Break Time!

After a not-so-grueling 6 weeks of classes, it's finally midterm week. Back at Fisher, those words probably would have made me a bit uneasy, but here in France, midterm week just refers to a week off at the halfway point of the semester. Not a bad deal.

When I was planning for my time abroad, I had assumed that I would be taking a trip to somewhere exotic this week, but that won't be the case. As much as I love to travel, it's not nearly as fun without people to go with or people to visit, so I decided I'm just going to save whatever money I would have spent on a trip now and really have a great time when my mom visits in December.

While there's not a big vacation in the works, a few of us from class are going to be visiting our classmate Xavier-Freddy's family home in Chaillevette, about 2.5 hours from here. While there, we will be visiting a very old lighthouse, possibly flying in a small plane to see some beautiful views of the area from up above, exploring a nearby forest, and enjoying plenty of local wine and food, including a very special oyster dish for which the area is famous. It will be a nice, relaxing break, and it will be a fantastic opportunity to spend some more time with my classmates without school weighing on our minds.

Speaking of school, I should probably update a bit about my classes. This semester I am taking a courseload of 7 classes, plus a few two-day seminars on topics such as intercultural management and negotiation skills built into the curriculum. Since the Audencia MBA is a one-year program and it only starts in September each year, I am taking many core classes that I took last year (Organizational Behavior, Managerial Economics, Global Business and Corporate Financial Accounting). They have a bit more of an international spin than the ones at Ohio State did, but it is a lot of repetition for me. There are a couple of new courses though, including HR management, international marketing, and business law.

Unlike Ohio State, we don't have a set weekly schedule. Instead, we have class when the professors are available to teach. We've only had 2 sessions of law, we haven't even started international marketing yet, but we're already done with accounting. It's kind of strange, but I'm used to it now. The nice thing about having three straight weeks of accounting is that we never had time to forget what we'd learned, so by the time we took the final on Wednesday, I think most of us felt very comfortable with the material. I know I finally understood the basics, which I certainly didn't after taking accounting last year. The prof here just had a very different teaching style, and it worked out better for me.

In general, the classes here aren't terribly stressful for me (though that may be because I've already had most of the subjects before). They're long sessions (3 hours each... sometimes with two sessions of one same class in the same day), and there is a lot of reading to do, but I find the class discussions fairly interesting, so the three hours usually passes pretty quickly. The professors are interested in hearing about how the subjects they're teaching us actually apply to our experiences, so that's refreshing as well.

In terms of grading, most of the classes are graded on two elements: continuous assessment and the final exam. The ratio is either 20%/80% or 50%/50%, just depends on the professor. I have two papers that are due at the end of the semester (each less than 8 pages), so I may actually write them next week. I'll probably get bored walking around the city for more than a couple hours at a time, so I might as well do something productive with my time.

Other than that, I'll probably just do some boutique shopping and try to find some gifts for my family and friends. I know France has a lot of good shopping, I just haven't found a lot of time to explore the little shops yet. No better time than now I guess!