the most serious or competitive of academic environments. And that's fine with me. I've decided to take only integrated courses, that is, courses that French students take. There were some other options: a set of classes taught in French but designed for exchange students; some basic French grammar classes also created with non-native speakers in mind; and, as some exchange students have opted to do, I could have enrolled in an English class here. Always in pursuit of cultural and language immersion, though, I knew the best experience would be in the integrated courses. Since these will be fundamentally challenging because of language difficulties, I'm perfectly okay with a somewhat less rigorous university setting.

Due to an odd registration system that allows students to try out courses for the first two weeks, I actually don't know for sure which classes I'll be taking this semester. A few that I'm pretty sure of are a comparative literature class focusing (separately) on the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and the story of the return of the prodigal son; a poetry class about contemporary French poets, namely Philippe Jacottet; a grammar and phonetics class; and a philosophy class on Spinoza's Ethics (l'Ethique). The last slot could be Geography of France, History of Music: The Modern Period, or maybe something else entirely.

One convenient feature of French classes is that there is a small amount of reading and an even smaller amount of homework. Besides my grammar class, I will probably only have one or perhaps two assignments for the whole semester, in addition to a test. On the one hand, this will allow me to take the time to understand what I'm reading. On the other hand, it will require a good deal of discipline on my part to continue studying in the face of so little accountability. I think it could be quite easy to let my classes go by the wayside in exchange for a leisurely semester in Montpellier, or in exchange for more communication with friends back home, or in exchange for all sorts of things. I recently wrote in my journal (in which I've been writing almost every day -- my thanks to Hanna Griffing for making it for me. Of course, that journal is one reason I don't write more on this blog; it harbors the majority of my reflective and creative impulses.) about what sort of experience I want in the next four months: "Do I want the European experience, traveling as much as possible, seeking out adventure? Do I want the French academic experience, excelling in my classes? The international student experience, bonding with other foreigners and making all sorts of transnational ties? The Montpellier experience, becoming an expert of the city and a friend of French folk? Sometimes I feel torn."

If my life -- or just life in general -- were as simple as one of Perrault's fairy tales, I would either make a bad decision or a good one as to what kind of experience I wanted, and after all was said and done there would be a neat little moral in verse. I'll be sure to post that moral once I figure it out.