5. Advice for Uni-ing xo

Campus 

If you are studying languages, unless you're going completely rogue and taking a proper (i.e. not social) science module (no offence x), your lessons will all be in Aix, on Avenue Robert Schuman, in the ALLSH (Faculté des Arts, Lettres, Langues et Sciences Humaines) complex, specifically in the EGGER building. You will not have any lessons in Marseille. It would have been really helpful to know that before coming. You are most welcome.

Timetabling

First I think it is important to admit that I am one of -those people- who get an adrenaline rush at the prospect of organisation (I really like stationary, timetables, calendars etc... pls don't bully me). However, I also déteste online shopping and comparison (as soon as I have both Hostelworld and Air BnB tabs open I am OUTA THERE... I just can’t keep all the relevant info in my head, it makes me feel stressed). Sorting out a timetable was a regretful combination of the two that gave me some pleasure at finding things worked, followed by extreme frustration, voire rage, when my module choices proved inappropriate, or just shit. My advice would be to sign yourself up (you do this on a website called Gigue) (pronounced like the dance) for anything you could possibly enjoy, because it is much better to be in a position to drop things than trying to enrol in classes that are full (i.e. having to lurk in some virtual ether, watching the class availability online and waiting to pounce if somebody does drop out). Or worst case would be having to enrol in things you don’t particularly like because everything else is full and you have to make up credit points.

Credit points

I would really like to know why these are valued in multiples of three... there is no lower denomination so just... pourquoi? My modules add up to 27, Bristol demands 24 as a minimum. Modules worth 6 credits are 3 hours' teaching a week (usually in one go ft. a 20 minute pause) and modules worth 3 credits are 2 hours a week (sans pause). Je sais... I don't see the logic either... 

Also, you have to do 6 of your credits within the Département Étude du Monde Anglophone. So studying souvent your own country, toujours in your own language. I don't know why, I don't see how anyone benefits from this arrangement, but it's why I am taking the (previously complained about) Feminist Visual Arts Club module, which is taught in English. My other 3 credits are the translation module, which you have to have English as a mother tongue to take, so it's only got British Erasmus-ers in it and is therefore just like any ol' class I'd take in Bristol... but voilà...

Contact hours
I have 13 1/2 each week. In Bristol last term I had 14 so presque la même! But (not to jinx it) there is much less work to do at home in comparison. Hence my surprisingly regular blog updates :D ... again, you are most welcome. 

Seminars

Si je ne me trompe, the French approach to uni is that you get out what you put in. Hence the outrageously roundabout bureaucracy - to challenge your dedication, perhaps... and the bonus opportunities which can earn you an extra mark added to your final grade (which is out of 20, so an extra 5%!). Bonuses can be volunteering to do presentations, language tandems, 'soft skill' ateliers etc. This may be fake news but I'm pretty sure that attending a German film screening was worth something numerical... Anway, it's a stark contrast to the mollycoddling of our pricey British establishments; you have to sign yourself up for exams, you email teachers to say you'll do an oral on a certain topic and if you don't email you'll get a mark of zero. No-one is going to check up on you or make sure you've completed all the necessary steps. No-one makes exceptions for you and (*tautology alert*) deadlines are actually deadlines. If you have 3 absences from one class you aren't allowed to sit the exam, and if you're late you count as absent. It's a tough ol' world out there. I am using the first of my three Friday afternoon French class absence opportunities to go to Montpellier. Woe is me. 

(Le coucher de soleil à Montpellier)

Sport

The university has a scheme allowing you to do two sports classes a week completely free. They offer a massive range of sports including cool stuff (!) like windsurfing, climbing and horse riding. This is really really great (wazzup Bristol mental health services... we're paying £9,000 and the Français just €200...) but only if you manage to sign up quickly in the online frenzy, which unfortunately I didn't, so I'm afraid I can proffer no lived experience here. Everything I wanted to do (classes along the yoga, swimming, recreational dance vein) (i.e. individual and requiring no talent or former training) had been snapped up by the time I'd clocked the system. I think my taste in sports may not be that unusual. The 'cool stuff' is also very oversubscribed so if you go for that, ensure that you arise well in time for that 9AM enrolment kick off.

