Course selection in French universities has been a very strange process for me. I’m used to thumbing through the online course catalog the instant it’s released, having several courses I need to take for my major fill most of my credit allotment, choosing 1-2 extra courses, and using an app to help me craft a final schedule. This semester, I consulted 5 different course catalogs, along with professor evaluations for each (although most of my potential professors didn’t appear in the list of evaluations). Luckily all of my courses has posted hours already (yes, that’s lucky in the French university system!), so I painstakingly drew out schedules by hand and experienced a tiny pang of sadness every time two courses I really wanted to take conflicted. I turned in several different drafts of my list of courses to CUPA, attempting to winnow it each time but usually failing miserably.
I resorted to using my best friend, Microsoft Excel, to help me with my final selection. After much deliberation, my course schedule ended up looking pretty much like my schedule does every semester: overfull, with classes in a variety of subjects, and organized in such a way that I’d need a time turner to handle it. Luckily for me, while classes at the Sorbonne begin tomorrow, classes at Paris 8 – Saint Denis don’t start until February 10th and so I have the opportunity to try out a bunch of classes this week, and then if I don’t like them, try out even more at Paris 8 next week. The highlighted courses are my first choices for courses to attend.
In reality, a few of my classes have already started — I’ve attended 3 courses at Université Pierre et Marie Curie, and I’m planning on staying in one (or maybe two) of them — but courses at La Sorbonne begin tomorrow, and since that’s where the bulk of my courses will likely end up being held, this week is going to be very busy for me.
I’ll be back with more updates soon!
Nouvelles Connaissances 