...and Life Goes On: After Bordeaux, Earthquake, Etc.
I've been meaning to get this blog up and running again, but wasn't sure what direction it should go. And frankly, I'm still not sure. It's definitely no longer a chronicle of my time abroad, since I'm back in Oklahoma, where things are much the same as they were when I left them.
Everything is different and the same. I've been missing my friends in Bordeaux like crazy, which is not alleviated by the photos posted by another OU student currently living in my apartment on Rue du Loup. I miss life in France in a lot of ways, and I feel like I'm living abroad sort of vicariously by meeting a lot of exchange students. I'm participating in a program that matches students studying abroad with students interested in cultural exchange. My student is Japanese, and we've so far had a lot of fun together. I envy the newness of everything she's getting to do, and the linguistic strides she's making. I teach her as much slang as I can work into the conversation, and I think she has fun with it.
I've been readjusting to school fairly well. It's nice to have demands on my time, but I kind of forgot what it feels like to wake up and go to an 8:30 class after six consecutive days of not getting enough sleep. I forgot what it's like to actually be expected to contribute to class discussion, which is a nice change. My classes are mostly challenging and diverse, and I can't help making constant comparisons of the French and American university systems. I used to think of the French department as a tiny microcosm that would reflect what school was going to be like in France -- and it's not even close, for all that it's less efficient and a lot more relaxed than rest of the university. Coming home has definitely given me a new perspective.
For basically the first time in college, I'm taking classes that require me to write essays. This is a welcome change. None of the zoology classes put any emphasis on free or critical thinking. I think they, as a field, sort of assume that's not going to be part of our lives until graduate school. Even in lab classes, we conduct the experiments the way the book tells us, write about the results expected, and go home without ever having escaped rote learning. Some of my paper assignments haven't been any better, but a few of them have. It's nice to know that I can still write a paper. Or, rather, write a paper to college standards and make as good a grade as I did in high school. It's been a while, but today I was rewarded with a 100% on a History of Science paper I spent a little too much time agonizing over.
For the first time, I'm working while going to school. I have a job in the invertebrate lab at the museum of natural history, where I have so far worked in cataloging the dragonfly collections. I'm just down the hall from herpetology, where I continue to volunteer occasionally. I finally found out where all the real, not medical school-bound zoology students at the university live -- and it's at the museum. Mostly in ichthyology, it would seem. I meet a lot of them, since we share a lab.
As a result of meeting all these people, and because my friends are all starting to graduate, I've been thinking a lot about grad school. It seems a long way off, but it's nearly time to start taking the GRE and contacting potential advisers.
I've also been thinking a lot about when I might return to France. I didn't think, when I came home in June, that I would need to go back for a while. But "need" seems more and more likely a word to use, and I think that after I get involved with graduate school, I'll probably never have another chance to go for any significant period of time. I had almost resigned myself to this idea when my French professor pulled me aside after class today. He told me that, every year, they do a teaching position exchange with Clermont-Ferrand, France, where they send one of their students over to teach English for a school year, and while it was usually reserved for grad students, sometimes they recommended an undergraduate. I was pleased by the recommendation, and also intrigued by the idea. It might be a welcome break in the marathon of college to go work for a year after my undergraduate studies -- improve some more on my language skills, get some teaching experience, and see what life is like as a certificated adult before the vacuum of academia swallows me again.
I don't know. It sounds good tonight. Maybe just because a walk through the streets of Bordeaux at 5 a.m. sounds a lot better than studying mudpuppy musculature for my comparative vertebrate anatomy class -- but I think it's more than that. I have to go back, but I don't know when.
In other news, there was an earthquake today, whose epicenter was six miles east of campus. It was my first earthquake ever, and it was a 5.1 on the Richter scale. It certainly livened up microbiology this morning, and the campus was buzzing about it all day.
Coming soon: A description of last weekend's visit to Austin, Texas for the Austin City Limits festival.
Everything is different and the same. I've been missing my friends in Bordeaux like crazy, which is not alleviated by the photos posted by another OU student currently living in my apartment on Rue du Loup. I miss life in France in a lot of ways, and I feel like I'm living abroad sort of vicariously by meeting a lot of exchange students. I'm participating in a program that matches students studying abroad with students interested in cultural exchange. My student is Japanese, and we've so far had a lot of fun together. I envy the newness of everything she's getting to do, and the linguistic strides she's making. I teach her as much slang as I can work into the conversation, and I think she has fun with it.
I've been readjusting to school fairly well. It's nice to have demands on my time, but I kind of forgot what it feels like to wake up and go to an 8:30 class after six consecutive days of not getting enough sleep. I forgot what it's like to actually be expected to contribute to class discussion, which is a nice change. My classes are mostly challenging and diverse, and I can't help making constant comparisons of the French and American university systems. I used to think of the French department as a tiny microcosm that would reflect what school was going to be like in France -- and it's not even close, for all that it's less efficient and a lot more relaxed than rest of the university. Coming home has definitely given me a new perspective.
For basically the first time in college, I'm taking classes that require me to write essays. This is a welcome change. None of the zoology classes put any emphasis on free or critical thinking. I think they, as a field, sort of assume that's not going to be part of our lives until graduate school. Even in lab classes, we conduct the experiments the way the book tells us, write about the results expected, and go home without ever having escaped rote learning. Some of my paper assignments haven't been any better, but a few of them have. It's nice to know that I can still write a paper. Or, rather, write a paper to college standards and make as good a grade as I did in high school. It's been a while, but today I was rewarded with a 100% on a History of Science paper I spent a little too much time agonizing over.
For the first time, I'm working while going to school. I have a job in the invertebrate lab at the museum of natural history, where I have so far worked in cataloging the dragonfly collections. I'm just down the hall from herpetology, where I continue to volunteer occasionally. I finally found out where all the real, not medical school-bound zoology students at the university live -- and it's at the museum. Mostly in ichthyology, it would seem. I meet a lot of them, since we share a lab.
As a result of meeting all these people, and because my friends are all starting to graduate, I've been thinking a lot about grad school. It seems a long way off, but it's nearly time to start taking the GRE and contacting potential advisers.
I've also been thinking a lot about when I might return to France. I didn't think, when I came home in June, that I would need to go back for a while. But "need" seems more and more likely a word to use, and I think that after I get involved with graduate school, I'll probably never have another chance to go for any significant period of time. I had almost resigned myself to this idea when my French professor pulled me aside after class today. He told me that, every year, they do a teaching position exchange with Clermont-Ferrand, France, where they send one of their students over to teach English for a school year, and while it was usually reserved for grad students, sometimes they recommended an undergraduate. I was pleased by the recommendation, and also intrigued by the idea. It might be a welcome break in the marathon of college to go work for a year after my undergraduate studies -- improve some more on my language skills, get some teaching experience, and see what life is like as a certificated adult before the vacuum of academia swallows me again.
I don't know. It sounds good tonight. Maybe just because a walk through the streets of Bordeaux at 5 a.m. sounds a lot better than studying mudpuppy musculature for my comparative vertebrate anatomy class -- but I think it's more than that. I have to go back, but I don't know when.
In other news, there was an earthquake today, whose epicenter was six miles east of campus. It was my first earthquake ever, and it was a 5.1 on the Richter scale. It certainly livened up microbiology this morning, and the campus was buzzing about it all day.
Coming soon: A description of last weekend's visit to Austin, Texas for the Austin City Limits festival.
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