Bureaucracy, the Sequel
Today, I went to the university to try and figure out when my classes are actually going to be held, since school starts on Monday. I thought that by waiting until Friday I had behaved in a remarkably laid-back and French-compatible manner, and that surely, by now, everything was sorted out and communicated to, at the very least, the International Relations office, which would help me in my quest.
What I found was a room with a table of schedules, unlabeled, sent from different departments, containing only that department's schedule. They were not even in a stack. They were scattered in no discernible order. This system is, evidently, not a problem at all for real French kids, because when they pick a major they take all the classes (and not really any others) on the agenda, at the same time as everyone else with their major, and that's that. For one such as me? Not going to work so well.
Luckily for me, none of the four departments I have preliminarily aligned myself with had actually sent their schedules to this magical, ill-conceived room. Some British girls told me I had to go find each department separately and that they'd have the courses posted.
So I tracked down a map of campus and set about it. The funny thing about the map was that it told me which buildings the departments were in, but not a floor or an office. Some of the "buildings" are in fact parts of other, larger, buildings -- and it is, as it happens, really easy to be searching for something in building "I" and suddenly discover that you've actually wandered into building "H" without noticing.
The only department whose location I found AND whose hours were posted was classics, letters and linguistics. There I was confronted with a strange and interesting truth: that weird musty smell in Kaufman Hall? That's what Classics smells like. Evidently. Because building "A", which houses the same things as Kaufman in Norman? They smell exactly the same. A world away, and the odor is universal. Curious.
That realization was, sadly, the best part of my campus adventure. I walked around and around looking for various departments or their "posted" hours. The history department claimed it would have its hours up by 5, but at 6 there were still a gaggle of students waiting on the stairs looking ready to commit mass suicide.
At length I managed to find the department of foreign languages and wandered around until I saw someone's door say "Italian" on it. I knocked and talked to him about it. I asked where the schedule was, and he told me he didn't think exchange students could take the class. I explained the situation. He asked me four different times whether I had ever studied Italian, and I said no. I asked him four times where the schedule was, and he explained at length the things I would learn in Italian 1. Then he told me to find the secretary. When I did, he/she was typing in his/her office, so I knocked. No answer (but hesitation in typing, as if unsure whether to answer). I knocked twice more with the same effect and then gave up, since it was 5 o'clock on a Friday and I was ready to choke from frustration.
I got on the tram, having spent upwards of 3 hours wandering around. I met up with some of the same British girls who had previously tipped me off, and they told me that the schedules would be posted online, and how to access them, and blah blah blah. Well, they aren't. Not entirely. They're "online" in about the same way that their hours were "posted" in the various departments.
I am frustrated. I don't know how to go to class next week. I have no more will to worry about it, though, so...we'll see what happens.
I took my camera in the other day to a lone guy in a room full of spare camera parts. I left him my lens and he told me to call him next Thursday, which is totally opposite to all of my ideas about how the cash-for-services exchange should work -- shouldn't he call me when he has news, rather than asking me to call him at some point in the future when he may or may not have addressed the problem? Oh, France. You're so different.
What I found was a room with a table of schedules, unlabeled, sent from different departments, containing only that department's schedule. They were not even in a stack. They were scattered in no discernible order. This system is, evidently, not a problem at all for real French kids, because when they pick a major they take all the classes (and not really any others) on the agenda, at the same time as everyone else with their major, and that's that. For one such as me? Not going to work so well.
Luckily for me, none of the four departments I have preliminarily aligned myself with had actually sent their schedules to this magical, ill-conceived room. Some British girls told me I had to go find each department separately and that they'd have the courses posted.
So I tracked down a map of campus and set about it. The funny thing about the map was that it told me which buildings the departments were in, but not a floor or an office. Some of the "buildings" are in fact parts of other, larger, buildings -- and it is, as it happens, really easy to be searching for something in building "I" and suddenly discover that you've actually wandered into building "H" without noticing.
The only department whose location I found AND whose hours were posted was classics, letters and linguistics. There I was confronted with a strange and interesting truth: that weird musty smell in Kaufman Hall? That's what Classics smells like. Evidently. Because building "A", which houses the same things as Kaufman in Norman? They smell exactly the same. A world away, and the odor is universal. Curious.
That realization was, sadly, the best part of my campus adventure. I walked around and around looking for various departments or their "posted" hours. The history department claimed it would have its hours up by 5, but at 6 there were still a gaggle of students waiting on the stairs looking ready to commit mass suicide.
At length I managed to find the department of foreign languages and wandered around until I saw someone's door say "Italian" on it. I knocked and talked to him about it. I asked where the schedule was, and he told me he didn't think exchange students could take the class. I explained the situation. He asked me four different times whether I had ever studied Italian, and I said no. I asked him four times where the schedule was, and he explained at length the things I would learn in Italian 1. Then he told me to find the secretary. When I did, he/she was typing in his/her office, so I knocked. No answer (but hesitation in typing, as if unsure whether to answer). I knocked twice more with the same effect and then gave up, since it was 5 o'clock on a Friday and I was ready to choke from frustration.
I got on the tram, having spent upwards of 3 hours wandering around. I met up with some of the same British girls who had previously tipped me off, and they told me that the schedules would be posted online, and how to access them, and blah blah blah. Well, they aren't. Not entirely. They're "online" in about the same way that their hours were "posted" in the various departments.
I am frustrated. I don't know how to go to class next week. I have no more will to worry about it, though, so...we'll see what happens.
I took my camera in the other day to a lone guy in a room full of spare camera parts. I left him my lens and he told me to call him next Thursday, which is totally opposite to all of my ideas about how the cash-for-services exchange should work -- shouldn't he call me when he has news, rather than asking me to call him at some point in the future when he may or may not have addressed the problem? Oh, France. You're so different.
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