It’s Sunday night and as
a way of putting off my work for droit
constitutionnel, I decided it’s about time I wrote another update about my
year abroad. I’ve been in Poitiers for about seven weeks now – it seems to have
gone by quickly and we’ve all settled into French life now, though of course
there are still days where I miss home and need to call my mum! But most of the
time it’s just a lot of fun, meeting new people every day and doing things you
would have the opportunity to back home.
I was initially going
to write a little bit about different aspects of French life that are really
different, but I ended up writing so much about the university that I’ll have
to put off the other ones until next time. A thousand words later and you’d all
be bored to death! So here we go…
Uni is the most
obvious thing to start with. On the first day we filled in a mountain of paperwork (France living up to its stereotypes from the get-go) and picked up
the generic timetables, then it’s down to you to pick your modules and make
sure nothing clashes. A few days later when proper lectures started we went to what
we thought was European Organisations. Obviously nobody had told us that the
timetables change a bit and you need to check every few days. So we ended up
sitting through 90 minutes of indescribably dull public finance until a fire
alarm went off and we made our escape. Saved by the bell!
At Bristol we’re so
used to the routine of literally seven or eight hours of teaching a week, that
coming here and having about 25 hours a week was a shock to the system!
Lectures start at 8 most days; never again will I complain about one 9am
lecture a week back home… On Tuesdays we have lectures 8am – 6pm with a break
for lunch, more hours in one day than I’d have in a week at Bristol! No excuse
for not picking up the language quickly then.
The other main thing
is that the lecturers speak so fast and once you get behind you’re pretty much
stuck there (as if it’s not already hard enough in another language). Some are
alright and the lecturers repeat every sentence, but others just speak as if in
conversation and you don’t stand a chance! Our tactic is to sit behind French
students on laptops and copy them when we fall behind on the dictation – and it
really is a matter of dictation. Another Bristol Erasmus student pointed out
that we were including phrases like quoi
qu’il en soit in our lecture notes (which translates roughly to ‘be that as
it may’). Don’t think I’ve ever started a sentence with ‘Be that as it may’ in
English, but here it is apparently the conjunction of choice, if there can
possibly be such a thing
What I find very weird
is that all our exams except one will be oral rather than written; this seems
an odd way of doing things but hoping it will all work out when it comes to
exam time! To get the diplôme from the uni we have to do one TD
(tutorial) and even these are totally different – each week we have a test, but
instead of understanding case law etc, you have the questions (like ‘what is
the Magna Carta’) in advance and basically Wikipedia and memorise them. Not a case reading in sight...
So many things to experience and get used to and that’s only
with the uni; I wanted to write about clubs, friends, food etc but that will
have to wait till next time – probably more interesting than me rambling on
about law lectures! A bientôt xx
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