the internal debate over classes continues

Throughout this past week I wavered between staying in Niveau 5 and going down to Niveau 4. I knew that I wanted a challenge when it came to French here, and Niveau 5 would certainly be a challenge, however, I also wanted to do well. On Thursday I talked to one of my Professors who I have for three classes. I told her that I wanted a challenge (defis) but that I also wanted to succeed and in her opinion, did she think I could do this? She said she wasn't sure as she hadn't been able to see my writing sample but that it was good that I was participating in class.

After this I was pretty sure that I was going to stay in Niveau 5 and either rapidly improve or fail miserably. But then, then came Grammar. It wasn't the worst class I have ever taken in my entire life (that title goes to Physics, which I still fully detest) but it was pretty terrifying. Our Professor threw as much information as he possibly could in as little time as possible. He dissected sentences, noting different parts of them, and then went into more detail about said parts. Let me explain that while I have a pretty decent grasp on English grammar, that does not mean that I am by any means an expert. I certainly can't go into incredible detail about sentence structure, in particular the names of certain parts of the sentence. So when this grammar is thrown at me in French...I get a little lost.

When this is followed by a "review" of all 22 verb forms (of which many are useless, many I did not know existed, and many I do not know how to correctly conjugate) of the French language, well then the class just starts to get nightmarish. By the end of the class, I was strongly leaning towards moving downwards. As I've told multiple people in the past few days, I can handle small challenges, but when the number of challenges rises and some of them cease to be small, then things switch from being slightly difficult to stressful and quite possibly insurmountable. 

This little guy is everywhere around the center of town. I don't know who he
is, or why he's there, but whenever I see him I think of Exit Through the
Gift Shop Window.

After talking with another student who switched down from 5 to 4, with reasons similar to my own, and after being reassured that the class wasn't too easy and definitely one that could be learned from, I was pretty much sold on the idea. Now I just need to wait till Tuesday to ask my Professor to sign a paper giving me permission to move down. I think it's a lot easier for Professors to sign off on someone moving down then to sign off on them moving down. Seeing as how I've expressed some concern already, I don't see it being too much of an issue.

Apart from French language classes, I've gone several culture classes and one civilization class. As a whole these were much less stressful. The only culture class I really did not like was Art History. It had nothing to do with the subject, but our Professor - who looked to be about the age of a grad student - had a monotone voice and his lecture was clearly based off of a book that he looked down to often while lecturing. To make it worse, when he showed us pictures of the art he literally turned around the book that he was using and showed it to us. I should note that we were in a lecture hall and that it was pretty impossible to see any of the art. By the end of the two hours, the Professor started to sound like the teacher out of Peanuts. 

Despite the disaster that was Art History (a class I thankfully do not have to go back to) my other classes were massive successes and I really look forward to them. Civilization gave a brief overview of French History. When I say brief I mean from the time of the Romans (when France was called La Gaul) to the present day. Our Professor is the same Stephane who was our guide to Beaune and still has not lost his humor. The class began with some stereotypes of France both from the perspectives of the French to those of foreigners. I won't go into detail, but it was incredibly entertaining.

Kevin, who is sort of a combination of Indiana Jones and James Bond
solely because he's British and because he always wears this hat.

I will note that I discovered that one of France's national symbols is the rooster, or the cockerel. The symbol harks back to the days of La Gaul when France (as well as parts of Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Italy) was under the control of the Roman Empire. The fierce pride of the Gauls mirrored the way in which a rooster puffs out its chest. In addition The Latin word for cock (gallus) is incredibly similar to the Latin word for the inhabitants of La Gaul (gallicus). Whatever the reason, it stuck.

Part of civilization was also what is called "francais familier" which is essentially a class in French slang. I find it quite weird to be studying slang before having a complete grasp on formal French, but I don't think our Professor intends for us to speak it and instead hopes that when sitting on the buses and walking in the streets we'll be able to understand what people are saying.

Lastly my Fridays end with a History class, which is something I look forward to, but that I know others don't. The classes switch off every other week and so I've only had Political Panorama (essentially 20th Century Europe but with an emphasis on France) but next week I have Contemporary History which is focused on France after 1945. Both classes are taught by the same Professor, which I'm really pleased with because he's both engaging and enthusiastic.

A gargoyle on the top of the tower in the Palais des Ducs. We climbed
to the top of it this weekend, which was quite a feat mostly because the
the stairs (over 300 of them) were incredibly windy.

At the start of the class the Professor asked if there were any History majors amongst the class and I was somewhat surprised to see that I was the only one to raise my hand! The class started off with World War I. For those non-history majors out there: when historians talk about the beginning of the 20th century they don't mean 1900, they mean 1914. Not only was WWI a devastating war it was also an incredibly different war and a real break from the past.

I shamefully, forget a good deal of WWI apart from the essential details, but do believe that I am pretty good at the end of it, the Treaty of Versailles and the interwar period. Of course what I realized on Friday was that while I might know the events in English, in French they're slightly different. I found myself trying to figure out how to say "self-determination" when talking about the Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points in French and somehow managed to get my point across and also discover that the translation is "auto-determination". This class, I think, will be one I'll really like. Apart from the fact that my concentration is Modern European History, I always find it fascinating to study the different perspectives of historical events. Up till now I've studied 20th Century Europe from that of the British, from an American Foreign Policy stand-point and will now embark on the French perspective. For all I know it might not be incredibly different, but when studying WWI and WWII I've always studied from the point of the victor, and while France was technically a victor in both, they were also occupied for most of WWII and I wonder what sort of impact that will have on my studying it. Who knows!