Ma Vie in France

When I returned home to the US this Christmas, I got a lot of questions about what happened in Paris, and how people are coping.  Since the tragic events in Paris on November 13, I've visited the city twice.   To be quite honest, things seem to have really gone back to normal. There is still heightened security in places, but in the end people needed to resume their daily lives.             So in the spirit of honoring this great city, I'd like to talk in this post about the very important place that Paris holds in France. Paris is an unusual city. Not only because of its rich history, art, and beauty, but because Paris is the capital of everything in France.   Unlike neighboring countries like Germany and Italy where different cities tend to have distinct functions, France is entirely and completely Paris-centric. Paris is the country's financial, cultural, educational, and political center. This is also a clear...

Every good guidebook should give as much information as possible about the habits, customs, and culture of a given country. After a recent trip to Italy, for example, we were informed by our guidebook that most restaurants have a charge for bread and table service, between 1.50 and 3 euros per person. If I were to write a guidebook about France, I would put in bold letters that THE ENTIRE COUNTRY GOES ON VACATION IN AUGUST, and everyone returns in September. You may think I’m exaggerating, but if you ever come to France during August, you’ll see the rows of closed shops with signs giving the dates of closure. We inform our dear clients that the store will be closed August 1-31. In more detail, my guidebook entry would read something like this: Tourists, this is what you need to know about France. If you come in August, many things will be closed. Most small stores will, and you’ll find a sign on the door telling you so. Big stores will ...

This month in France took place a rite of passage: the high school baccalauréat. Often translated as ‘high school diploma’, the baccalauréat is the mandatory, nationalized high school exit exam students must take in order to continue with their studies. While nowadays having one’s bac is becoming more and more common (much like having a high school diploma in the United States), for some students it is the first of many exams they will take in their adult lives, in both educational and work contexts. Because not only is right now the end of the baccalauréat, it is also the middle of the ‘concours’ season for many other areas of study. Concours, a word impossible to translate in English, is more or less a competitive exam. Competitive because the results of a concours do not depend on how good you score, but how much better you score than everyone else taking the exam. I’ve had an inside look into two concours going on at the moment, the agrégation in English (an exam to ha...

After the all the time I’ve spent in France, teaching French and studying French, I’ve become used to many things that surprised me in my earlier stages of study. Every once in a while, though, I’ll learn a piece of information about France that is totally new and catches me off guard. This week, I had one of these moments. In talking to university students, we were on  the subject of grandes écoles (already a strange concept to non-French citizens). I was asking students to name the different, most well-known grandes écoles. These are our equivalent to Ivy League schools. They listed the names quickly and briefly, using acronyms and single words because the names are so common and obvious to them. There is one school out of this group that really sticks out: Polytechnique, also just called X (which I also learned this week, hence the clever title of this post). Not only is it, from what I understand, the institution for higher education relating to the sciences, but...