Sara Mitra’s Bon Voyage: Institut Catholique

Recently, API has informed us that we have to transfer to Institut Catholique, a private university that does not have striking and will grant us college credit. The grève at Paris VII has been highly disappointing and hindered our ability to start classes. Like most college students, I was initially very enthusiastic about not having classes, but now I am just frustrated.

From what I have seen it seems to be just as much of an inconvenience for the French students, who have started teaching their own classes, and some of the French professors think striking faculty is hardly progressive and have continued teaching classes. Unfortunately, I did not have any of these professors. In the past month, I attended three classes at Paris VII; the James Bond cinema class, a French writing class, and a French grammar class where the teacher only came for five minutes to tell us apologetically that she would not be teaching class.

For the record, I really tried to hold back from ranting on this subject (most evident in my last post being February 4). I have accepted that I have no other choice but to attend Catho, since attaining college credit for this semester is my highest priority.

I will start classes on February 23, and one of my classes is Les Médias en France. There were no journalism classes offered at Paris VII so I am excited to have this new opportunity. My program has also insisted that Catho is a much better school, describing it as the equivalent of Boston College in Paris. Since higher education is free in France, only those who are higher middle class attend private colleges.