First impressions of France: They most likely won’t tell you about a problem until it is borderline too late to do anything about it, and even then they won’t offer a solution.
Note to Self–always have a backup plan (maybe two or three pending on the situation at hand), and always be persistent almost to the point of annoyance and/or harassment. Also, start to let go of the “Metro NY/Boston” combination attitude you have developed since you were born, as it clearly won’t fly overseas.
AUP (American University of Paris) is not the best at organizational skills and relaying information to the person that needs the relaying. I found this out about a month and a half after submitting my course registration for Fall semester. Apparently, 400 and 500 level courses are considered graduate level (even though Northeastern undergrad goes up to 900), and thus three out of my five classes were graduate level. Of course, even though I gave 10 alternative courses, I was still officially registered for only two classes.
This is the point where I began to press the panic button repeatedly, as I need to pick a specific number of classes to graduate on time with my double major, double minor. Yes, I am aware that this is slightly ambitious on my part, but I guess that’s just me wanting to learn as much as I possibly can, wherever I can.
After countless of emails between my study abroad advisory and AUP coordinators in both the US office in Denver and Paris, I had had enough and picked up the phone to dial AUP directly, only to speak to three different people, before being told to go back to my computer and email more individuals.
Eventually, after a throng of emails and an increase in our phone bill from international calling, I finally became registered for Fall classes. I’m taking four (they won’t let me take five, even though that’s what they originally told me), and include:
1). Broadcast News Writing
2). Rhetoric and Persuasion
3). Visual Rhetoric
4). Feature Journalism
I’m pretty relieved that I’ll be able to get some of my journalism requirements out of the way, which leaves me for some more options come spring for my comm major as well as my psych and history concentrations. More so, if my schedule is the same if not better than Fall, Friday’s will be off as well and quite possibly Monday’s too. This means that I can go visit Marshall Cat in Florence. Dream score.
