Back to being a student...

My second official week in Nantes, and I am back to being a university student. After hours of boring and monotonous orientations last week, classes have commenced here in Nantes. I have to provide a bit of an explanation of the ins and outs of my abroad program in order to describe the classes I am taking. The city of Nantes is home to an incredibly large public, French university named l’Universite de Nantes. There are about 31,000 students who attend the university, and there are only 1,700 professors. In France, the college educational system is divided into two parts; the Grandes Ecoles and les Universites. If you know what career field you want to follow, you go to a Grandes Ecoles. For example, if I knew I wanted to be an engineer, I would find a Grandes Ecoles that specialized in engineering. Universites, on the other hand, offer a broader variety of subjects which is the equivalent to the United States’ liberal arts education. At the universities, you can choose what subjects you most interest you, and then you continue to study them. The best, and the worst, part of the French college system is that all public universities are practically free. Students have to pay about 250 euros a year, which is absolutely nothing compared to Denison’s $45,000 a year education. France also has private universities that you must pay for, but those are mainly colleges affiliated with religion. Apparently, the Catholics need money. With a little explanation provided, I can now begin to describe the classes I am taking and how I am taking them. IES, which is the name of my abroad organization, is divided into two parts in terms of academics. The program is affiliated with the University of Nantes, so all of the professors that teach at IES are University of Nantes professors. IES, the program itself, offers a variety of courses, that all of us students can sign up for. There are 91 students in the IES Nantes program, and we all chose to be in specific courses. If you take a course with IES, then there will only be American students in the course. Although there are American students, all of the IES courses are taught in French. In addition to the courses IES offers, there are also the hundreds of course at the University of Nantes to choose from. With IES’s partnership with the university, all of us American students become students at the university. We get a handy student identity card as well! So, as a student at the university, we can choose to take some courses exclusively at the university with other French students. Some of the classes are incredibly large amphitheatre lectures, and other classes are smaller. There are also different levels of classes that are signified by L1, L2, and L3. This is the equivalent to the U.S. courses that have numbers. L1 classes are the least advanced. As for choosing the classes I wanted to take, it was incredibly difficult. (The French have a weird trait about them, because they love to do things very last minute. Let me put the disclaimer out there that last minute does not work for me.) None of the university students receive a list of classes to be offered each semester until the Friday before classes start. In other words, you have about a day to decide what you would like to study. They do have a longer “shopping for classes” period, but I hate doing the class shopping thing. In my four semesters as a college student, I have changed one class. It was a religion class, and the only reason I switched was because I had been accepted to another Honors’ class. It really was not that hard to choose courses, once I actually had the information. I knew what I wanted to take before, and my plan only changed slightly. I am taking five courses: a French Grammar course, a literature course entitled “French Writers in Foreign Nations,” a French to English and English to French translation course, an art history course focusing on “French classicism,” and a teaching internship. Of these classes, four are offered at IES, and the translation course is offered through the university. My schedule is well spread out, so I have time to eat and travel around the city if need be. What am I most excited about? I am most excited about the teaching internship. I am going to be placed in a French high school or middle school. After meeting with our professor, we filled out an information paper asking us what our preferences were. Although I absolutely love children of all ages, I thought it would be the most meaningful to work with kids who are actually beginning to study the English language. Less babysitting and more actual teaching! I am so interested and have great anticipation for this internship, because it will definitely help me decide if I want to change the direction of my career path. Psychology is my passion, but teaching involves a great deal of psychology as well. It will be interesting to try something new and out of the ordinary to see if I may enjoy teaching! I had quite the experience teaching AIDS/HIV education this summer, so maybe I can combine the two!