azur christmas

Nice is trying hard to have a winter. There are (real) pine trees everywhere, stands selling mulled wine in the Christmas market, an outdoor skating rink.

But it's hard to imagine you are anywhere but the South of France with the palm trees and 17 degree weather.


(Or Abu Dhabi, you know, with that huge snowman they put outside Marina Mall, facing all the people on the beach at the Hiltonia?)

I just hope the fake snow doesn't melt before Christmas.

torino

This is the most exquisitely expensive drink I have ever had the pleasure of spending money on.

It cost twice as much as dinner.

But, oh, was it worth it.


The waiter wore a bow tie. He poured the prosecco over the crushed strawberries with grace and submerged the stirrer in sparkling water before swirling it in my glass. Prego, signorina.

I can hardly believe a colour this rich -- not red, not pink -- doesn't have its own name. It deserves volumes of poetry. But rossini sounds right, with rosso and rosa echoing inside the affectionate diminutive.

The disarming beauty of this drink, of this elegant café, of the cascading cadences of this language, is why JE and I came to Turin. Our pictures from the weekend are a catalogue of beautiful food and drink. Fancy treats, like the Rossini, but also simpler ones, like this asparagus pizza at a rowdy focacceria.


Back in Nice, I leafed through that book by Elizabeth Gilbert that you've all read.

"There are so many manifestations of pleasure in Italy.... You have to kind of declare a pleasure major here, or you'll get overwhelmed. That being the case, I didn't get into fashion, or opera, or cinema, or fancy automobiles, or skiing in the Alps. I didn't even want to look at that much art.... I found that all I really wanted was to eat beautiful food and to speak as much beautiful Italian as possible. That was it. So I declared a double major, really -- in speaking and eating (with a concentration on gelato)."

A double major in speaking and eating, with a minor in fancy aperitivos? Sign me up.

oh les beaux jours

I lean closer to A-A, who sits next to me.

The best thing about this class -- lips barely moving, eye on the prof -- is the view.

La seule, she whispers back.

Monday morning, third floor of building H, Campus Carlone, on a hill just west of downtown. The November sun is hot, the windows are thrown open. A line of traffic down the promenade, the port behind the hill, a lone sailboat on the water. The blue of the sky melting into the bluer of the water.

Frizzy-haired Mme B and her autopsy of Beckett's Happy Days can hardly compete. I don't have the stomach for literature classes anymore. The dissection of each once-living theatrical moment (word by word, image by image, symbol by symbol) just makes me queasy.

And so I float in and out of her stream of consciousness, in and out of the open window. It's breathtaking, à couper le souffle. She quotes Verlaine: Oh les beaux jours de bonheur indicible and I blink at the azur and I think, exactly.

breath

We're at a stage in our work -- a very, very early one -- where everything is discovery.

Baby steps. Understanding the distance between our bodies as something that connects as well as separates. Training openness. Allowing impulses, allowing responses.

The project is new. Connected to school, yes, but bigger than any single subject. It is our attempt to perform our way out of a theatre-as-literature paper. But it is also a feeling, intuition, that our bodies can say something together. That something will happen if we close ourselves in the auditorium for long enough.

We only know where we are starting. A miniature text, a single page, with nothing but stage directions. Four bodies. A space.

It's going to be quite the trip.

Rose

Promesses silencieuses
De je ne sais quel bonheur
Je te regarde et cela suffit

Poem and sculpture by Jean-Philippe Richard, Jardin Exotique, Eze.

the last sunday in october

I don't know where you've gone

Sir

Or where you're going

Sir

But I don't like it not one little bit

Sir.



And giving me one back tonight will not repair

For all the ones you've stolen while I slept


And read

And learned

And danced

And thought

And felt

And dreamt


Sir.


And so for future reference

(if you care for my well-being)

I would like it better

Sir

If you would just slow down a little

Sir

So I can sleep read learn dance feel think dream

Breathe

A little


More

Sir.

ché posto splendido per costruire un villaggio!

