Experience and exposure make a man powerful and fruitful. As per our course (Erasmus Mundus - ASC) curriculum, every student were mandatorily sent to any one of the universities in among the seven European countries, Germany (Leipzig), France (Lille), Spain (Madrid), Italy (Bologna), Norway (Bergen), Finland (Helsinki) and Poland (Krakow). I have chosen to go to Lille which is located in extreme north of France. I spent my last winter semester there in Lille with my wife immediately after my marriage. So it was a wonderful and romantic experience for both of us in Lille. This article will summarize my all kind of feelings in France.
Education system in France is different from Germany. In Germany only professors are allowed to lecture but in France it is not necessary. So that the scientists who have completed their post-doc, they can give lectures. The lectures were fruitful and friendly, since they interact with students individually. However, they could not organize their lectures like professors. Further, Equal important was paid on lectures, practical and seminars. Individual seminars and protocols were compulsory after the practical sessions. In spite of heavy load, at the end of the term, we felt that we learned something new and practised most important things. The resultant action was, we began to like this education system.
There was an association for international students, which conducts one day trips to visit nearby countries and cities in France with very low fare. This is organized at the beginning of every academic year. For example, Brussels (20 euro), Paris (20 euro), Amsterdam (20 euro, including boat ride around the city), London (30 euro) etc, because of this offers we immediately enrolled in that association and enjoyed two of the trips to Brussels and Amsterdam. Unfortunately, we could not visit Paris at that time but after the semester exams we arranged a three days trip to Paris and really had the awesome experiences and feelings on Eiffel tower, boat riding in Seines River. It was a great and thrilling experience when we were on Eiffel. We had a nice chance to see the most expensive painting in the world; Monalisa is placed in one of the largest museums in the world, Louvre in Paris.
The first thing which amazed us in Lille was the “driverless metro”. The university is located more than 20 km away from the city. This “driverless metro” connects our scientific city (university stop) to Lille city. Every time it was an exciting journey while travelling with that metro, since no driver. I was acting like a driver in very front of metro (smile). The second one was the highly sophisticated and superfast train TGV. This connects Lille to Paris in 1 hour (about 250 km). We felt very luxurious during the journeys.
About foods, French people give more important to foods especially to Lunch. They spend exactly 2 hours for lunch (12 to 14 hrs). Sometimes it may exceed but not reverse. Although few activities show them as lazy people, they are really sincere and hard workers. Furthermore, they were very helpful in all kinds especially our course secretary Mrs. Francine Chanier did all kind of official stuffs even which were not part of her job. She touched our hearts by caring us. Additionally, they arranged intensive and extensive French language classes to involve with their culture as quickly.
To conclude this article, France hosted us after marriage, has trained us to present seminars and reports very nicely, organized tours to Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris, made us happy by giving exposure to visit and travel in both “driverless metro” and the superfast TGV and given a chance to involve in French culture by teaching French. Hence, totally course at University of Lille, France was very nice experience for both of us.
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Enjoy the pictures and please post your comments to improve my postings. Have a nice day.
-Nagarajan Elumalai
1 comment:
Nice & brief article on your French educational experiences Nagu.
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