Being Schooled

I can’t believe I’ve been here for almost two months! You’re thinking, I still know nothing! For that, I apologize. It just seems like daily life is not very thrilling. But I’m in France! Everything is different! Well kind of….

I guess I’ll start with school. At BEM, you only take one class at a time. For three weeks… let’s just say this is nice (yay! Only one class!) but bad (bleh. I have to sit in a class for 8 hours). Although, the French system makes it pretty easy on you:

                Class 8:30 to 10:00

                Break 10:00 to 10:30

                Class 10:30 to 12:00

                Break 12:00 to 1:30/13:30

                Class 1:30/13:30 to 3:00/15:00

                Break 3:00/15:00 to 3:30/15:30

                Class 3:30/15:30 to 5:00/17:00

So as you can see we take lots of breaks, and use the 24 hour clock (which still takes me a long time to figure out, sorry Dad). The French need to smoke. The French need coffee. The French need to eat. The French need their breaks. At every break (which the entire school has at the same time) we cram into the cafeteria. There is a cafeteria style food and the little shop thing that has the coffee and sandwiches. Rather than making orderly lines you must shove up to the front and make eyes at the lady taking orders. Everything that could be well organized just ends up feeling like you’re at a bar, not well dressed enough, being purposely ignored by someone less attractive than you. On the plus side, I’m getting really good at cutting. Don’t judge! It’s the French way! Have I mentioned how poorly planned it is to have 3,000 people, all caffeine and nicotine deprived, vying for the attention of two elderly women?

Anywho, my first sequence was Brand Management. For the first two weeks we had a French professor who was really interesting and had some good stories to tell. I always trust business teachers more when they have been in the real world and can give real-personal-life-experience stories to back up their lessons. The third week, we had an Australian teacher (yes, that’s right. We have more than one teacher in one class). She too had good stories to tell. I think she loved me, which is never a bad thing. In fact, on the project that we were doing in class, my group won. We won Oreos! Oh yes, the Australians are not above bribing. I don’t think I mind.

So, the class was based on participation (I think, still not too sure…they said it counted, but I don’t know if they were bluffing) and a final case study. We were supposed to do this case study based on two vague power point slides, turn it in to someone who was not our teacher and never present on it. How they are supposed to know what we learned, I will never know. My group was pretty good, although we never met one of our team mates. The annoying thing is, is that he’ll get the same grade as the rest of us, despite the fact he was never in class (one of my teammate’s argument’s was “He’ll fail if we don’t put his name on it” my reply “who cares?”)

This brings me to another point. The French students. They are really weird. All the international students are completely shocked and often appalled by their attitudes. In class, they literally have full voice conversations; they just ignore the professor completely. I don’t really get why they come to class at all. And when you’re in a group with them, they’re all about procrastinating, dividing the work, never meeting, and pushing something through in the last minute. After this experience, I honestly don’t think I would ever higher a French person. Cultural differences galore!

In the second sequence I’m taking E-marketing and E-commerce, which is e-boring. So far, we’ve had 2 professors, one French (horrible accent and BORING) and one Quebecois (ooo French Canadian, and he’s funny, and he lets us out early! Huzzah!) Again, we have to do a case study and we have a test. We have no idea what will be on the test, in what form it will be, which teacher(s) information it will be on AND when it will be. This is especially frustrating for those of us trying to plan travel.

That is just a little peek into the world of BEM in all its glory. That being said, I actually have learned some pretty interesting things.

Here’s a fun one on viral marketing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEqJV1acgN4

PS When they say football they mean FOOTball.