drago

So some people have asked me how a French University manages to have a master’s course taught entirely in English. It’s simple really. How does any country get things it doesn’t itself produce? It imports them of course.

Fo serious. Most of my teachers are from other countries (London, the States, India) and they come for about two weeks at a time. During those one or two weeks I am put through what is essentially a subject matter boot camp consisting of lectures, projects, and a do or die final all condensed into about two weeks what would normally span a semester (hence the slowing down of blog updates).

Currently I am in the middle of a data networking and communications boot camp. My professor has been imported from Slovenia and has the kind of accent and mannerisms that, given a different time and place, could easily be found working in a secretive nuclear power plant facility or consuming blood in his castle.

The guy is interesting for sure and knows his shit. The only problem is that he has the affliction I’ve encountered with other highly intelligent, eccentric people and that is that he doesn’t quite operate at the same level as normal people do. This wouldn’t be a problem except he is my professor and I need to understand him.

Par example, at the beginning of his lecture he used the word “frequency” in explaining something. This is normal since he’s an engineer and so is everyone else at my school (it is engineering school after all and not like Virginia Tech is an engineering school – in France grand ecoles are purely one thing or another).

So the engineering teacher is using engineering terms like “frequency” and everyone nods their head like “uh huh right, frequency” and then there’s me, who is in no way shape or form an engineer, wonders what the hell frequency is but I let it slide since nobody else seems to have a problem with the term. So he continues and uses the word “frequency” again. And again. And again. Hmmm… frequency seems rather important since it comes up quite frequently (haha).

Anywho so I raise my hand and shamefully ask the question: What is frequency? He looks at me like I’m on crack because I don’t know what that is. I tell him I don’t have an engineering background. I think this makes him feel better and he then proceeds to explain frequency for 20 minutes.

Graphs are drawn, equations are written, manipulated, and derived and at the end of it all I still have no idea what frequency is but I pretend like I do because he tried so hard to explain it to me and I just wasted 20 minutes of everyone’s time and it’s not their fault I’m too dumb to get it. Or so I thought.

Turns out the guy is an overcommunicater. I found this out because other people started asking questions as well to which they end up regretting. That’s because he throws a lot of information at you and then you have to shift through that information and ascertain the answer yourself.

I’ll use a layman example. Let’s say you ask what’s wine made of? His answer would be something like:

Well back in the early days of mankind they searched for an alternative beverage for merriment and in doing so came across what they later refer to ask the nectar of the gods. The origin of wine starts in mother earth herself as a seedling which over time with the help of a liquid essential to all life with the chemical makeup of one hydrogen atom and two oxygen atoms. This seeding grows into a vine which is of the genus Vitis. From this vine comes a fruit with an average circumference of less than one inch (this can be mathematically proven) and can be different colors depending on the species but is mainly usually red or green. This fruit is referred to as a grape in English speaking countries but is called le raisin here in France which can be confusing as the word raisin in English means a dried grape, which as we all know is different.

Did I answer your question?

If this is your first encounter with the man you will say something like so… grapes? To which he will reply:

Well, like I mentioned earlier back in the early days of mankind…

So yeah it’s best to say instead a definitive “Yes” and it is absolutely critical you follow that with nothing other than a period.

I have a two hour test in this course next Tuesday, open notes which means it will be killer. He told us to email him if we had any questions. I could only imagine what that would be like.