la rentrée

My first week of school is finally over, and amazingly I survived it! =P

La Rentrée is the return of the French academic fraternity from their Summer holidays, and is a pretty huge thing in France, where time seems to stand still every June to September. Anyway last week was La Rentrée, but there were still no classes because La Rentrée only meant back to school, not begin to study n'est pas? And so my lessons started only this Monday.

First day of school started auspiciously enough. I had Cotation Fonctionnelle et Techniques de Production, and the professor taught tolerancing and dimensioning, things which I had already learnt in NUS, so it was no trouble understanding him, except for a few minor matters. Second day was better. I had Automatique Sequentielle and I was pretty much in revision land as the professor touched on Boolean Algebra. Man.. Now I know how those PRC scholars feel when they go for lecture in Singapore!

Things started to go downhill on Wednesday. First was Automatique Sequentielle again. This time, things were not so easy. Learnt about number systems and coding, both of which were foreign to me. Then came a tutorial session - Travaux Dirigés. The class was so noisy and the prof spoke so fast and wrote so cursively such that it was impossible to listen/read/understand anything which transpired between him and us! However the worst was yet to come.

Had Conception Dimensionnement on Thursday. Not only were the course contents new to me, I also had difficulty trying to catch what the professor was saying because he did not use a microphone, even though he was lecturing in a lecture hall! I think I gave up halfway trying to comprehend, and just started copying down random notes because I was lost in this sea of confusion and frustration. Anyway did I mention that I was sitting in the front row?! The French must all not be listening, or they must have excellent hearing skills.

So today was Atelier Ingénerie again. Today I had more discussion with my group and I volunteered to be the bibliothécaire, which is someone in charge of arranging and keeping all the documents in the course of our project. I hope that I can contribute meaningfully to the group instead of just freeloading off the rest.

Ok will tell you more later - I have a bike ride early tomorrow morning and I have to go sleep now. There were some problems with my bike earlier and I spent quite some time trying to fix it. Not sure now if my bike is fully good to go now, but I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best! =P