Post-Study Abroad Update

I met Annie Clark (St. Vincent) again and she remembered me from Paris. 

Last thing you heard about my life was back when I wrote about experiencing reverse culture shock so I think it's time for an update. Since coming back I think my life changed quite a bit. I began to work and that took a while to transition and once school started I literally had no time for myself because school and work took over my life. I now can understand why many Europeans think American college students are crazy when they work and handle being a full time student. It personally drove me nuts! 17 units plus a part time job 5 days a week is a good recipe for something bad happening and something eventually did. Other than being a zombie for the first two months of school, things started to turn around in my classes. I still find that GEs are kind of hard to take seriously especially since I don't see how they pertain to majoring in French but I'm starting to enjoy my Italian class a lot. I just had to accept that American professors have a different style of teaching and once I did I started enjoying the class. On the other hand, my European Cinema class has been consistently great. We've watched really great movies so far with my favorites being La sconosciuta (The Unknown Woman- Italy) and Ničija zemlja (No Man's Land- Bosnia-Herzegovina). 

Now for the two events that have led me to some frustration post-studying abroad. First my BNP bank account was not closed and they wanted me to send some money to close it. I'll write a whole blog post with more details about it later, but it was just so frustrating trying to solve this matter quickly. This literally dragged on two months after I left Paris. I sent the money order to close it and a month later they claimed that they never received it which just seemed very fishy to me. I just didn't understand why they send an email a month after the wire transfer, if they didn't receive it they could have sent me an email a couple days later and not a whole month later so the amount would be even higher. The way it was handled really showed me how unprofessional BNP is. Hopefully Orlando will share his own BNP horror story in the future but all I can say is.... AVOID BNP! Take out money from your BofA account using the BNP ATMs but use another French bank. 

Now the other thing that has angered me has been trying to get my college transcript. It has been almost 5 months since I've been back and there was no sign of my transcript anywhere! My friend, Beatriz, already got hers so that lead me to wonder about mine. I emailed MICEFA and the CSU IP adviser asking about the status of my transcript. It turns out one of my Sorbonne professors hadn't submitted my grade. I emailed them again last week to find out the status, and I learned that she turned it in but the grade was too low for my taste especially knowing that I had earned high grades. So although it's the job of the advisers to email the professor I decided to take matter into my own hands and email my professor myself. Turns out that I needed to take another class along with that one. Why didn't anyone including the professor or the secretary of the department tell me during the semester? I have no idea. It is incredibly unfair to take a class and put a lot of effort into it and then find out that the reason why I got a low grade was because they just assumed that I knew that I needed another class. Foreign exchange students don't know the French system like French students and it's very unfair for them to assume that. Now this matter lies on the hands of MICEFAs adviser and I'm hoping that my 13/20 will be counted instead of the low grade but who knows. Keep your fingers crossed for me though!

I will keep you updated on what happens with my transcript, as well as my life during the next months. To get more updates you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.

Hope everyone's doing great and keep your eyes open for an upcoming blog post from our new contributor, Orlando!

Bonne journée!

UPDATE: I was granted my 13 (A-)!!!! MICEFA sided with me and decided not to penalize me for something that was not my fault.