Once upon a time, someone looked at this isolated pile of rock and shrubbery and thought, "What a wonderful place to build a village!"

Thousands of years later, Saorge clings tenaciously to its mountain in the Roya Valley, defying reason and, from some angles, gravity.

The yellow building perched precariously above the olive trees is -- to no one's alarm but my own -- a primary school.


Saorge is only one of many stops along the train line that runs northwest from Nice to Tende, the last stop in Provence before the border.


Of course it hasn't been that long since this entire area was past the border. Most of this corner of France was annexed from the Italian Dukes of Savoie in 1860, but Tende only became French in 1947.

1947!

This detail of history explains many things.


It explains the omnipresence of Italian names in the hilltop graveyard.

It explains the trenitalia train that took us a few stops towards Ventimiglia.

It explains the delicious fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil sandwiches we picked up at the bakery for lunch.


Maybe even the vespacar?

More of TSL's photos here.

two days two trips

Two little day trips this week, couldn't have been more different.


The first, on Thursday, to Villefranche-sur-mer, a small town 5 kilometers east of Nice. Just me and my beach towel, looking for a patch of gravel.

I found an old town in yellow and ochre with the medieval rue Obscure running underneath it. I found a deep bay of still, clear water, complete with sail boats and fishies. And yes, I found rocks small enough to be comfortable.

I'm going back.


Friday's day trip was actually a school trip. The Dance Department took us to the atelier of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo and an exposition about the Ballets Russes. We visited with costumers and the lady in charge of all the ballet slippers and pointes, poked our noses in empty studios and sat in on a rehearsal for Cinderella, coming soon to a theatre in Shanghai.

I mourned for the prima ballerina I could have been.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in vain search of an open café. The old town was deserted, all the hullabaloo was in the port (something to do with expensive yachts, lest we forget we were in Monaco).



By the end of the afternoon I was hot, bothered, undercaffeinated and exhausted. Too many tall buildings, too many big cars, too many fancy boats. Claustrophobic, really.


I'll be back, but only for the ballet.

pinch me

Should we take a coffee?"

"Sure. Were do you want to go?"

"How about Cannes?"


It was one of those right-I-do-live-on-the-Riviera moments. With all the very ordinary things I've been doing lately -- finding a place to live, settling in, grocery shopping, administrative errands, preparations for the school year -- I occasionally forget how extraordinary this whole situation is.

And then I realise that the only thing separating my home from the home of a fancy film fest is a one euro bus ticket -- and it all comes rushing back.

Cannes is all you would want it to be: palm trees, pastel-coloured old town, sandy beaches, muscular men scrubbing the decks of sail boats...

I can see how it might be asphyxiating in the peak of the summer, but on a warm September Sunday, it was just right. Some sunbathers and swimmers, couples strolling, groups at cafés. But no obnoxious tour groups or bars blasting music.

Just happy people soaking up the last days of summer.

And views like this.



More of TSL's photos here.

back-to-school shopping

I bought a pair of shoes today.

Normally I would be prancing about happily in housecoat and heels. You know, breaking them in.

But no.

Instead I wander over to the box from time to time, lift them out carefully and hold them.

smooth black leather
cushy cotton insoles
cold steel toe and heel


That's right, friends. While the rest were buying ring-binders and highlighters, I bought tap shoes.

This is going to be the best back-to-school ever.

l'auberge

Our little two-bedroom has been home to four this week. Besides myself and the Tall Serbian Lady (TSL), there's a Colombian waiting for the key to her res room and a house-hunting Romanian.

There hasn't been much to do around here. Torrential rain has made outdoors unappealing. We've had no classes to attend since la rentrée was pushed from the 14th to the 21st. The bank/school registration/insurance errands were run last week (whilst under the September 14th illusion).

And so, we cook.


Last night we feasted on our balcony. To celebrate the clear evening sky we took a bottle of wine to the pebbley beach and girl-talked until the wee hours.

