When I filled out the application to study abroad in Strasbourg, I took a deep breath, crossed my fingers and signed up to take the majority of my classes at a French university. I knew it would be a challenge, but I looked forward to mastering the French language and immersing myself in a new experience.

But last Monday, as I walked away from my history lecture, I wasn’t thinking about the new vocabulary I’d picked up or the books I was reading. I was thinking, “What the expletive did I sign myself up for?”

That Monday was a particularly brutal one. I’d taken my first test at the University of Strasbourg, which was a chronology exam covering 700 years of medieval history. Between a slight procrastination on my part, a slight misunderstanding about what the test would cover and the fact that no sane human being can memorize 700 years of dates, the test was exactly as bad as it sounds.

And, as I was discovering, the French grading scale is inherently more rigorous than the American model because of the different nature of higher education. French students don’t apply to college. Anyone who passes the baccalaureate, the famously stressful exam given in France at the end of high school, can enroll in a public French university of their choice. But without the ability to raise admissions standards, French universities attain selectivity by using tough grading standards to whittle down each graduating class.

But after a yoga class at the university gym helped me de-stress from the trauma of that test, I was soon able to focus on the positive aspects of taking classes in the French university again.

One of the obvious advantages is an increased vocabulary. The type of academic language used in textbooks, while not always applicable to conversation, is an important step toward fluency. And if, like me, you take a class in contemporary theatre, you also learn an entire set of innuendos and swear words, the usefulness of which can be left to the imagination.

But French professors evidently don’t believe in baby steps. Coming from the American university system, I expected a few small papers and quizzes to pave the way to a final project or exam. Instead, my professors simply handed out impossibly long reading lists and announced that on the last day of class we would take a three-hour exam and/or hand in a 15-page research paper and/or present our firstborn child for sacrifice.

In keeping with this independent learning style, almost no time is allotted to questions or discussion in my classes. Instead, as the professor lectures, students jot down notes at the speed of light evidently not missing a word.

The feat is both impressive and infuriating when you haven’t followed your professor’s train of thought for the past 15 minutes and your notes are a collection of random nouns and question marks.

But one of the benefits of the hands-off teaching style is that professors have fewer rules when it comes to the nuts and bolts details of assignments. Rather than measuring our margins and double-checking that we used the Modern Language Association rather than the American Psychological Association format, French professors tend to go straight to the content.

This past Thursday, I had my first major school assignment since my disastrous history test. I had to read my textual analysis aloud to the class, an exercise that, like reading textbooks in a foreign language, is ultimately rewarding but also slightly terrifying. Luckily, I was allowed to read from the printed copy of my paper, and I very quickly gave up on the nuances of pronunciation in favor of robotically reading the words off the page.

All in all, the presentation went about as well as I could have hoped. I couldn’t tell if the blank looks on my classmates’ faces were due to my mispronunciations or the fact that no one, in any language, wants to hear analysis of Verlaine hours before the weekend begins.

Once I finished, my professor was kind enough to say I’d done well, before going over all the grammatical errors in my outline. But that was good enough for me.

My professors may not believe in baby steps, but that’s exactly what I’m learning to take.

Maggie Cregan is a sophomore history and magazine journalism major. From Cleveland to Syracuse to Strasbourg, she enjoys rocking out and getting hopelessly lost. If you want to talk to her about this column, or are Keith Richards, reach her at mmcregan@syr.edu and follow her on Twitter at @MaggieCregan_SU.

Published on February 17, 2014 at 11:12 pm