Crazy Little Thing Called Course Registration

(For your viewing pleasure, I have included some photos from my exploration of the area around the Museum of Contemporary art, although they have little connection to my post. Enjoy!)

Entrance to the Museum of Contemporary Art (Personal Photo)

Class registration was... interesting. And chaotic. 

At UWO, we register for our courses entirely online. If a class is full, we can register for another class and then swap when there’s a spot. Then there is an add/drop period, after which you’re stuck in the courses you’ve signed up for. For the most part, you then attend lectures on the first day of classes.

At the University of Nice, tutorials and electives are separate from lectures, at least in terms of registration. The entire campus signs up for those courses in the same room, regardless of year or program. For lectures, you just show up during the first week of class. Essentially, you audit your courses until sometime in October, when you register for exams. This is in place of an add/drop period, for if you decide to drop a course, you simply stop attending class and don’t sign up for the exam.

The hour before this sign-up session, my classmates and I were being told about course registration in general. From our chairs, we could see the crowd amassing outside the room, pressing against the sides of the doors and occasionally creeping a toe over the threshold. 

La Tête Carrée (Personal Photo)

At some unseen signal, they swarmed into the room like ants and filled up every available seat. Then the professors then filed in and sat in the front rows. One of them announced where each year would be registering, but because of the acoustics of the room, I couldn’t hear much more than echos. Still, I managed to successfully manoeuvre my way around the room, pushing and shoving and saying “Excusez-moi” more times than I can count. There must be an art to it, since some people were weaving their way through the mass of bodies with seeming ease.

On another note, marks are given out of 20, and phantom whispers have told me, to my inner perfectionist’s horror, that it is incredibly difficult to do well in school here. I’m trying not to think about that—I have more pressing issues at the moment [such as getting my Carte de séjour]. 

 

The Acropolis (Personal Photo)

The credit system is also different. From my understanding, courses are valued in terms of “ECTS,” which seem to translate as: 1 hour of class = 2 ECTS. Most courses are 4 ECTS. Students require 30 ECTS per semester. Thankfully, as an exchange student, I don’t have to worry too much about this. I simply pick three courses worth 4 ECTS. At this moment in time, I’m planning on taking Phonology, Medieval French and Translation (although I’m going to check out the Sociolinguistics course and a Philology courses, too).

This semester, I will only have twelve hours of class per week... a welcome reprieve from my previous semester, which was twenty-two hours per week! Plus—wait for it, wait for it!—my weekend will begin Wednesday afternoon!

We likes that, doesn’t we, Preciousss?