Today they've promised us a meeting.

The Grand Unveiling of our class schedules.

The feasting has been fun, but I'm ready for school.

Bring on the lunchbox.

lesson one

Yesterday I was invited to the home of some family friends' for lunch. When I admitted upon arrival that wasn't wearing my bikini, I got quizzical looks. When I clarified that I didn't have one in my purse to change into, I might as well have said that I had ripped off a layer of skin, rinsed it and left it on the line to dry.

(Needless to say a spare suit was procured and post-digestion paddling proceeded as planned.)

Some cities let their bodies of water do their own thing; they admire or fear them, but from a distance. Nice, on the other hand, holds the Mediterranean in a bear hug. The life of the city boils up in its hills and rushes down towards the pebbly beaches, sweeping us with it.

It's unavoidable, you see. Inescapable.

I know because everyday this week I found myself coming home with salty skin, straw-like hair and mascara raccoon eyes. And without the bus pass, stamps, or groceries I had planned to get when I showered, put on makeup and straightened my hair that morning.

No matter how strong my mental visualisation of myself crossing town, popping into the post office or stopping by the grocery store, five minutes out the door I was floating belly-up in the calm, warm sea water.

If I weren't so relaxed from a day on the beach, I'd probably muster up some frustration.

Instead, I'm learning my lessons.
No mascara. No hair straightening. No planning.
And always bring a bikini.

This is what I look at when I wait for the bus. Would you resist?

lyon saint-exupéry

A day of airport.

First in Lisbon, filling over two hours of delay.
Wandering, coffee, newspaper.
Crossword too hard. Sudoku too easy.

Landed in Lyon with my train already half-way to Avignon.
Marooned for three hours.
More wandering, reading, eating.
Contacts too dry. Pizza too greasy.

Now, a lounge chair. Blobs of chocolate floating in a cappuccino from a franchise I forgot I should avoid. Messages to M, already in Avignon, to make sure I won’t be locked out of the dorm. Watching numbers blink on the digital clock.

Airports.

on y danse...among other things

Off in a few minutes to the airport. Lisbon-Lyon, then TGV to Avignon. A week of theatre overdose awaits. Don't have too many details about what we will be seeing and discussing. Will blog if there's internet.

david hare: wall

I've finally finished the collection of lectures by (Sir) David Hare that I picked up at the National Theatre in London last January. Quite coincidentally came across a recording of Hare reading his new monologue, Wall, here. Give it a listen if political theatre or Palestine/Israel is your thing.

P.S. Hare has written two monologues about Palestinian-Israeli issues. An excerpt from the first, Via Dolorosa (1998) here.

glu glu

Two dancers in black briefs saunter hand-in-hand down a dock. They wear sparkly gold shopping bags over their heads. Suddenly, the screen is filled by a striped shirt stretched taut over a potbelly.

"Is a dance project," explains the undeniably Italian cameraman, ushering the bewildered belly out of the shot, "Contemporary dance project!"

A shared peal of laughter, an inside joke. Artists and amateurs, sitting cross-legged in an airy room of the splendid Museu do Oriente.

Complicity.

---

Déjà vu.

Grade 8, 9, 10.... Amman or Dubai, maybe Cairo, one of those international schools. It's the first night of the arts festival: the showcase. We strut and show, so that the next morning we can get down to the dirty business of working, creating together.

Pointe to Point is a project bringing together 20 young choreographers from Europe and Asia. The Lisbon phase is their first real meeting. The public is invited to participate in their introductions, to meet the artists as individuals before they form groups and begin to collaborate. Over the weekend everyone shared something: a short dance piece, a presentation of previous work, installations, videos, conversations.

Like our high school showcases. Thankfully, no American School of Dubai-style cheesy jingles. (EMAC Fine Arts Festival, Festival, is full of fun/EMAC Fine Arts Festival, and we are ASD!!)

