Haven’t posted since classes started for a very good reason: I’ve been swamped academically. The Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières has a well-deserved excellent reputation with high academic standards. So what that meant for me as someone who was newly transitioning from the international school to the regular undergrad program with intelligent articulate native speakers of French … is that I was WAY over my head. WAY over my head. I haven’t studied French formally for years; my summer programs up here the past three years don’t count as they’re very informal and as much about Québec culture as the French language. So I’m down from 12 credits to six. That’s two classes. And that is what I can manage under the circumstances. Homework takes a LOT longer when you’re doing university-level work NOT in your native language.
The entire university has an interesting class schedule; all classes meet just once a week for three hours, with the same start times university-wide: 8:30 a.m., noon, 3:30 p.m., and 7:00 p.m. My Tuesday 3:30 p.m. class is “expression orale,” or public speaking, taught by a warm and gracious woman well-known around here who has been teaching here as an adjunct for 30 years and has been a regular program host on Radio-Canada for 18. She knew me from my summer program as she came to present to us every one of the three summers I’ve been here, and in fact chose me and another woman this past summer to be in a video she was making to promote the summer program. She told me before the first class yesterday that it’s just about to be released and that she would send me the link as soon as it comes out — which of course I will share and I hope you’ll watch even if you don’t understand what I’m saying!! My other class, Thursdays at 8:30 a.m., is “difficultés de la grammaire française.” I think you can figure that one out even if you don’t speak French. The professor is one of the elder statesmen around here; he joked on the first day of class that he has been teaching here since 1925. According to his resume on his web page, it’s really 1969. 50 years. Holy cow. This university actually opened in 1969 (big 50th anniversary celebrations ongoing) so that means he has been teaching here for the university’s entire history. He is known for being a great teacher but assigning a ton of homework. Yep. All true. One of the two classes I dropped was also taught by him. Absolutely no way could I manage both.
So here’s what I’m going to do now that my schedule has changed. It’s easy to get home; a six-hour drive, but an easy one. I enjoy driving, I’m used to driving between here and home, and my car is still relatively new and I take excellent care of it. So I’m coming home for long weekends, starting today. I am going to take advantage of that fact to sub at FHS on Fridays when they need me, and to go to FHS games and performances in person instead of following along on ScoreStream or social media. It won’t be exhausting; it will be refreshing. I will head for home when my Thursday class gets out and will be home by mid-evening allowing for a dinner break in there somewhere. I will be very grateful to sleep in my own bed Thursday through Sunday nights. I’ll bring my homework with me. I am pleased about the possibility of being able to continue my learning experience here in Trois-Rivières but being able to get back to my FHS community as well. This will work as long as the weather is decent. When the snow flies, I’ll have to revisit this plan. But it will work for now and I’m looking forward to implementing it.
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
the oldest student at new student orientation
All the new student activities have now been completed, and of course I was the oldest one in the room every time. I was expecting that, of course, and I've only gotten a few strange looks and been mistaken for a professor once. I do get a huge kick out of the fact that I'm going through new student orientation at the same time as many members of the FHS Class of 2019!
The way they do it here is to have one orientation for exchange students, which was last week; one orientation for international students, which I attended last Friday; and orientations today by academic department.
Snapshots:
• I've been the only American in either of my orientations. When people find out I'm American, they assume that I'm not going to be able to understand them if they speak French to me. Yet so far, I've understood just about everything and have been able to answer questions clearly when asked.
• I was also the only one taking notes at the French department orientation and one of very few doing so at the international student orientation. That fascinated me. Generation gap?
• There were about 150 students at the international students' orientation, slightly more women than men, nearly all of them from Africa, and nearly all of them very nicely dressed. About a third were undergrads, a third master's degree students, and a third doctoral students. Nearly all were in their 20's and 30's, of course, so I was secretly very pleased to see two women come in who were definitely close to my age! I hope to cross their paths at some point. I thought it was interesting when they offered a cultural explanation that in this culture, if something starts at 1:30 p.m., you need to be there by 1:25 to be ready to start at 1:30. They talked about the transition to life in Canada (with more than a passing reference to winter), getting settled into living accommodations, and lots of info about student services: health services including mental health, financial aid, help finding work, academic support, and student activities.
• There were 15 students at the French department orientation; we were told that there were 25 new students total. 11 from the region, one exchange student from France, one each from Martinique and Guadeloupe, and me. 13 young women, one young man, and me. The department head sort of explained to the others what the French exchange student was doing there and what I was doing there; she stood out because of her accent, and I stood out because of my age. All the same info about student services came up again, and instead of talking about adjustment to Canada the rest of the presentation was about what to expect from university academics.
• Both the international students' orientation and the French department orientation were three-hour presentations. There was no interactive stuff, no ice-breakers or get-to-know-you stuff, which was fine with me. Just sitting and listening. Both presentations did include lots of info about student services and student activities, and definitely gave me the impression that things are really well run around here. They do seem to truly care about student well-being; both orientations mentioned that there are really positive relationships between faculty and students and that the faculty members are approachable. Kind of like being back at FHS only on the other side of the desk!
