By bevvy2212
It’s been a month since I’ve been in France and three weeks since classes have started. I can’t believe time has gone by so fast and I’ll only have about three months left before the semester ends.
Even though it’s already been three weeks, I still feel rusty in terms of grasping what I have learned so far. Because I was on a plane the day class registration opened, I did not get the chance to be enrolled in my preferred courses and I was a little bit bummed in the beginning. Currently I am enrolled in four normal classes taught in English and a French language class, which isn’t bad at all in comparison to the French students who actually go to Sciences Po.
I was a little bit concerned at first because I am not at all familiar with the topics of my classes: 1) Foundations of moral and political thought. 2) Social policies in Europe. 3)International Law. 4) What is social democracy. For someone who is an international affairs major with a security policy concentration, I have no idea what went on with the welfare states in Northern Europe nor about the foundations of western philosophy.
The first two weeks were hard, mainly because it was a little bit difficult to bring up my interests for these classes that I didn’t intend to sign up for. Back at GW, I always had the perfect schedule with the perfect professors all planned out, so these uncertain classes made me a bit nervous. But it turned out that I was being overly worrisome. The professors are Sciences Po are… awesome. It didn’t matter that I have no previous knowledge about the subject, they made the class so interesting that I now have this unknown energy and motivation to finish all my readings and take diligent notes in class. (I mean, I did all that back in GW of course, *cough cough*)The one thing that I don’t like about the professors here is that they don’t offer office hours, nor do they respond promptly to my emails. We were warned before we got to Sciences Po that professors here are usually adjunct professors and they all have busy lives outside of the academic life. I guess I’m just used to being able to discuss the topic more in depth during office hours instead of seeing the professors fled the scene as soon as class is over.
We also went on a GW-organized trip to Giverny this Saturday. It was my first GW trip and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the trip. Giverny is the place where French Impressionist Claude Monet lived. He created his famous Water Lilies there and it was very fun to see all the places where he painted.
It’s funny because I did not consider myself an “artsy” person before I came to Paris. I do like art but I usually just breezed past them due to lack of time. But because we are technically “French” students, we can get into all the museums and galleries for free, so I ‘ve enjoyed strolling inside the Louvre every Wednesday (because it opens till 9:30pm on Wednesdays and Fridays). I intend to make it a routine thing. It’s very nice to take my time instead of rushing through the gallery like other tourists.
On a side note, the weekend of September 20 and 21 is the French National Heritage weekend. A lot of the offices that are usually closed to public are open on these two days. I was going to go visit the Palace Elysée (aka the White House of France) but the line was insane and I didn’t feel like waiting. So I waundered into Hotel de Ville (the City Hall) instead. Typical French to have golden chandeliers and oil paintings everywhere.