French School is Hard

My first week of French Classes could best be described on a scale of Really Confident to Holy Shit Why Am I Here? In order to keep up with my major and my minors I have to take 2 300-level classes in French, and at least one 200-level Psychology course. My first two classes of the week were a grammar and a writing class, both of which were designed for American or foreign programs in Montpellier. They were both relatively easy classes and the coursework was similar to a college French course (exercises and workbooks, etc.). After my first day I was entirely confident that I would do just fine and the semester would not be as challenging as everyone had informed me it would be.

On my second day of classes I had yet another class, Conversation 1, that is taught by one of the people who works with the UMN - Montpellier program. After this class my confidence went sky high and I was really beaming from the notion that I would be okay. Then I got to my integrated class (Dun Dun Dun..But Actually).

Side note, finding buildings on this campus has been a struggle in its own. There are two types of buildings here, Bâtiment (A, B, C,D, E, etc) and Ampi (A, B,C,D). Now I assumed that just like at Wheaton, you see a number next to your class and that is where you go. No, here there are two buildings with the letter D just one is called "building" and the other is called "amphitheater". So needless to say, Lydia and I walked to the wrong building and were late to our first and only integrated class and were forced to sit towards the back.  Also super happy that I wasn't alone for this class or else I would have lost it. S/O to Lydia: Mac 406! 

So our professor for our Clinical Psychology class walks in sits down at a table in front of the entire class and begins to talk. For the first 30 mins we basically understood what was going on, minus a few things here or there. Then everything went downhill.  As we were taking shitty note but notes nonetheless, our professor suddenly says something and every one's hands go flying up, except for ours. Confused about what just happened we laugh it off because its clearly funny that we didn't understand. As the class continues to go on, we are beginning to understand less and less. Students in our class are frantically writing notes and asking questions.  At this point I have given up on taking clean notes and just start writing gibberish (Literal gibberish...I tried to read it again last night and idk wtf was going on). A French student even turned to turned to ask Lydia a question, to which my response was well if you don't know whats going on then I sure as hell don't. After a while I stopped writing notes, started doodling, and talking to Lydia about the horrible stench coming from the Trolls Doll sitting next to her.

(My notes from Day 1 aka gibberish and doodles) 

At this point, Lydia and I are low key so frustrated that everything is not hilarious. To make matters worse, this guy behind us sneezed during a moment silence and NO ONE laughed. Of course then we lost it and tried not to burst out laughing which just made the whole situation even more funny. Long story short we walked out of class hysterically laughing to cover up our very apparent struggle to understand in that class.

To make the week even worse on our third day, we had a discussion session the next day in which we signed up for a group oral project in where we need to discuss and explain Freud's Theories to a class of 30 students in French. So there's that to look forward to....

Everyone says that it takes at least 2-3 weeks of not understanding anything in class before to begin to understand. Cheers to Week 2 of classes!