Bouleversé(e)
I didn't very well succeed at making my sleeping/waking schedule school-compatible in advance. As I was trying to go to sleep 7 hours "early" last night, I was struck by the memory of standing in my parents' kitchen, trying in vane to argue with my mother about my new school-year bed time. I was short enough I couldn't see into the microwave mounted over the stove, but I'm not really sure what that means.
What I do know is that the night before last I went to bed at 7 a.m., and this morning I woke up at 8. Yes, this morning's wake-up time was last night's going to sleep time, give or take "snooze" a few times. It wasn't very fun, but all things considered I think I got more sleep last night than I really expected to.
I woke up so early to go to campus because I thought "hey, I have no idea when my classes meet -- what if they meet in the morning? then I'd miss them!" My flaw with this thinking was in the belief that by going anywhere in France early I could achieve any kind of measurable result -- unless you count my increased grumpiness as a result of that decreased sleep duration and increased frustration.
What I found out when I went to campus was absolutely nothing. I could not find the class on the (finally!) posted history of art schedules, but I did find a first year level class on the same topic. Not what I was hoping for, but we'll see what happens when I show up. So far the classes I've been looking at will put me over the credits I need, I think, but I'm not sure what that means about the workload.
So at 10:10, discouraged again, I went home. The most that I achieved was wasting about an hour on the tram in transit. I went back to campus for my 1:30 linguistics class (hooray for La Science du Langage being the only department that had their schedules both posted on time and easy to find last week?), which I found after some effort. I was looking for room B200 in building B -- how silly of me. Of COURSE there's a separate building for "les amphi", which are the large lecture halls, and which are deceptively named to sound like they exist in other buildings. I think this was a bizarre effort to keep deparment building labels applying to the lecture halls? Like if building B contains the linguistics classes, then even if the largest hall is in another building, we should slap a "B" on it for pseudo-consistency. And when I say "large lecture hall" I mean it's less than a third the size of PHSC 200, where all of my big classes at OU were held, but contained just about 2/3 as many people as that classroom would have. And that's where the European ideas about personal space come in handy, I suppose.
The classroom was astoundingly 60s, but I'm not sure why that surprises me anymore, since the campus is pretty consistent that way. The first class was phonetics, which I think is intended to be broad but with a focus on French and English as the common language of those enrolled...should be interesting for me. I took French phonetics with the French department but it was much less about the linguistic discipline and more about trying to teach us to pronounce things correctly. Who knows why they waited until the junior-level to teach pronunciation, but there it is.
The first professor was a Mme LaBrune, and she was very clear and easy to understand. I think I'll like her. The class was conducted very differently. For instance, there were no powerpoint presentations, no handouts, and no notes on the chalkboard. There was a professor who talked out loud. She had a microphone, but it was not as I know them, which is to say cordless and collar-clipped -- it was an actual, hold-it-and-try-not-to-trip-over-the-cord microphone. The upshot of this was that the professor actually can't do anything useful like hold her notes and write on the chalkboard (which might be why she didn't?) and tends to gesture with her hands, pulling the mic away from her face and making herself nearly impossible to hear. Maybe I should sit closer to the front.
The second professor was in the same classroom, and the class was "Typologie et diversité des langues". He was a lot more difficult to understand because he was from somewhere other than France and I wasn't used to his accent. I'm not sure where he's from, although in general I find older men to be the most difficult to understand in French, so I'm not sure it matters. We shall see.
Tomorrow I have THREE discussion classes. If they're anything like discussions in the States, Tuesdays are going to bore me to death. I hope not.
I'm really bummed out because I just was notified that the Monsters of Folk show in Paris I was all excited about got cancelled. I'm thinking about buying a ticket to see them in London two days before the Decemberists show I was going to see. It only changes things by one day, but it also takes away my chance to see Conor perform in France. Alas. Maybe Rachel will meet me in London for the Decemberists set! ....working on maintaining a positive outlook.
What I do know is that the night before last I went to bed at 7 a.m., and this morning I woke up at 8. Yes, this morning's wake-up time was last night's going to sleep time, give or take "snooze" a few times. It wasn't very fun, but all things considered I think I got more sleep last night than I really expected to.
I woke up so early to go to campus because I thought "hey, I have no idea when my classes meet -- what if they meet in the morning? then I'd miss them!" My flaw with this thinking was in the belief that by going anywhere in France early I could achieve any kind of measurable result -- unless you count my increased grumpiness as a result of that decreased sleep duration and increased frustration.
What I found out when I went to campus was absolutely nothing. I could not find the class on the (finally!) posted history of art schedules, but I did find a first year level class on the same topic. Not what I was hoping for, but we'll see what happens when I show up. So far the classes I've been looking at will put me over the credits I need, I think, but I'm not sure what that means about the workload.
So at 10:10, discouraged again, I went home. The most that I achieved was wasting about an hour on the tram in transit. I went back to campus for my 1:30 linguistics class (hooray for La Science du Langage being the only department that had their schedules both posted on time and easy to find last week?), which I found after some effort. I was looking for room B200 in building B -- how silly of me. Of COURSE there's a separate building for "les amphi", which are the large lecture halls, and which are deceptively named to sound like they exist in other buildings. I think this was a bizarre effort to keep deparment building labels applying to the lecture halls? Like if building B contains the linguistics classes, then even if the largest hall is in another building, we should slap a "B" on it for pseudo-consistency. And when I say "large lecture hall" I mean it's less than a third the size of PHSC 200, where all of my big classes at OU were held, but contained just about 2/3 as many people as that classroom would have. And that's where the European ideas about personal space come in handy, I suppose.
The classroom was astoundingly 60s, but I'm not sure why that surprises me anymore, since the campus is pretty consistent that way. The first class was phonetics, which I think is intended to be broad but with a focus on French and English as the common language of those enrolled...should be interesting for me. I took French phonetics with the French department but it was much less about the linguistic discipline and more about trying to teach us to pronounce things correctly. Who knows why they waited until the junior-level to teach pronunciation, but there it is.
The first professor was a Mme LaBrune, and she was very clear and easy to understand. I think I'll like her. The class was conducted very differently. For instance, there were no powerpoint presentations, no handouts, and no notes on the chalkboard. There was a professor who talked out loud. She had a microphone, but it was not as I know them, which is to say cordless and collar-clipped -- it was an actual, hold-it-and-try-not-to-trip-over-the-cord microphone. The upshot of this was that the professor actually can't do anything useful like hold her notes and write on the chalkboard (which might be why she didn't?) and tends to gesture with her hands, pulling the mic away from her face and making herself nearly impossible to hear. Maybe I should sit closer to the front.
The second professor was in the same classroom, and the class was "Typologie et diversité des langues". He was a lot more difficult to understand because he was from somewhere other than France and I wasn't used to his accent. I'm not sure where he's from, although in general I find older men to be the most difficult to understand in French, so I'm not sure it matters. We shall see.
Tomorrow I have THREE discussion classes. If they're anything like discussions in the States, Tuesdays are going to bore me to death. I hope not.
I'm really bummed out because I just was notified that the Monsters of Folk show in Paris I was all excited about got cancelled. I'm thinking about buying a ticket to see them in London two days before the Decemberists show I was going to see. It only changes things by one day, but it also takes away my chance to see Conor perform in France. Alas. Maybe Rachel will meet me in London for the Decemberists set! ....working on maintaining a positive outlook.
Hey! How did you register for your classes/ get permission to do so? Are you part of the California program, or did you find out about them by yourself? I would love to take some real french courses and not just DEFLE!
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