---

This project is co-organised by the Asia-Europe Foundation and alkantara, the Portuguese independent arts organisation that makes my heart skip a beat. If all goes well, I will be their most enthusiastic intern next year and their festival will be the topic of my thesis.

As exciting as everything I saw this weekend was, I couldn't help feeling overwhelmed. What can I possibly offer these people? There were so many of them, young, all with haircuts more assymmetric than mine.

The pond is turning out to be a bit bigger than this little fish thought.

vilnius

There are holes in the sides of Vilnius's buildings. Sometimes at street level, sometimes near entrances, sometimes facing allies. Regularly rectangular, so you know they're there on purpose.

Proof of age, reminders of reconstruction, testaments to history. Some buildings wear them proudly. Others -- whose holes are less regular, less rectangular, less on purpose -- stand firmly despite the holes.

At the top of the hill was a large church, its yellow paint a faint memory. In the niches on the facade, the ghosts of a frescoed Jesus and his saints. A once grand triple set of steps slumped from the door to the ground.

A paper tacked on the front door announced mass times in unfamiliar alphabets. Greek Catholics worship here, as they did when the church was built centuries ago. But when the Russians moved in they claimed this church, suppressing in this way what they believed to be a covert Catholic conversion operation targeting Orthodox peasants. The Uniate or Ukranian Church, a recognised practice within Roman Catholicism, wouldn't regain legal status -- and control of this Church of the Holy Trinity -- until the fall of the Soviet Union.


The history is in the walls. Heaters fixed on green paint, peeling away to reveal bright geometric patterns and carefully carved Greek letters.

Scaffolding, hanging wires, arched window frames piled in corners. A desk for an alter, school rows for pews, mismatched rugs covering mismatched floors. Wood panels hiding piles of scrap wood, garbage, ornaments.

This is the hidden story of may of Vilnius' churches and chapels, gothic and baroque, Catholic and Orthodox. The old town's skyline is defined by pristine steeples, freshly painted bell towers and copper onion domes not yet oxidised. Gaps have been filled, edges smoothed, character whitewashed. 'Restored' -- to sterility.

out

“You’ll be back soon,” my grandmother says, putting her clammy cheek next to mine. “Right?”

“In and out, in and out,” I reply vaguely.

I have been “in” – which is to say, in Lisbon – since Sunday. Today is Wednesday, and as the Scandinavian landscape from my porthole confirms, I am definitely out.

It’s been three hours since we took off from a mercifully cooler Lisbon towards Copenhagen, via Stockholm. The pilot has just announced that rain and chilly temperatures (10 degrees) will greet us – which rather accurately describes the 5-day forecast for my final destination of Vilnius, Lithuania.

In Vilnius I will be attending the Erasmus Mundus Students and Alumni Association General Assembly, in my capacity as course representative. On either side of the conference programme I have given myself a day for which I have made no attempt to prepare. Guidebook-, companion-, and preconception-less, I intend to wander, eat mysterious food and get soaked by several days of heavy rain.

I’ll be in again next Monday, out to Brussels for a few days at the end of the month, in for the first two weeks of July, out to the Avignon Festival in France from the 17th to the 24th, before pushing still outwards to Amsterdam to round off the month in the company of S and J.

All of August will be in – which is to say, in the sun, in the sea, at the beach.

Like I say, in and out.

Rain and 9 degrees as we pull in to Vilnius airport. Yes, it is June.

walter

Mademoiselle.

He pauses, adjusts his spectacles.

The post office has been open since ten o’clock this morning.

Another pause. He looks down at his watch, causing the specs to slip to the end of his nose. It occurs to me that when he raises his head he will be eyeing me over the frames. I brace myself.

It is not at five minutes to closing that one attempts to send a large parcel.

I could explain that this is the second time I have been to his post office today. I want to whine about the lies on the website and the uninformed lady at the first post office. I consider sobbing that if he doesn’t take my things I will be bootless and bookless in Nice come September.

Instead, I say, very quietly

There are three.

