Supplementary Rant

So, no vocab words or cute pictures or even a week number since I am smack dab in the middle of Week 11. No no, I am just PISSED. Overall, my stay here has been great and I am so glad I came- a pretty incredible thing for me to say considering how terrible my health + this university has been. I blame my time getting sick, being sick, and recovering from sickness for this belated anger at the Université de Bordeaux, UC Berkeley, and EAP. I guess before I just thought that class would eventually resume and that when I had a final assignment I would at least have a couple lectures worth of notes or SOMETHING. I was also just never really that upset because I always assume the grève would end soon. Here is how it works: grève organizers (students and profs, I think) hold a general assembly to vote on whether the school should be bloqué for the next week or so. The only people's whose votes count are those present (organizational pitfall here!) They schedule "re-votes" pretty arbitrarily but it is always at 12:30pm and usually on Monday, with that vote lasting until Wednesday or Thursday at which point they vote again to have a re-vote the next Monday and on and on and on...

I didn't really want to think about this in depth beacuse it makes me sad, but here goes. We started our classes on January 19th. As of the week of February 2nd, there was grève partielle and only a couple of my profs would talk about the grève during class instead of teach, and we thought it was exciting and cool that we were here to see history being made, and funny that the French really are always on strike. I thought it was pretty cool and also pretty funny that it was my college (Bordeaux III) and my department (History) that were leading the charge. A week or two off of school? Cool, right? But we began to wonder how long this was going to go on...it had been a month...the government was doing nothing in response...more and more of my classes weren't being held...how were we going to get our credit...I support their cause wholeheartedly, but... then it hit us. The school was blocked Monday, March 9th. Blocked meaning tables block the doors and you have to talk to angry grèvistes to be able to be let in. They decided on Monday to be blocked until a re-vote on Thursday...aaaand then the cycle began. Today they decided to stay blocked until Monday, March 30 when (you guessed it) they're going to re-vote. Classes end on April 18th. That means that 3 weeks remain in which they could start teaching again suddenly. What would they teach? Where would they start? If the government hasn't made any changes, why would they stop the grève now? They've already come so far, right?

So we are "teaching ourselves." This is not what I signed up for. I was always understanding of the situation because honestly I don't know what else EAP or Cal can do. I am still understanding, but at the same time incredibly frustrated. Work based completely on self motivation without any form of deadline is probably my worst nightmare.

Well you know what? It doesn't matter. It really doesn't because this is what I need to do if I want credit for my courses and for my time here not to have gone to waste- period. So I might as well stop complaining and start working. (There's that Protestant work ethic!)