The Academic Part

I've been having so much fun in Paris that I almost forgot about school. Almost. This week and last week we have been in our propedutiques which are language-intensive review courses to prepare us for class next week. They are based on a placement test that we took the first week we were here. The course starts off as a review and then continues throughout the semester and turns into our mandatory grammar/culture class.

Today I had an appointment with my academic advisor at IES to register for the rest of the courses that I will be taking. After going over everything, I found the perfect classes to take and I am pretty excited to start "real" school next week!
Here is what my schedule will look like:

Monday
10:45-12:15 French Foreign Policy
12:30-2:00 Literature of Comic Strips

Tuesday
9:00-10:30 Grammar/Culture
12:30-2:00 History of French Civilization
3:30-5:00 TD

Wednesday
10:45-12:15 French Foreign Policy
12:30-2:00 Literature of Comic Strips

Thursday
9:00-10:30 Grammar/Culture
12:30-2:00 History of French Civilization

Friday
11:00-12:30 French Medieval History

*French Foreign Policy will count towards both my French major and my International Studies major

*Literature of Comic Strips sounds like a "blow off" class, however it actually covers very serious material. In France, they use comics to present controversial issues about politics and religion (we do that in the U.S. sometimes too) and they view comic strips as another literary device. For example, the animated film Persepolis was based off of a graphic novel discussing the Iranian Revolution

*The Medieval History course is at the Institut Catholique de Paris and I will be in a class with real French students. It will be hard, but the exterior courses are a great way to improve my language skills and potentially meet French people my age

*TD is the traveaux dirigees course to supplement the Medieval History course. It will be taught by a teaching assistant and it will be a seminar-type class where we discuss things from the professor's lecture. It is at the ICP