Eyebrows are raised. Nostrils flare. Lips tighten.

He flings a fistful of forms across the counter and spits

Sit. Fill. Return. Fast.

I fill the forms to natural light because someone turns of the fluorescents. By the time I return it is down to me, him and the security agent turning people away at the door.

He rings up the total. I breathe and unsheathe my visa.

More Pinter pausing. The nostrils eventually communicate what words do not.

I consider protesting the ridiculously of the Brussels central post office not accepting visa. I want to ask who the hell carries 130 euros in cash. I almost storm out in indignation.

Instead, I say, very quietly

Well, nothing.

It has been a harrowing afternoon and, frankly, I’m spent.

He sends me to the ATM outside. I am behind a couple who takes ages because, judging by the cloud of shopping bags, they no longer have any money to take out.

He must be worried I’ve dumped my boxes on him and run away laughing because he comes out of the post office to look for me. Which is convenient, because I need him to get past the equally anxious to leave security agent.

We exchange money and receipts. He stands, pulls up his pants and sighs

Bon week-end.

I want to tell him that I didn’t do it on purpose. I can’t decide whether to apologize. I almost hug him.

Instead, I say, very, very quietly (remember I am spent)

Merci.

too busy for blogging

crossing things off the ugly may spider is keeping me busy.

blogging will be back in june.

just like them

Part of our daily routine in our commedia dell'arte workshop (all this week and another week late in April) includes acrobatics. Looks something like these guys last night at les Halles de Schaerbeek.
Not the part where they run around blindfolded. Or when the little guy springs into the big guy's arms. Or stands on the other dude's head.

Ok, but that part when they balance tied together by their sweaters?
Like that.
But with our hands. And not stepping on the other person.
Right.

(Bonus: the little guy is Québécois, product of the École Nationale du Cirque in Montreal. Represent.)

may you get what you wish for and may it be what you meant

My MA is a joint programme run through seven universities in Brussels, Paris, Nice, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Seville and A Coruña. We are required to attend at least two universities in different countries, with the possibility of adding a third for kicks.

In my application I indicated my preference: semesters 1, 2 and 4 in Brussels with a 3rd semester stint in Nice.

It was not a whimsical decision. For weeks the walls of my room were papered with pro-con lists for each possible combination.

Frankfurt and Copenhagen didn't make the cut for linguistic reasons -- don't speak German, didn't want to speak English. The Spanish schools failed to convince on content. Then the ethnoscenology/anthropology focus in Paris eliminated most of the other sheets.

That left me with various Brussels-Nice combinations. Brussels seemed most organised, Nice had neat practical courses. And French! And pleasant, livable, theatrical cities!

Brussels-Nice-Brussels became The Plan. Brussels felt right from the start, the thought of returning, writing, graduating here was a happy one. The heavily theoretical environment (how I have grown to despise you, anthropology) was bearable because I knew my slice of artistry was coming. It was a Good Plan.

Unfortunately for me, The Powers That Be didn't get it.

"Carla...Carla...S3, Bruxelles....S4....La Coruña!"

I wanted to believe there was an academic reason. I spent an hour looking for information on the uni webpage and found none -- the programme is currently being restructured and is therefore suspended. I met Monsieur H and he said he wasn't pleased with the decision either. I needed something, some logic. I e-mailed the prof in A Coruña -- charming man -- and he extolled the virtues of Galician seafood.

Seafood.

I wrote a letter. I explained the challenges of incorporating crustaceans into my thesis about the Alkantara festival in Lisbon. I wondered why I was the only -- the only -- student completing all three semesters of coursework (semester 4 is just for thesis writing) at the same university. Between the lines I brooded that administrative (à savoir financial) logic was at work and that my languages made me too flexible.

In Brussels, my professor offered solutions. We'll send you on an international internship! Take the train into Paris from Brussels and attend classes informally! Just between you and me, no one is actually going to check if you are in Coruña...

