This past week, getting to class has been a total pain as I’ve been introduced to another of Paris’s proud traditions: la grève (strike). Normally I would take the RER B line from right near my home into the city center and then switch to another metro line. (The RER is the commuter rail, but each RER line also traverses Paris and, within city borders, works and costs the same as any normal city metro line.) This strike resulted in a couple late arrivals to class and a missed yoga course. Argh, frustration!
But I, as the rest of Paris, will survive this strike (and many more over the next few years, I am certain). Getting beyond the difficulties of transportation, there is still the challenges faced one passing through the classroom doors. Here, things become a bit more interesting:
I am currently enrolled in the second year of a Master’s program in Cellular and Integrative Neuroscience. There are two catches: 1. Most of my classes are in French, and 2. I have never studied neuroscience before. Surprisingly enough, catch #2 is proving most challenging. In fact, this past week and next week I have a brief linguistic reprieve as the second of my two-week intensive seminars is actually taught in English. I have discovered that when the teaching staff are all native French speakers, it’s actually a lot easier to follow their lectures in French. Often enough in English, their rhythm of speaking is hard to follow and their struggle with the language can lead to their losing their train of thought mid-explanation, really putting a damper on the quality of teaching.
The courses here are so strange: my first three each last two weeks, and the final two are each one week long. Every weekday, I spend between four and six hours in lecture with a one-and-a-half hour lunch break. Each two to three hour lecture has a different speaker and while all the talks are somehow tied to the overarching theme of the course, they are in no way related to each other. There are no course syllabi and, while some courses will require a paper presentation from each student, otherwise there are no assignments, just exams in January which seem, based on previous years’ exams, to be based only mildly on what was taught in class and mostly on one’s ability to analyze neuroscience research and publications. This is somewhat useful on one hand because I can spend my study time mostly trying to learn the neuroscience that I think will prove most useful for me, but on the other hand I find it quite disconcerting as I’ve been thoroughly trained to learn every detail of almost anything that appears in a course lecture. Also, the independence offered from the almost complete absence of assignments is severely testing my self-motivation, and I’m not so sure I’m actually measuring up.
The students are another story. I haven’t actually gotten to know many yet. Declan is in nearly all my courses, and while we tag-team the introductions to the real French kids (everyone else in class), mostly it’s resulted in a collection of names. We sometimes attempt conversation, but that trails off when language barriers start killing conversation. I’m not really sure what to talk about with these kids either. As a final motivation-killer, come January I won’t see most of them ever again since I’ll be moving to the Institut Pasteur. One thing I really like about the scientific Master’s/PhD program over here is that at any one time you are either taking courses or working in a lab, unlike in the US where you are expected to balance the two for your first couple years of the program. This fall I am taking all my classes through the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), which will award me my Master’s. (Though the École des Neurosciences de Paris Île-de-France--the ENP-- is funding me, they are not a degree-awarding institution and they can enroll their students in almost any university in Paris as best suits the student’s research interests. Of the six first-years in the ENP taking Master’s courses this fall, four of us are at UPMC, also known as the Université de Paris VI (Paris VI for short), divided between two different neuroscience programs, and the last two students are enrolled at Paris V.) Come January, I will begin a six-month rotation at the Institut Pasteur where I will do my Master’s thesis (or stage as it’s called here) with David DiGregorio. I’ll be working on optical methods for imaging synaptic activity, becoming quite the little physicist (which actually sounds very exciting to me!) but I’ll write more on that later. Anyway, come spring term all the Cellular and Integrative Neuroscience Master’s students from UPMC will disperse between various research universities and institutes across Paris, so unless I see some strong friendship potential, my energies are best reserved for the springtime when I start meeting the people who, assuming I like the Digregorio lab during my stage, will be my peers for the subsequent three to four years of my PhD thesis.
In the meantime, I’m just trying to adjust to life over here. The food is great and Project Boulangerie is well underway. (I am trying to map the city of Paris out according to its best boulangeries, by my preferences, which means don’t expect a thorough review of rich chocolate-y desserts.) Yoga is great and my Spanish and Italian conversation classes, which meet weekly, are pretty darn cool. My major goal is to learn to keep Italian and Spanish separate in my head and in my speech. Otherwise, sometimes it’s fairly lonely here, but I suppose that’s all part of the adjustment period. And I’ll be back in the US for the holidays in only 38 days, believe it or not!