Transport

To get to Aix you need need get bus 50 from Gare Saint-Charles. This is the central train station and a focal point of the city. You will arrive there when you first get to Marseille no matter how you choose travel - it is a train, coach and metro station. The bus 50 goes every 5 minutes and they are always full. In the mornings you often have to miss one before you manage to elbow your way through the doors. Faites attention not to get the bus to Aix via La Parade which has dozens of stops en route and takes about an hour and a half (sans circulation). The stop for ALLSH is called La Beauvalle and buses that say via La Brossollette will stop there. Bon courage to any future commuters reading; it is a commitment but personellement I think it's worth it.

Food

Buy or pack some Tupperware. The canteen is okay-ish but really pricey, and the veggie sandwiches are all gone by lunchtime. Other than sarnies, valid options for ye veggeroonskies are limited to severely congealed pasta, or a slice of reliably brûléed pizza. There is a supermarket by the uni building but by about 12:30 the meal deal section has been annihilated. Also, on a side note, they don't really sell normal-sized packets of crisps here - just big sharing packets. I find this odd, and need to find a new emergency meal option...

I have not observed many vegetarian/vegans here. Perhaps my perspective has been warped by living in le Vegan Holy Land, Bristol.

On another *side note* I am addicted to cheese. Which I seriously never saw happening. Bread, yes. Wine, definitely. But cheese really just wasn't on my radar. I used to eschew chewable milk, and would definitely never intentionally stray from the holy triptych: cheddar, feta or mozzarella. Well, people, I am straying all over the frickin shop these days (literally - they often have multiple fridges full of fromage). And I've started to eat it on anything. I'd been having non-stop pasta or ricecakes (I'm not even gonna *start* on that strange new addiction), so for a change I thought I'd roast my sweet self some harissa-ey aubergine or whatever... and before I knew it I was slathering my veggies in my new favourite: a cheap imitation-Camembert. I piled Boursin atop my vegan chickpea curry... I wacked brie in my (vegan) pesto pasta... i felt incredibly cheesed off the other day (sorry) when my usual emmental sandwich wasn't on offer in the cafeteria. This substance has totally unanticipatedly taken me over: it now runs in my veins (or rather obstructs them, probably). I can sincerely say I regrette rien, though - truly only having not discovered this level of hedonistic pleasure sooner.

Update on the cafeteria: the pastries are amazing. Franchement I have had some pretty crummy croissants in Marseille (figuratively rather than literally crummy... that was main the problem) but this morning I finally got my fix. The coffee is good as well. I think I'm going to start bringing lunch and buying mon p'tit déj... In case you were wondering x

Fashun

At uni here, fashion is different than in Bristol. French students generally take the direct route to conformism (by shopping at H&M / Topshop) rather than the round-about way we Bristolian students go (via charity shops and through some highly-policed façade of individuality). People here aren't kidding themselves that shopping second hand adds a dimension to their personality, but then I suppose, neither are they supporting the market that is currently the only loosely sustainable approach to our seemingly insatiable consumerism. (I hope none of this sounds holier-than-thou, I'm trying to do some observation... eek, iffy topic, SOS, abort).

There is enough deviance, however, that I don't feel too shy about what I wear or how I look. TBH, I don't dress particularly *outrageously*, but I had been told that Marseille was very macho and was worrying before I came about feeling self-conscious. There was defo no need to worry. I don't mean to brag, but two girls have out n out *complimented* my leg hair... I thanked them and said it was all thanks to my time-consuming and costly maintenance ritual. My joke didn't translate well; both times it just caused some confusion. Women also don't seem to wear much make up here (probs cos of the sun => sweat situation in all honesty... maybe they do have it on in the mornings but by the time they've walked to the end of their road it's melted off). Anyway, point is, it's not a particularly vain-feeling city (@Paris).