In the end, I just had to say that I really wasn't happy, that this wasn't what I had signed up for. That earned me some moderately patronizing comments from the administrative assistant (We can't just switch you because you want to be in the sun. I went home and cried when I didn't get my first erasmus option and then I got over it. Why are you writing on Portugal anyways, shouldn't you add a new country to your CV?).

When I finally got word last week, it was a victory.

Nice in semester 3 and A Coruña for 4.

It's mostly what I wanted. I still think Nice is the best fit. And since Spain can't seem to get its sticky fingers off me, I might as well enjoy the opportunity to explore a new corner of the Iberian Peninsula.

Not all stories have to be circular. Not all boucles get bouclé-ed.

It is a victory, I'm just not feeling victorious. I haven't quite come around to the idea of packing up for good in a few months. My attitude to the city, to traveling, to meeting people has been tied to the (fleeting) stability offered by the idea of Brussels as home base, at least for these two years. Now I shake hands at parties halfheartedly. What's the point? Not enough time left for making new friends. I feel more pressured to tick things off my tourism to-do. I begrudge the blooming that is making Brussels beautiful.

I will come around. New places, travel, new faces, adventure -- this is what I wished for.

random acts of seasonal affective whatever

As if being Monday and the first day of second semester wasn't enough, it snowed.

Granted, it was snow of the typically gone-by-nightfall Belgian variety (in contrast to the when-will-the-bluecollars-stop-striking Montreal version). But I am whiney and wimpy where winter is concerned, so I crawled promptly back into bed.

When the snow stopped coming down, I got up. With a lot of unnecessary groaning (unnecessary only because there was no one around to hear it, obviously). I put on inordinate amounts of unmatched winterwear (red turtleneck/purple scarf/pink tuque/brown gloves) and went to class.

The day was a string of unconsequential blah until De Markten. I parked at the corner table with my books and ordered my much needed caffeine fix. Lait russe downed, I felt suficiently revived to bury my nose in my Arts Management text.

I think hours passed. My coffee cup was whisked away, the café cat fell asleep under my table, the servers changed shifts.

Somewhere in the middle of chapter ten a steaming mug was edged into my field of vision. The waiter said, "You look cold. It's from me." Was I hugging the heater so obviously? Where the economics-induced shivers (chapter ten is on organizational forms and dynamics) not just in my head?

Upon further inspection, I found the steam to be rising from frothy milk. On the plate was a cube of chocolate on a stick. Mmm. The only way hot chocolate should be. I put down chapter ten, surrendering to my mug and the Cold Play meets Buena Vista Social Club background music.

It was a moment worth enjoying. After all, one day I will no longer be a cute twenty-something studenty-type and bored waiters will probably only bring me the drinks I order.

Oh misery!

art, up close and personal

J is wrapped in art. It’s a long, intestinal thing, made out of the stretchy flesh-coloured material used to pad actor’s bodies. The plaque on the wall tells us to play with it.

“How does it feel?” I ask.

“I think it’s trying to get to second base.”


This is the type of place that encourages this sort of thing. This is no conventional art gallery. This is SHUNT, an arts space in the arched underbelly of the London Bridge tube station. It’s dark and smells musty – the website says it used to be a wine vault. It could just have easily been home to Oliver-style street urchins.

We are somewhere along the long hallway, past the “Gothic Circus” mechanical/light/sound installation, but before the bar. In the alcoves to our right and left are the silhouettes of a man and a woman sitting in, swirling around, suspended from hula hoops. “Are we allowed to talk to the art?” J whispers furtively. Someone has gotten prohibitively close and seems, indeed, to be chatting with the SHUNT urchins.

This is the type of place this is. The beer is cheap, the air is dank and some chairs are covered in Astroturf. Girls in silver hotpants and bubblewrap helmets walk past – and you can’t be sure they are in costume until later, when they sail over your head in a weirdly poetic slow-motion trapeze act.

You can be sure there will be a line. We arrived for opening at 6 pm on a Wednesday and waited around the block. The line was just as long when we left several hours later.

