La rentrée

So, I bet a lot of you are wondering what it's like to study at a foreign school. And not just any foreign school, but one of France's premiere "Grandes Écoles." Well, it has its ups and downs. Mostly downs at first. Let me tell you about my experience with "la rentrée."

Four years ago when I studied abroad, I didn't deal with any of this stuff. Instead, CUPA gave us a three week orientation in which we learned all about French methodology, worked on our language skills, learned about current events, had practical info sessions on how to make friends at school and how to interact with our host families, etc. This all happened during the three week administrative/pedagogical "rentrée" that normal French students have to deal with. In retrospect, CUPA's brilliant orientation now seems even more so, since it spared me the necessity of dealing with French academic bureaucracy. And even though I was already very displeased with the French educational system upon arriving here this time, the rentrée has convinced me that I have not misplaced my criticisms.

My first day at the ENS was a useless meeting where they welcomed the international students in their broken English with a bunch of irrelevant information about alumni associations, university rankings, and a few useless student clubs. The next day, which I thought was supposed to be important, was actually just five hours of filling out paperwork. The following Monday was a three hour presentation of each department, mostly meant for the new students who will actually be attending this school, but as our schedule said "obligatoire," I decided to attend. After I ditched the end of the presentations, we had to wait for two hours in line to discuss finding a "tuteur" which I can only imagine is some sort of advisor. As I already have an advisor who is concerned with my work, the woman told me that she couldn't do anything for me. She also told me that Princeton is "the best of the best" and that my research sounds "fascinating." I heard a lot of that...though it seems no one at the ENS is capable of giving me any advice about mathematics.

In those first three weeks, I also got my all-purpose card, learned how to request library access (no, that doesn't come on the card for some reason...), put money on it for the cafeteria, and open a French bank account (see my previous blogs—I already know that I don't want to open a new account). Getting library access was a bit tricky, since I requested access to both the humanities and sciences libraries. In France, academics is divided into "lettres" and "sciences," which traditionally just do not mix. So, the librarians were extremely confused when I barged into the math library even though my card says "lettres." I explained my research and...guess what! It sounds really interesting! But they tried to send me to the math department anyway. Eventually they caved in once I told them I had a BA in math. Not sure why that should be required to take out math textbooks, but who knows with these people?

So, you may be wondering: what about the classes? The students? Well, I'll be writing about that soon. Courses just started yesterday, and even though I'm not going to be taking many (too much of my own work), I definitely have some observations to make about my first introductory Hebrew lesson yesterday.

All I can think of to end this post is this: thank you CUPA for being such an excellent study abroad program! Not only did you prepare me for a lifetime of French literature research, but you spared me from the rentrée and I am eternally grateful!