The Win­ter semes­ter started in early Jan­u­ary, but I can’t seem to put myself into study mode. First, there is my very full-time job. I work in an envi­ron­ment where futile things such as eat­ing and sleep­ing are almost frowned upon, let alone study­ing. And then, there is the usual win­ter blues. Hard to walk to class after a full day of work when it’s cold, windy and pitch black.

Last semes­ter, one of my class was just fucked up. The pro­fes­sor, as well as both of the teacher’s assis­tants, were native French speak­ers but the class was taught in Eng­lish. It was a strug­gle to under­stand what they were say­ing… and it got me mad. I’m not one to make fun of lan­guage abil­i­ties but come on, don’t teach an Eng­lish class if you are not com­fort­able with the lan­guage! And shall I remind you that I was myself “forced” to attend my classes in Eng­lish because I couldn’t prove that French was my mother tongue? I love Canada but this coun­try has an issue with language(s).

I mostly stud­ied on my own. The class quickly gave up on the prof (at one point, I showed up in class and only 8 were attend­ing out of 200 stu­dents) and we were left with a mas­sive list of read­ings to com­plete. I actu­ally learned a lot from them so I can’t com­plain too much.

I’m also happy with my grades so far: two A– and — believe it or not — I passed my French as a sec­ond lan­guage test! (insert sar­cas­tic laugh here) The Uni­ver­sity actu­ally sent me a very nice framed “cer­ti­fi­cat de bilin­guisme” that I will def­i­nitely keep for memory.

This semes­ter, I’m tak­ing a first year class (a pre-requisite). Not to sound arro­gant, but I find it very basic and I’m shocked to see a lot of stu­dents don’t mas­ter basic gram­mar skills… or lack gen­eral knowl­edge for that mat­ters. Last class, the teacher asked the stu­dents to name states. First answer of a stu­dent? Africa. Sec­ond answer? Québec. Argh.

I feel like an out­cast. Stu­dents are pretty “young and inno­cent” and I don’t really fit in. The prof also seem fond of group work, which I hate because I really don’t have time to hang out at uni­ver­sity with other stu­dents after class. I know I sound anti­so­cial — I’m not, but I must admit that all my group work expe­ri­ences have been lame. I love work­ing as a team in a work set­ting but not in academics.I guess I’m learn­ing now…

But That’s Where I Was Going!	Phone Booths
Lounge	In The Library Elevator
Hall­way	Hall­way
Study­ing	Offices Or Rat Cages…?
Play­ing	Swim­ming

Related posts:

1. On Cam­pus (Part I)
2. On Cam­pus (Part II)
3. Sights of Paris (Part II)
4. Win­ter­lude !
5. Smells Like Fall…