Speaking of sun and sweat (as all the hip post-modernist podcasters like to cry: *SEGWAY*): at the beach, women present a full spectrum: some who sun their breasts like they're... I dunno... just another body part(!) And then some who wear alarmingly porous materials, fully covering their limbs. My concern for these women stems from the inevitable weight of wearing head-to-toe cotton in the sea, rather than any sham "menace de securité"... @FrenchLegislation. And actually having said that, I'm pretty sure this inappropriate/dangerous swim-gear has become necessary precisely because of the burkini ban... I hope this isn't sounding facetious, I really honestly think it's a drowning hazard.

Friends

I'm not going to discuss any people in particular because it's obviously a bit creepy for people to have their lives documented in third person (and also because I don't want to jinx any budding friendships teehee)... but néanmois I can offer some ways I have met people.

First of all, the university offered a language course to international students (no matter what subject they were studying) a week before term started (i.e. the last week of August). They didn't release this info until about 2 months before it began, so I imagine most punters had already made travel arrangements closer to the date that they would actually start their course. Very fortunately, I had decided to come halfway through August so that I could get to know the city a bit / find somewhere to live before term started (spoiler: I didn't). The course was a really great thing to do. The teaching wasn't brilliant and each student's niveau de compétences linguistiques was totally different, but I met some really nice people who are studying completely different things from me (9 of the 20 people in our class were Germans studying Medicine) (so different from me but not from each other... tant pis :D) anyway, because we were all in a language class together, we spoke to each other in French (most, if not all of them, were quasiment fluent in English, so I think it's impressive that we managed to stick with it). This was a really good way to ease into speaking the language, and there was organised fun in the afternoons which meant we milled around for a couple of hours, often sharing lunch, and then were artificially bonded by congregating with the other classes (I would guess there were about six groups of 20), making us feel a bit territorial about our little group, and accelerating/enhancing our sense of familiarity with each other, in the face of outsiders. I heart human nature!

Another way I met people in the early days was through the Erasmus group chat. Généralement I am not a fan of big chats with their terrible memes and the seemingly inevitable bombardment of nauseating laughing-crying emojis... However, there was a Facebook group for Erasmus students in Marseille that I joined very early on in the process (as in when I was still in Bristol). The FB group itself hasn't been of much use (it's mainly just ESN spam) but close to the start of term, someone made a WhatsApp group and posted a link to it in there. At the beginning there were some smaller "meet ups" which were manageable and sometimes even enjoyable(!) At these rendez-vous I do often end up speaking English because there are some people who have come to study here with little or even no knowledge of French. It is comforting to know that despite feeling very maladroit in the language sometimes, there are people genuinely wandering around the city with no clue whatsoever. I mean they are here studying things like Aerospace Engineering etc. (and always in English which is their second language as well... ha ha) so I can't really get too cocky about knowing more French than them...

In my experience, living in Marseille is a free ticket to some buddies :3 As our journey is so damned long and arduous (cry cry whinge whinge) you get to know the other people who are doing it. We have established our wee gaggle (gaggle?) of international students commuting from Marseille. I'm not saying you SHOULD put yourself in inconvenient situations just to make friends.... I'm just saying that it has worked for me :D

Social Mediums

On a side note, this is the first period of my life where I've totally unreservedly submerged myself in group chat / voice note #Life. Never before have I used social media with such abandon. It is indescribably comforting to have constant contact with my friends, especially as some of them have moved abroad too and are equally keen for comprehensible communication (even if most of our conversations consist of scatological reports). I had got pretty good (if I do say so myself) at décroché-ing myself from my phone last year, but I'm now back on it in a big way. And at this point I really don't care, it is such a big source of reassurance.

... Interact with me :3 thank you