Le deuxième jour des cours

17/2
Unfortunately this day was just as long as yesterday! And everyday this week is going to be like a first day of school, because all my classes are only offered once a week (some once every other week). However, don’t think that that means that I don’t have a lot of class, I have like 11 classes! And contrary to what I’ve been told, they are hard, they do have homework, and even if the attendance is optional, they do seem like I will need to go in order to do well. Bummer! Today started out with langue ecrite. This class is usually only supposed to be 2 hours, but the professor already had to cancel a lesson in the future, so she decided to add on an extra hour to this week and next weeks classes. So our first class today was 3 hours, from 10-1. I was hoping that she wouldn’t actually make us write anything today, but I wasn’t so lucky, because we started off with a mini-autobiography. I guess as topics it could be worse though. The prof seems like she has a system and she wants it followed, as far as her approach to writing goes. She seemed very organized. To me, she seems like the least French prof that I have! She started off by telling us what the course would be like and what our exams would be like (3 ½ hours of writing and reading a text… gross!) which no other prof has done here yet, especially without specifically asking. The class seemed pretty intense, probably just because the teacher kind of laid it all out there and was like I want you to write like this, according to the way I want it to be. So hopefully she will help us out with all that, I just hope it’s not too crazy. After that we had an hour break before langue orale. We were only supposed to have 2 hours of langue orale today because we were supposed to be broken into smaller groups, and have one hour of a large group class and one hour of a smaller class. However no group lists were posted so we all showed up for the first group hour and she made us all stay for 3 whole hours of class, une heure de cadeau, she said, yeah right! I’m not sure if the teacher liked us. She was funny but also seemed like she had a strong personality, and wouldn’t be so forgiving with our errors. Plus she assigned us this crazy huge enquete project that we work on the whole semester, where we choose to research something about French culture and we have to talk to at least 10 French people in order to have real research and in order for her to make us talk to French people. In addition, we have to give oral presentations starting next class. Also, she talked the majority of the first class about what she wanted from us, so we barely talked. Hopefully this will get better. So I had that class until 5, which really means I was there until 10 after, because nothing ends on time, and then I had to rush to my elective that I’m thinking of taking, histoire politique de la france contemporaine. Well in English that means contemporary political history of France, but when I walked in to the class he was talking about ancient Gaul, which is way back as far as French history goes. So I walked in a little late to whatever he was teaching, and he continued whatever he was teaching, which was apparently a very quick history of France. He talked non-stop, not taking a break, and not pausing for a breath or anything, for the entire hour of class! It was like he had a text book in his mind. I can’t understand how he did it. And since I was so tired and came in late to his lecture I couldn’t make myself pay attention as he recounted facts that I had learned before. Also he talked pretty quickly and my brain was practically mush. I don’t think I’ll end up taking it.. just because I don’t want to take a history class and I don’t think I’ll be able to pay attention in his two hour class after my other two intense classes on Tuesday. Demain, 2 possible electives, that don’t start until 4 pm!!!