• There are no dorm activities as we think of them in the USA. There is on-campus housing, all apartment suites, but it only accommodates a few hundred of the 15,000 students here, and is mostly occupied by international students, so I'm told. The vast majority of undergrads commute from home. I live in an apartment building with six apartments in a nice residential neighborhood which is all either apartment buildings or private homes with basement apartments rented to students.
So I'm all new-student-oriented. It helps of course that I've been here the past three summers and know where things are located on campus and know the neighborhood, the city, and the region. I'm all settled into my apartment.
One thing they do here that's really helpful (and maybe American universities do this too and I'm just not aware of it since it's been awhile! ...) is put the course syllabus online. It is expected that students will read it before going to the first class. So over lunch I read the syllabi for my four courses ... and promptly dropped one of the four. The total workload would have just been too much. So I'm at nine credits now. I'll write more about the courses next time when things are finalized in case I do any more dropping/adding.
All the classes meet once a week for three hours. So the two three-hour orientations were also an orientation to staying focused and following presentations in French for three hours (with no break in one case) in which information was flowing in a constant unbroken stream. The syllabus for two of the three courses said that cell phones are to be turned off and put in our bags, not on the table, and that we are not allowed to have laptops out. Good thing I have good note-taking skills.
I have one class each on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. That's going to be great for coming home weekends. Sometimes I think I'd like to come home most weekends. But I wonder if that defeats the purpose of being here. Time will tell.
The two orientations were very informative, but I'm glad they're done and I'm eager to go to my first class tomorrow!
The way they do it here is to have one orientation for exchange students, which was last week; one orientation for international students, which I attended last Friday; and orientations today by academic department.
Snapshots:
• I've been the only American in either of my orientations. When people find out I'm American, they assume that I'm not going to be able to understand them if they speak French to me. Yet so far, I've understood just about everything and have been able to answer questions clearly when asked.
• I was also the only one taking notes at the French department orientation and one of very few doing so at the international student orientation. That fascinated me. Generation gap?
• There were about 150 students at the international students' orientation, slightly more women than men, nearly all of them from Africa, and nearly all of them very nicely dressed. About a third were undergrads, a third master's degree students, and a third doctoral students. Nearly all were in their 20's and 30's, of course, so I was secretly very pleased to see two women come in who were definitely close to my age! I hope to cross their paths at some point. I thought it was interesting when they offered a cultural explanation that in this culture, if something starts at 1:30 p.m., you need to be there by 1:25 to be ready to start at 1:30. They talked about the transition to life in Canada (with more than a passing reference to winter), getting settled into living accommodations, and lots of info about student services: health services including mental health, financial aid, help finding work, academic support, and student activities.
• There were 15 students at the French department orientation; we were told that there were 25 new students total. 11 from the region, one exchange student from France, one each from Martinique and Guadeloupe, and me. 13 young women, one young man, and me. The department head sort of explained to the others what the French exchange student was doing there and what I was doing there; she stood out because of her accent, and I stood out because of my age. All the same info about student services came up again, and instead of talking about adjustment to Canada the rest of the presentation was about what to expect from university academics.
• Both the international students' orientation and the French department orientation were three-hour presentations. There was no interactive stuff, no ice-breakers or get-to-know-you stuff, which was fine with me. Just sitting and listening. Both presentations did include lots of info about student services and student activities, and definitely gave me the impression that things are really well run around here. They do seem to truly care about student well-being; both orientations mentioned that there are really positive relationships between faculty and students and that the faculty members are approachable. Kind of like being back at FHS only on the other side of the desk!
• There are no dorm activities as we think of them in the USA. There is on-campus housing, all apartment suites, but it only accommodates a few hundred of the 15,000 students here, and is mostly occupied by international students, so I'm told. The vast majority of undergrads commute from home. I live in an apartment building with six apartments in a nice residential neighborhood which is all either apartment buildings or private homes with basement apartments rented to students.
So I'm all new-student-oriented. It helps of course that I've been here the past three summers and know where things are located on campus and know the neighborhood, the city, and the region. I'm all settled into my apartment.
One thing they do here that's really helpful (and maybe American universities do this too and I'm just not aware of it since it's been awhile! ...) is put the course syllabus online. It is expected that students will read it before going to the first class. So over lunch I read the syllabi for my four courses ... and promptly dropped one of the four. The total workload would have just been too much. So I'm at nine credits now. I'll write more about the courses next time when things are finalized in case I do any more dropping/adding.
All the classes meet once a week for three hours. So the two three-hour orientations were also an orientation to staying focused and following presentations in French for three hours (with no break in one case) in which information was flowing in a constant unbroken stream. The syllabus for two of the three courses said that cell phones are to be turned off and put in our bags, not on the table, and that we are not allowed to have laptops out. Good thing I have good note-taking skills.
I have one class each on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. That's going to be great for coming home weekends. Sometimes I think I'd like to come home most weekends. But I wonder if that defeats the purpose of being here. Time will tell.
The two orientations were very informative, but I'm glad they're done and I'm eager to go to my first class tomorrow!
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