Elizabeth Brauders, our French Erasmus Blogger, reflects on the highs and lows of her Erasmus Experience.
French examinations are casual. Seriously casual. You walk in, sling your coat and bag over the back of your chair, plonk your mobile on the desk so you can use it to check the time, and sometimes even take out your notes to help you answer questions. Phone rings during the exam? No worries, just answer, tell the caller you’re in an exam and that you’ll get back to them, hang up and give the professor an apologetic smile. Need to go to the bathroom/smoke a cigarette? Go ahead and walk out and come back when you wish! At first this system is amusing, ideal some would say (those with the desire to cheat mostly). The only apparent downside appeared to be how the lack of invigilators in robes leaves zero imagination space for one to pretend one is in Hogwarts. However, the real downside became evident to me last Wednesday as I laid my pen down having completed my final examination. Without all the ceremony and atmosphere of exams it seems like such an anti-climax to be finished. There is no overwhelming sense of accomplishment or relief and due to Erasmus students all taking different courses, no big end-of-exams night with friends to celebrate. Instead I went home, painted on a Nutella moustache, and had a serious think about my year as a French étudiante. While my apartment contract means I have another month of holiday time to enjoy here, my official Erasmus year has ended, so it is time to solemnly reflect.
Before going on Erasmus my expectations were sky-high. Everything I had heard was about what an amazing experience it was going to be, how much I was going to love it, how I wouldn’t have to do any work at all and would generally spend my time inebriated and laughing, while talking to marvelous people about how marvelous we all were. To put it bluntly, the first semester
was a let-down. Taking English classes abroad was quite easy, but French ones turned out to be extremely difficult. All of a sudden I became aware of the scope of French accents, and just how many of those I didn’t understand at all. I was scraping a pass in some classes, and I’m pretty sure that was due to the generosity of the tutors involved. From being followed home from the supermarket by a man demanding my number, to being threatened on the night bus and inappropriately touched on the day bus, nothing seemed to be quite as I’d expected. By the time I came home for Christmas I admit I had settled in, had adjusted, but didn’t love it as others had before. I started to wonder what was wrong with me. How dare I not be having the greatest year of my life? Clearly my expectations of wandering through a lavender field, wearing a beret and discussing my views on Proust with a horizontal-stripe-wearing man called Jean-Claude were just too high!
I returned for the second semester with suitably lowered expectations and an increased desire to get to really know my fellow Erasmus students, to cultivate relationships instead of experiences. Friendships from the first term crystallised and solidified. We began to share who we were along with our cultures. I made some amazing friends, and all of a sudden the moments I’d been craving seemed to happen organically. I found myself swimming in the Mediterranean at 2am on a February morning, learning how to make socca pancakes in a gîte in the foothills of the Alps, tasting home-made Serbian liqueurs at a traditional birthday party, watching the Russian ballet in a French opera house, wandering Amsterdam’s Van Gogh museum at night, and bargaining in Italian at an Italian market with friends from Canada, Newfoundland (Oh it’s different, trust me!), Tennessee, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Serbia, The Philippines, Jamaica, Cameroon, Venezuela and, of course, la belle France. I can now sing “If You’re Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands” in flawless Serbian.
A fortuitous encounter on the part of a friend also lead to a weekend in the French countryside in the idyllic village of Brignoles, just outside Aix-en-Provence. Rambles around vineyards, mountains and rivers in the company of our charmant French hosts and their equally charmant friends reminded me of why I’d fallen in love with France, first as a child on holiday in Paris, and again as a teenager in school in Biarritz. Once the seemingly-formal initial interaction is over, the people are amongst the warmest in the world, eager to show you around and help you discover their home, and genuinely hoping for you to see the same beauty in their country that they do. Dear reader, I did.
Leaving the countryside that weekend made me feel as though I was leaving France to return to a completely foreign multicultural metropolis which had nevertheless become my home, filled with my Erasmus family. The year also made me appreciate my actual family (and friends) at home. The effort made to stay in touch, the unwavering support, the letters, presents, surprises, and tearful Skype calls, made me love them all the more. It has been a rollercoaster experience that I have loved and hated, I admit my review of the good times does gloss over the depths of the bad. (If this article is too sentimental for you see earlier piece in re: what I hated about Nice, or take the classic route of leaving an abusive comment below). The intensely personal experience and the range of universities and people means every single Erasmus year is entirely different from the next, but for what it’s worth, here is my advice to next year’s Erasmus students: over-prepare, get learning agreements out of the way as soon aspossible, befriend local students who understand the system, open your mind, lower your expectations, and you may just have the oft-promised best year of your college life.