Weird, wonderful, wildly popular.

Appropriate for a girl's first night out in London, wouldn't you say?

no, you're a star

Feeling like a proper business woman. Hopped on the Eurostar train with dozens of other laptop-toting travelers. Watching the indistinguishable Belgian/French/English grey skies and rolling green scenery out of the corner of my eye while typing very seriously on my mini pc. Breaking only to sip from my horrendously expensive coffee (London prices effective from boarding, apparently).

I made the bold (stupid?) move of leaving my work behind. Although this is technically our break between semesters, I have a paper I swear I will finish before second semester begins on Feb 2, an article summary for Feb 6, my final thesis topic (!!) for the 10th. Not to mention the self-assigned project of deciding what to do with myself this summer.

But truthfully, I have been on holiday since last Friday, and if I wasn’t productive in Brussels – I wasn’t – I doubt I will be more inspired in London.

Not that kind of inspiration, anyways. The other kind, the kind that comes from new places and old friends, I already feel cursing through my veins (or is it the overpriced caffeine?).

Plans, you ask? Soaking up J, who I last saw about eight months ago in Brussels. Another McGill theatrical friend H, who I haven’t seen since 2006. The London Mime Festival, a musical, maybe a straight play for kicks. Lots of markets. Maybe some new shoes if the sales are friendly. The British Museum, and if I am not utterly overwhelmed, the Tate Modern. In either case, hopefully some reading and writing of the pleasurable (English!) sort.

Oh, look, we’re in the Chunnel! Boy, the train is fun.

More from London, friends.

end of exams rant

The first one was a fiasco. No invigilators, no assistants, just our crotchety old professor dictating questions from the desk at the front of the auditorium. Three questions, just the first of which could have taken far more than the 45-minutes we were given. Didn’t bother to type up his questions or check our ID cards. He seems surprised that we didn’t bring our own paper.

I regurgitated enough of his holy book to score a 15 – a B, in McGill-speak. A fittingly dull grade for an entirely dull (non)learning process. I’m just thankful that I can now erase that man and his disregard for pedagogy from my consciousness.

And burn the notes. Maybe the book, too.

I spent the entire semester fuming in this man’s class. Particularly memorable moments include watching him answer his mobile in the middle of a lecture (not just once, mind you – wrong number both times). Then that time when he chastised a chatty(?) student with a curt “I am here to talk, you are here to listen!” Oh and then when he justified his exam, extolling the virtues of memorization, reminding us that we are not yet ready for higher levels of thinking.

I had higher expectations for the other two exams. First of all, the professors are mounds better and the classes more responsibly given. And they were at least formally better – there were actual exams and paper, invigilators, even ID card checks.

The content, however, was more of the same. Both exams were three pages of true/false, identification, bullet-response-type questions, lifted directly from class notes (with an exception or two).

When was the last time you took a final with 20 questions? I think I was in high school.

Leaving my last exam, I was pissed. Shouldn’t we be beyond memorization? Why doesn’t anyone require us to think?! All these courses are 100% finals, too – what a meaningless evaluation system. There used to be something bizarrely fun about finals – show off what you know, a challenge, a chance to connect the dots across a semester of coursework. And this? An easy way to get some numbers to put on a transcript. Not that they are easy exams – I left questions blank on both. Just seems such a cheap way to qualify students.

The worst part – and I don’t like to think about it too much because it is depressing – is that the exams reflect the way most courses are given. Professors lecture, we listen. No such thing so far as conferences or seminars, or even coursepacks with readings to reflect on and prepare. I miss learning from the people around me. Feeling that we might have valuable opinions. Or that helping us establish some is an important part of why we're here.

Although writing papers in French was painful – oh God, so painful – it required the kind of brainpower I expect to be expending as a masters student. Crossing my fingers that our markers will engage sufficiently with our work to give some meaningful comments and restore a smidgen of my faith in the system.