Etudiante temporairement française

Here I am already in the third (!) week of school, and I figure it's a good time to give a brief rundown of the classes I am taking at Sciences Po.

First I have my cours magistral or main French lecture course. This is in the big lecture hall with lots and lots of other students, and the man who teaches it used to be the foreign minister of FRANCE. It's pretty cool to be in the presence of someone so important, but I have to admit that the two lectures so far left something to be desired. At first I thought maybe some of it was going over my head (he does speak pretty fast and it's easy to zone out) but after a while I realized it was very possible that he just wasn't saying anything particularly groundbreaking. The name of the course is "Réalités Internationales," which according to the syllabus appears to cover pretty much every current international issue, from sustainable development to the role of religion (many of the classes at this school seem to be insanely general in this way). In Monday's lecture the professor basically went over different theories of how the world works, one being that there exists an "international community," but his example of this was the WTO ("OMC" in French, I think that was the only thing I learned during this lecture) which I thought was weird. The WTO is not exactly what I think of when you say "global community," but maybe that's just me. His second theory that he presented, to balance out the "community" view, was everyone's favorite "Clash of Civilizations" argument. Ugh. I just sat there thinking, Have we not moved on from this? Really? To me the entire debate seems outdated. He presented the critiques of said argument, of course, but it's disgusting to me that Huntington continues to get so much attention for a work that never deserved attention in the first place. The lecture continued with your typical Globalization 101 discussion of whether the world is uni-polar or bi-polar (or multi-polar? or A-polar?!?!), only to come to the grand conclusion that "there is no consensus on globalization." Wow. All in all, material that could have been summed up in maybe 15 minutes and not a full two hours.
I realize I'm coming off a little Negative Nancy and it's still only the beginning of the semester. But I haven't been feeling too inspired this week. Oh, and I've only mentioned one class....

Attached to my cours magistral is my conférence of about 20 kids. On the first day of class we went around the room doing introductions and I quickly realized that I am the ONLY American in the class, and one of three foreigners (there are two German kids, woo). A little scary, sure, but this is integration at its finest. I'd say I don't understand a good 15-25% of what is going on in class, either because people are talking too fast or I get tired and let up on the active listening and then realize it's too late to figure out what is happening. It's in this class that I most often get that surreal feeling of "Wait, I'm in class...I'm often in class...but everyone is speaking French...because they ARE French...because I'm at a prestigious political science institute...in France...woah." This is also the class where I'll be doing my traditional French assignments, including my exposé in approximately two weeks. The instructor seems very nice, which is good, but he doesn't speak very loudly and often mumbles, which is a foreign student's worst nightmare. Often I'll be writing notes and he'll very slowly and definitively state "And the second...point...is..."(at which point I am eagerly paying attention for what's coming next) and then expel a lighting-fast-incoherent-mumbling jumble of words that elicit a blank stare on my part. Thanks, sir. I must say it is getting better, though, and even though the students are all very scary because they are French, I do get a generally good vibe from them. I'm hoping they won't give me too tough a time when I do my exposé (some of the kids are up there for an hour answering questions...yikes.)

Next we have my English elective "Labor and Politics" which I mentioned briefly in my last post. It is pretty straightforward, regular reading and the class is mostly lecture, but surprisingly I think it is my most interesting class so far, and the one in which I'm learning the most. My other English elective is "Imperialism, War, and Culture," which is taught by a crazy British man who made a Monty Python reference in the first class meeting, so of course I was on board from the beginning. He has us all laughing for a good portion of the class. A lot of the material is stuff I've learned before (how imperialism eternally screwed up the world basically consumed my last semester at Berkeley), but the class thus far doesn't feel like a waste of time. There are a lot of things we'll be reading that I haven't come across before, although now we're supposed to be reading Heart of Darkness which I've already read twice (well, "read" is a strong word...). But I'm up for more discussion, especially now that I've finally decided that I in fact don't like that book. This class also has a really good mix of French and international students, many of whom have very interesting backgrounds.

Then there is my English lecture, "Theory of International Relations." I really like the professor, he is Italian and has the best accent and uses lots of hand motions (sorry, it's true). Since I've never really taken a class on theory before I thought this would be pretty interesting...but, it turns out it really is just an overview of all the different theories on international relations (I guess I'm good at reading course titles). It's just difficult for me to grasp how practical it really is to spend hours and hours determining whether a situation fits into one theory or another instead of actually thinking about the problem itself and what could be done to solve it. I guess if anything this class will help me figure out where I stand on that front.

Lastly I have "Résistances et résistants," a French elective about--you guessed it--resistance movements. The professor for this is also really cool and extremely knowledgeable. I am definitely interested in the subject matter, but the class is in French and once again I find myself lost more often than I expected to be. We are currently watching "Army of Shadows" with no subtitles, and while there are a few French movies I can do without subtitles, this is not one of them. I have essentially given up on trying to figure out what it is about and plan to do some research before the next class. This course is not as well balanced and has only four french students, so I doubt I'm the only one who's confused, but it can be frustrating nonetheless.

That just about sums it up for school. All my classes meet once a week but with all of them put together (including my French language class that hasn't met for two weeks), it definitely adds up. All the classes are a full two hours and I keep coming to the conclusion that that is just too long for me to sit in one place, even if the class is riveting (which so far, they haven't been). That's made it difficult but again, I know it's only the beginning of the semester and there is a lot of time for improvement.

For the non-school related portion of this post (this seems to be becoming a pattern in this blog of mine), my mom was here this weekend on her way home from Cairo and we had a really nice day walking around Montmartre, which I hadn't visited yet. It might just be my favorite area of Paris, besides where I live which also continues to awe me. See Picasa for pictures. I've also fallen in love with this little movie theatre right next to the Sorbonne that shows a great variety of films; I've already seen Vivre sa vie (a Godard film, in French, no subtitles, a challenge but worthwhile) and A Clockwork Orange (you can't go wrong there). I also went to the Picasso museum with one of the girls I've befriended here, and I'm not a huge Picasso buff but it was still an exhilarating experience. The sheer volume of his work is impossible for me to wrap my head around! The weather has also been getting increasingly nicer, and we've had some especially pleasant nights.

Katie comes to visit next week from Dublin, so I might be M.I.A. for a while as it's my goal to finish my exposé before she gets here. I definitely have a good incentive!