And so, after much partying, catching up, meeting the new ERASMUS students and the general banter of returning after New Year, the hard realisation of university life is again upon us. And my goodness, is this semester gonna be hard!
Let it be known that, in Glasgow University especially, most students in Scotland do not have particuarly long weeks, given the exceptions like medicine, dentistry etc. In my case, I usually had, say, a 13 hour week at uni, sometimes having only one or two classes per day. My longest day on record is 4 hours in one day, that's to say, 4 hours in a row, not over the space of a 9-5pm day. It was either a few classes in the morning, or that one particular day. I finished at 1pm every day bar that day last year. I had what you called an easy academic life. Nothing particuarly challenging, with subjects I was fairly comfortable with and a daily dose of QMU banter.
That is, of course, until I came to Poitiers, and enrolled at the Univ. de Poitiers - widely regarded as the hell hole. My university timetable now consists of:
Monday: 10am - 4pm
Tuesday: 9am - 7pm (!!!!!!!!!)
Wednesday: 12pm - 1.30pm
Thursday: 8.30am - 12.30pm
Friday: Off :)
Now. Despite Tuesday being quite literally hell on earth, I would say it is a balanced timetable. I would gladly stay late and have more classes in one day so that I can have 2 afternoons and a Friday off uni. But it is hard. I have 3 translation classes (Theme, Version and a mixture of both); a British civilisation class (why not?); 2 literature classes; an essay/ mini dissertation class and Lingua, ie french for foreigners (the 7pm class :/)
It's a fairly competant timetable, but one I am actually enjoying. The first week back was amusing enough! Hannah drank copious Green tea (the "Posh" kind of green tea, might I add :P), Zoe endlessly fretted about translation classes but turns out she has a knack for them, and I sang about being trapped in cabinets. It all started in the Theme translation class when the class was trying to decide what word to use: wardrobe, cupboard, drawers, cabinets... Which lead to an impromptu break out of The Mighty Boosh's song "Captain Cabinet" (Youtube it if you aren't familiar) which goes alone the lines of:
Captain Cabinet, trapped in cabinets!
Can he get out? Will he get out? Course he will!
We sang this for the best part of the day. At lunch, we spent an hour talking about what we each call various cupboard-esque things in the house, for example: Zoe calls a display cabinet a dresser, when Hannah and I agreed a dresser is what you have in your bedroom to do your make up at etc. Hannah calls what Zoe and I regard as kitchen units, G-Units (no correlation to rap, at all!), and so forth. We also discussed cubby holes, and what they were exactly - we still aren't sure. Before going to the next class, we laughed saying "How funny would it be if the next teacher mentioned cabinets?"
It turned out to be fantastic. On discussing a rather dull French - English translation, a part came up where the narrator was talking about neighbours. I can't exactly remember the exact words, but the teacher ended up saying: "... I mean, it's not like they were trapped in a cabinet!". I actually thought my head would explode I tried so hard not to laugh. Still, we sang the song over and over, laughing about it probably too loudly, as the French kids obviously thought we were mad. This continued in British Civilisation, as we carried on to be unnecessarily loud and outlandishly British in the class, further ostracising us from our fellow class mates. Still, we don't all need French friends, do we?
Sadly, I have contracted the lurgy and my glands and neck are swelling out of control. Think of an upside down snowman, and you'll get a rough idea of how I look.
Trapped in cabinets!!!
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