Berkley Center

I’m writing my final blog entry from a train. French farmland is flying by the window of my TGV at 200 kilometers per hour. I’m not leaving Lyon for good—my flight isn’t for three weeks—just going to visit a friend in Paris. Still, after completing four of my six classes (my last two finals are at the end of the month) and playing my final concert with Tem’po at Sciences Po’s annual gala last night, the semester feels too close to the end. In addition, my host family has already begun to discuss the student whom they will host in the fall. A few things that I learned in Lyon could be helpful for him or her and for other exchange students next year.

First, courses here are not American-style classes taught in French. Instead, professors use a different style of teaching, evaluating, and thinking (by the way, it feels great to have just used an Oxford comma; they don’t exist in French). Moving from high school to college, students in the United States are told that there is less homework and more emphasis on a final evaluation. The French system takes this to the extreme. Three of my six classes had no outside assignments and only occasional one-page readings. As one of my professors said, “the PowerPoint is your textbook.” Other classes do not use PowerPoints or textbooks at all. In these, all of the material was read by the professor and written down furiously by the students. When studying for finals, which in three of my classes represented the entire grade, these notes become the student’s primary source and are referred to as that student’s “course.”

Second, French dossiers (research papers) and exposés (presentations) are written with a very specific format. Typically, both are two or three person group projects, so in classes with these type of assignments group work makes up a majority or all of the final grade. Writing dossiers and exposés begins with the creation of a problématique, a concept that remained a mystery to me for most of the semester. I eventually learned that, to create a problématique, students use an assigned topic to create a research question that can be used to assess both sides of an issue. After, they create a fairly rigid plan for the paper, separate and write their sections of the paper individually, and then put it together. Typically, French students ask to what extent an idea is true. In other words, they do not make an argument but instead explore both sides a question.

Finally, I've learned that argot (French slang) is both useful and funny. My time here provided me with a wealth of these expressions. For example, at Crit, a sports competition between different universities, I learned to describe things as énorme (great), bordel (a mess), and degulas (disgusting). Close friends can be called mec or cem for a man or meuf for a woman. Cem and meuf are both examples of verlan, a form of slang in which words are reversed. (Cem is the inverse of mec and meuf is the inverse of femme, the word for woman). In addition, some French expressions such as j’y go (I go there) and c’est top (it’s great) incorporate English words. The word marron, which means chestnut, describes anything that fits into the ironic French sense of humor. Learning argot helps with the transition from classroom French to spoken French and is an important step in understanding local culture.

Studying abroad has been an incredible opportunity to learn, travel, and meet people. I could end this post by using the train as a metaphor for the progression of my time here. Instead, I’ll just say this: Lyon gère la fougère (it rocks).