But I, as the rest of Paris, will survive this strike (and many more over the next few years, I am certain). Getting beyond the difficulties of transportation, there is still the challenges faced one passing through the classroom doors. Here, things become a bit more interesting:
I am currently enrolled in the second year of a Master’s program in Cellular and Integrative Neuroscience. There are two catches: 1. Most of my classes are in French, and 2. I have never studied neuroscience before. Surprisingly enough, catch #2 is proving most challenging. In fact, this past week and next week I have a brief linguistic reprieve as the second of my two-week intensive seminars is actually taught in English. I have discovered that when the teaching staff are all native French speakers, it’s actually a lot easier to follow their lectures in French. Often enough in English, their rhythm of speaking is hard to follow and their struggle with the language can lead to their losing their train of thought mid-explanation, really putting a damper on the quality of teaching.
The courses here are so strange: my first three each last two weeks, and the final two are each one week long. Every weekday, I spend between four and six hours in lecture with a one-and-a-half hour lunch break. Each two to three hour lecture has a different speaker and while all the talks are somehow tied to the overarching theme of the course, they are in no way related to each other. There are no course syllabi and, while some courses will require a paper presentation from each student, otherwise there are no assignments, just exams in January which seem, based on previous years’ exams, to be based only mildly on what was taught in class and mostly on one’s ability to analyze neuroscience research and publications. This is somewhat useful on one hand because I can spend my study time mostly trying to learn the neuroscience that I think will prove most useful for me, but on the other hand I find it quite disconcerting as I’ve been thoroughly trained to learn every detail of almost anything that appears in a course lecture. Also, the independence offered from the almost complete absence of assignments is severely testing my self-motivation, and I’m not so sure I’m actually measuring up.
The students are another story. I haven’t actually gotten to know many yet. Declan is in nearly all my courses, and while we tag-team the introductions to the real French kids (everyone else in class), mostly it’s resulted in a collection of names. We sometimes attempt conversation, but that trails off when language barriers start killing conversation. I’m not really sure what to talk about with these kids either. As a final motivation-killer, come January I won’t see most of them ever again since I’ll be moving to the Institut Pasteur. One thing I really like about the scientific Master’s/PhD program over here is that at any one time you are either taking courses or working in a lab, unlike in the US where you are expected to balance the two for your first couple years of the program. This fall I am taking all my classes through the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), which will award me my Master’s. (Though the École des Neurosciences de Paris Île-de-France--the ENP-- is funding me, they are not a degree-awarding institution and they can enroll their students in almost any university in Paris as best suits the student’s research interests. Of the six first-years in the ENP taking Master’s courses this fall, four of us are at UPMC, also known as the Université de Paris VI (Paris VI for short), divided between two different neuroscience programs, and the last two students are enrolled at Paris V.) Come January, I will begin a six-month rotation at the Institut Pasteur where I will do my Master’s thesis (or stage as it’s called here) with David DiGregorio. I’ll be working on optical methods for imaging synaptic activity, becoming quite the little physicist (which actually sounds very exciting to me!) but I’ll write more on that later. Anyway, come spring term all the Cellular and Integrative Neuroscience Master’s students from UPMC will disperse between various research universities and institutes across Paris, so unless I see some strong friendship potential, my energies are best reserved for the springtime when I start meeting the people who, assuming I like the Digregorio lab during my stage, will be my peers for the subsequent three to four years of my PhD thesis.
In the meantime, I’m just trying to adjust to life over here. The food is great and Project Boulangerie is well underway. (I am trying to map the city of Paris out according to its best boulangeries, by my preferences, which means don’t expect a thorough review of rich chocolate-y desserts.) Yoga is great and my Spanish and Italian conversation classes, which meet weekly, are pretty darn cool. My major goal is to learn to keep Italian and Spanish separate in my head and in my speech. Otherwise, sometimes it’s fairly lonely here, but I suppose that’s all part of the adjustment period. And I’ll be back in the US for the holidays in only 38 days, believe it or not!
No comments:
Post a Comment