CM, TD, Bibliotheque

Absence from Cornell, and introduction to a foreign system, make me realize just how much I miss so many basic aspects of the Big Red.

At Cornell, there are three main pillars of academics: the lecture, section (discussion, lab, or fieldwork), and library. Superficially, the same division exists in France: the weekly CM (cours magistral) is a lecture lasting 60-90 minutes delivered to all of the students taking the class; the weekly TD (travaux diriges) element of the class breaks the students into groups of around fifteen to twenty, and lasts 2-3 hours; and there is a university library, just around the corner from the Pantheon.

I'm taking four classes, all of them at Paris IV (I passed the very easy French language test required in order to opt out of an otherwise mandatory French class taught by EDUCO). On my academic menu, I have four courses: 1) International Relations of Medieval Europe, 2) The France of Louis XIV, 3) 18th-century French society, and 4) Emergence of the Arab World 1798-1914. I've been to 2 CMs for each, and attended the first TD, except for the Louis XIV TD, which is tomorrow morning at 8:00. I begin all of my days relatively early, usually at 8:00, but never finish later than 2:00 in the afternoon. It's a 40- to 50- minute walk from my dorm to Paris IV, so a fair amount of my time is taken up just in getting to class. On my way to class each day, I pass by the Parc Montsouris, the monument to the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Observatory, the Jardins Luxembourg, and the Pantheon.

CMs are enjoyable, and not unbearably long. All of the professors wear suits and ties, every day, and it is absolutely necessary to address them all as vous (formal "you"). The professors are as cordial as they come, and though very professional, are extremely welcoming, especially to foreigners. There are a surprisingly large amount of foreign students here, most of them through an intermediary program known as ERASMUS; among the first questions I'm always asked by instructors is if I'm with ERASMUS. Surprisingly, lecture halls fill up from the front to the back; I am accustomed to students sitting as far back as possible. Here, students line up in the hallway before the start of class, maybe 15 minutes in advance, in order to be first in the room, to grab front seats. It isn't always easy to hear just what the professors are saying if you're in the back, something I never noticed at Cornell, because I near the front, in the first occupied row, if possible. Not possible here. In any case, the three greatest differences between the American and French systems are 1) French professors have zero contact with their students, 2) office hours do not exist, and 3) though there is a bibliography, there are no reading assignments meant to be completed each day. Bibliographies can contain over 100 volumes; in other words, students are required to pick what and how much to read for the CM.

TDs are long, and sometimes boring. They are not discussion sections; they are lectures delivered to a smaller class size. I cannot tell whether the instructors are young professors, or grad students (or whatever the equivalent is here), but they also wear suits, and are not on a first-name basis with the students. Every single one of the 4 TDs I have attended so far has followed exactly the same model: the instructor hands out a fasicule, or course packet; for each week, there are two short readings, each about 3-5 pages long. The instructor reads down the list of readings, and every student volunteers to prepare an expose, written or oral, on a particular reading. There are very, very strict guidelines for exposes, which are not gone over in class, because all of the French students have been preparing exposes for three years now. (To receive the first post-high school degree, the LICENSE, requires 3 years; all of my classes are third-year courses, and include MASTER students.) For instance, for my 18th-century France class, I chose an excerpt from Montesquie's Lettres Persanes, which I read with Prof. Kaplan, and absolutely adored. Luckily, I'm going to receive a little bit of coaching about how to prepare an expose. But the form of the TD is that of a lecture, only on a smaller scale. In this same class, for instance, I received an incredibly boring lecture on French historiography, which was also very disheartening for someone with academic aspirations, for reasons I can't quite explain. Unfortunately, the sheer number of foreign students has impelled my Arab World Prof (same instructor in CM and TD) to treat them as a separate category, preparing a different kind of assignment than their French peers. Although I could easily understand more lenient grading for non-Francophones, I think it's rather stupid, as well as discouraging, to be denied equality with one's peers in this way. This marks me off, definitively, as different, something I don't like.

Finally, the library. Oh, boy, where to begin; the Cornell system of libraries is superior in absolutely every respect. Assuming most of you know the policies of Olin, Mann, and Uris, I'm just going to list what I can only see as faults of the Sorbonne library:

1) Hours are 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
2) Students may not access the stacks, but must place an order on the library catalog, and are obligated to wait two days to receive their books.
3) Students may only borrow 2 books at a time.
4) Loans are for 14 days.
5) No Borrow Direct, no Interlibrary Loan.
6) Students must apply for a library card.
7) Students must use their library card to gain admittance, as well as to exit the library; they must pass through metro-like turnstiles.
8) There are no printers in the library.
9) One must exit the library in order to use the bathrooms.
10) No Libe Cafe.

I am as shocked by the fact that the library closes as the EDUCO team is of the fact that American students don't respect their bodies (as they put it), and don't get 8 hours of sleep every night. I've spoken to my Australian friend Nick, who told me that in Australia, university is just a part of one's life; it doesn't consume one's life, as it does in the states, where one identifies with one's graduating class, with one's hallway, with one's dormitory, etc., very strongly. I think that it's the same here in France: students live with their parents, and, I guess, that means that they go to bed before midnight each night (at the moment of my typing this, it's 12:17 in the morning, and I have an 8:00 class tomorrow). I know that I could never have writte that Hume paper with such restrictive guidelines.

Two notes before I finish.

The French make up for their horrendous libraries with wonderful, wonderful bookstores. There are some massive used bookstores here, in the Latin quarter, on the Rue Saint Michel, just south of the street's eponymous statue.

French universities, including Paris I, IV, and VII, have departments of geography, and of demography. Maybe these fields are covered in the U.S. by history, econ, and political science (gov at CU)? I don't know. I've only heard of one demographics course ever being taught at Cornell, and that was before I was born, and taught by Prof. Kaplan.

I will update again, sometime after Yom Kippur. Is there anything that anyone is curious about, that I haven't written about? Let me know.

~JD

"Ces grandes chose paraitront petites un jour, quand elles seront confondues dans la multitude immense des revolutions qui bouleversent le monde, et il n'en resterait qu'un faible souvenir, si les arts perfectionnes ne repandaient sur ce siecle une gloire unique qui ne perira jamais" [These mighty happenings will appear insignificant one day, when they will be confounded in the immense multitudes of the revolutions which overturn the world, and nothing would remain of them but a feeble memory, if the perfected arts had not draped upon this century a unique glory which will never perish] (Voltaire, Le Siecle de Louis XIV, p. 561).