A Bureaucratic Lesson

I will finally begin classes tomorrow (Monday, February 8, 2010). That fact, on its own, is not quite so interesting. However, I obtained the official schedule for when and where each of my classes will meet THREE DAYS AGO on Friday, February 5^th. And so begins my first foray into the mind-numbingly frustrating French bureaucratic system… the registration process.

It began simply enough. We went to a meeting at our program’s headquarters that summarized the offerings of all the Paris universities in which we are allowed to take classes. To my slight disappointment, I learned that the two Universités de Paris that have retained the renowned “Sorbonne” name do not offer psychology courses (my major), so it wouldn’t be very practical for me to enroll there. However, the Université de Paris Ouest (aka Paris-X or Paris-Nanterre) offers a wide range of courses that fits the bill. Only problem is that Paris-X is located just outside Paris in the dreary suburb of Nanterre, an easy 45-minute commute away.

Nevertheless, Nanterre has its bright sides; the buildings are actually situated on a campus, with student cafeterias, a gym, labeled buildings (believe me, that’s a luxury you don’t enjoy when going to class in the heart of the city), and even a large patch of grass. Plus with over 40,000 students, the campus is smaller than Georgetown’s, but still offers courses through many of the departments that interested me this semester: French Literature, Art History, Cinema, and of course Psychology. Then it’s only a matter of choosing specific classes, right? Wrong.

Despite the high quality programs of study offered at each of the Paris Universities, hardly any course schedules are listed online, and registration is still done in person. As such, a student interested in taking specific classes must trek to each university, find each department he/she is interested in, and scour a few bulletin boards for schedule listings. To be sure to cover the bases, a student must also pay attention to post-its from professors on the bulletin boards, as sometimes they announce cancelled classes, room changes, or other conflicting and terribly confusing information. One sign I saw in the Linguistics department announced that all 100-level classes would start a week later than the rest of the university, as the schedule planning had not yet been completed. Was this information posted anywhere else? Nah.

On my specific trip to Nanterre, which was mercifully guided by our lovely CUPA student-coordinators, Marie and Chantal, there was nothing posted on the Psychology Department bulletin board, and since several of us had come to the university that day to look for psych classes, Marie removed her gum and got in line to speak with the registrar. Two seconds later, Marie (who is at least 25 and pursuing a Master’s) came out of the office, flushed and trying to keep her composure. I heard the interaction from the hallway, and when Marie asked if the schedule was available for the undergraduate psychology classes, the registrar responded in an agitated tone, “No, you can’t have it. It will come out when it comes out. Now beat it.” Eesh! I don’t blame Marie in the slightest for reaching for her cigarettes as soon as we left the building.

As several advisors have wisely warned me, it is dangerous and often counter-productive to constantly compare the way things are in France to the way things are in the United States. So in that spirit, it helps to have an understanding of why the French system is so unlike our own culture. First of all, French students choose their specialization much earlier on in their schooling, and once their path is decided, everyone in the major takes all the same classes with very few electives as they pursue their degrees. As such, the concept of picking and choosing classes between multiple departments, let alone multiple schools, is completely foreign to them, so registration is almost always more of a paperwork formality than an exercise in choosing from an a la carte menu. When you don’t have to do any schedule juggling yourself, it’s not a big deal to visit a bulletin board to find out when you’re going to classes.

Secondly, it helps to remember that French students pay peanuts for their university degree (on average, about 500 euros a year is what I’ve heard, but correct me if I’m wrong), not that I’m using this fact to comment on the quality of their education system. Instead, I’m highlighting that because of its affordability, the French student is not the university’s client, like an American student is in the States; the attitude here is that each student is lucky to have this opportunity and should profit from the gift, rather than waste it.

Luckily, this story has a happy ending. I have a full schedule that begins this week and I am extremely excited about my classes: an in-house CUPA Art History course on French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters, where we meet for regular class once a week and meet at the Louvre or the Musée d’Orsay for our second class each week; a literature class covering the work of Emile Zola, perhaps most famous for his journalism covering the Dreyfus Affair; a film class called Classic French Cinéma; a psychology class on the development of friendships and loving relationships; and finally, a class on the psychology of consumer behavior (which happens to be a field I’ve dreamed of studying for the past few years!). Now all that’s left is to make sure I can understand all my professors’ accents – wish me luck this week!