Differences between education systems

Today was my first day of classes. And it was stressful. I have a feeling the rest of the week will be like this too. So I started my day by making the commute to the DEFLE all alone. It was so sad without Jill! I had no one to giggle about how cute the little French kids are on their way to school! Nevertheless, I managed. 

So it seems that in France, the process of going to university goes like this:

1. Register to go to the school.
2. Jump through hoops to figure out which courses are offered and at what time.
3. 2 options:
1. Go to classes and sign up for the classes with the teacher.
2. Go to classes for a few weeks and then sign up and hope to be allowed in.

It seems like option 2 is the most common one.

However, at the DEFLE this morning option 1 was what was happening. I went to my phonetiques class and someone walked in and said that the professor wouldn’t be ready for another half hour. Really? When she finally did arrive her schedule of classes didn’t match ours so that created some problems. Then, she started realizing that the administration is making her teach at times that wouldn’t work for her. So she said some funny french complaints in the funny french way : “quelle idée”, “ c’est pas possible”, “putin”.... you get the picture. It just seems so complicated to do all this work by hand, each teacher trying to schedule each student’s time. It really made me appreciate the centralized and computerized system we have a Santa Cruz. It makes sure that you don’t have any classes overlapping and lets you know what your qualified to take. This French system is too chaotic!

Anyways, I think I got all my classes figured out. This semester I will just be taking French and cultural anthropology courses. But next semester I plan on taking physical anthro and psych classes. Oh, I decided last night, sometime after midnight, that I’m going to minor in cognitive science. This means I need to take a 5th year of college. Or just take a ridiculous amount of credits next year, walk for graduation, then do summer school and fall quarter. Uhhg, that would be too much. I just don’t want to spend money on tuition for a 5th year!

Thats about it now. Trying to get school all figured out.