First off, I am sorry for the strange white highlighting in the previous post. I'm not sure why it did that, but I can't figure out how to get rid of it.
In any case, I think that in this post, I'll explain a little about how I am preparing to be abroad for a year. For those of you who don't know, I'll be an exchange student at the École Normale Supérieure, essentially France's Ivy League equivalent. Though, it is not an exact equivalent—the entire system in France doesn't match with ours in the US. Let me explain how it works:
1) The students who go to the ENS do not go there for their "undergraduate degree" like you might think. They go to an intensive two-year "classe préparatoire" (preparatory classes). The point of these classes is first and foremost to give all the students the same preparation for their future graduate work. They take the same classes, the same exams, all in accordance with what they wish to study. The courses prepare the students to take the examination that gets them into a "Grande École" (such as the ENS).
There are pros and cons to this system. The obvious pro is that all the students who eventually go on to study have the same exact background, which must facilitate teaching to a certain extent. In America, students who go to major universities all come in with different levels of education—some from public schools, some from private schools, some homeschooled. I know that when I started at Johns Hopkins, I felt woefully unprepared to take literature courses based on how little I had studied in high school. Even starting graduate school, I felt underprepared. Although I had been devouring every French book I could get my hands on, I hadn't taken courses in every century of French literature, I had only spent about 5 months in France, and I had only been taking French literature courses (as opposed to language courses) for about two years). On the other hand, there are French students in my PhD program at Princeton, who have been taking French courses their whole lives, who have been speaking French their whole lives, and who know their culture and history much better than I ever will—because they have lived it. That sort of uncertainty in one's background never happens in France.
No for the cons: all of the students have the same background. That is not to say that they are identical, but with exactly the same formation, the school takes and produces classically trained students. Unlike at American universities, there is very little diversity in any sense of the word: no economic diversity (most of the students are quite well off, coming from academic families as well), no racial diversity (the students who can afford this sort of preparation are generally from major cities), no diversity of ideas (the students who are able to pass the entrance exams generally come from the same few exclusive preparatory classes).
2) The ENS is not a university. It is a public "Grand Ecole," established shortly after the Revolution (1789). It has a very lovely building in the 5th arrondissement (the Latin Quarter), near the Pantheon, on the rue d'Ulm. The courtyard is one of my favorite places in Paris. In the center, there is a little fountain with goldfish. They're called the "Ernests" and the courtyard is aptly named the Cour aux Ernests. It has practice rooms, and housing (a limited amount, unlike American schools), clubs and activities, but the entire concept is a little different. Students there are autonomous and expected to be. Being physically present on the "campus" (if you can even call it that) is not necessary, or even really important at all. The courses are seminar style and you don't need to validate them by taking an exam or writing a final paper if you don't want to. It's a graduate school, where the students are there to do more independent work. To finish their "licence" or undergraduate degree, they take courses at the Universities in their first year. For me, this system will be fine. I'm beyond the coursework phase in my PhD. But, it will come with its own unique set of challenges as well. Clearly I won't be on the same continent as my adviser, so we will correspond via email. The library resources at the ENS and in France are not quite as user friendly as at Princeton. In Princeton, I can get any book or article I need in days. In France, things take longer. But hey, I'll manage.
3) The classes: while I am not required to take class, I don't see the harm in shopping around a bit. I'd love to learn another language while I'm there, for instance. Before Paris, I will be going to Berlin for a month and a half to spend some time with my friend Eileen, practice my German, and just get to know a new city/country. I've been taking German language classes all year, and so I'm finally about an intermediate level. This will be my first time spending a significant time in a country where my language skills aren't quite there yet, so it will be frustrating, but hopefully rewarding. At the ENS, I think it might be a good idea to take a Latin class. The French language courses aren't as intensive as American ones, so a dead language seems like a good bet since I'm sure attaining a decent reading knowledge in Latin wouldn't be too difficult given my French and Italian knowledge. Latin isn't horribly important for the OuLiPo, but I do believe it is important for anyone studying French literature since most Europeans (at least, certainly most French people) have some exposure to Latin throughout their educations. I would like to learn Hebrew, but I think that might be a bit difficult in France to find. We'll see, though. Other than language courses, there is a course on surrealism that seems intriguing, and also an introduction to Italian literature, both of which might help me with my own work. Raymond Queneau, the founder of the OuLiPo, was a surrealist early on, and his later aversion to the group and their practices would be a huge inspiration (so to speak, since the OuLiPo doesn't believe in inspiration) for what the OuLiPo would not be. Doing a course on that would help me learn more contextually about what preceded the OuLiPo, framing my dissertation better.
And, that is what I know so far! It should be an interesting year at the ENS and I simply cannot wait to be there!
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