Really just a lot of complaining. You would be better off skipping it and waiting until the next blog is posted.

Dear Katie (and please keep reading even if that is not your name),
I decided to respond to your comment about frustration with cultural differences by posting the following, most of which I wrote two or three days after arriving here. Clearly I am already way into that stage of culture shock. Also, responding via blog just makes this whole thing so much more fun and interactive.

When I register for classes at my home university, it can be a little stressful. The past two weeks puts all that into perspective. Here, registering is not done by the click of a button. In fact most of the registry process is done on paper. (So much paper.) Each department prints its own course guide, which is the size of a small book. Each year. The earth is weeping.

To the credit of the University, they do their best to help out foreign, and especially American students, as much as possible. The ISEP coordinator arranged a special breakfast with the eight Americain students, so she could talk us through some of the academic process.

Basically, there is very little coordination between departments, and there is no University-wide online registration process. This is not a problem for French students. They go into a specialization from the beginning and are obligated to take specific blocks of classes each semester. As an exchange student I can pick and choose and take just a few classes out of a block. Which is both nice, and exceedingly complicated. Here is what I have to do to register:
- First I had an appointment with Isabelle, the ISEP coordinator. Some classes (like translation) I know I want, so she wrote them down on a semi-official looking piece of paper. For other classes we searched though the course catalogues. I’m still not sure how you find specific information in them, but it may involve the Lille3 website in some way. Which has also proven quite difficult to navigate. Isabelle was able to find them, and I ended up with a most of my courses written down by hand. Sound complicated enough yet? Not nearly. Much as the faculty did not vote on the dates for this school year until June, the times and locations of different lectures are not posted until a few days before classes start. Posted, I might add, on lists that are not at all in obvious locations around campus. I would never have found them without a guide. So there is still a chance my classes could overlap, and I would have to make substitutions on my own. In fact, I spent quite a bit of time looking between course guides and lists to fill up my schedule. Also, the first few weeks are basically survey for me. If I don’t like a class, I can choose another. When I finally decide what I actually want to take, I go to the exchange students coordinator, and she will register me. Oh, and the classrooms are completely impossible to find.

It goes on. Normally classes are entirely lecture based, and then at the end there is a big, scary test that determines your grade. However, since we are not evaluated in this fashion at home, ISEP students are encouraged to ask their professors for an essay topic, and then hand in a final paper instead of taking the exam. Then we have to badger the prof to grade the paper and give us a final grade (physically hand us a hard copy) before we leave the country. Otherwise there is a high likelihood it will never happen
The French student who likes to tell me how horrible the American government is and has all sorts of conspiracy theories involving George Bush and 9/11, always manages to drag the fact that France is a welfare state and takes care of its people into any conversation. I respect that he supports his government, and it makes sense that he likes it because he personally really benefits from it. He is from a low-income family and thus receives a “burse” from the state so he can go to University for free, as well as receive other benefits. I would even go as far as to whish that people in the United State were better taken care of for Health Insurance and education.

But in my present annoyance, what I see is that this is a country where you have to stand in line to get the things you want. Where you have to do a load of paperwork for seemingly simple things. Where nothing is as effectively organized as it could be. In a word: Bureaucracy. My confusion is great, and my patience is running low. My goal was to figure out what is going on by today. I’m getting there.

I would also like to add that I am aware off some benefits to this very different system. But this blog entry is unfortunately too long already.