She’s back!!
Salut tout le monde, welcome to episode 3 of the blog!
I can’t believe I’m writing this sentence, but here we are: my exchange semester has just finished. Everything feels a little unreal at the moment, but I’m enjoying the run up to Christmas in the very wintery Bolton.
I actually wanted to do a little more of an informative blog post this time – for anyone considering Lyon as a semester abroad location. Obviously after about 4 months I’m a local (I’m not), but I do have a few thoughts and recommendations both about the city as a whole, and about the exchange experience specifically.
I’ll start by talking about the academic side of this exchange (arguably the entire point of the exchange, also arguably a small side note of the exchange).
As I’ve mentioned before, I am in the SELF programme – ‘Study English in Lyon France’. This programme offers around 15 classes, all taught in English, that fall under one of three majors – Business, Law, or Humanities. You can choose up to 4 of these ‘core’ classes.
On top of these, there are two compulsory classes: French Language, and French History and Culture.
The layout of the timetable does give the impression that it was made with international students in mind, with each course having only one class per week. The ‘core’ classes (classes within one of the three majors) were 2.5 or 3 hour classes.
The French Language course is one 4 hour class – I know this sounds like a lot in one go, but I found it to be surprisingly manageable, and in fact very fun – I cannot overstate how beneficial this class was for my language learning, and what an absolute angel my teacher was. This class was probably my highest workload, but it did not feel like it – mostly because I genuinely wanted to put in the work to improve and was being the biggest nerd and asking for more homework.
Finally, the French History and Culture course is just 1 hour each week! This was honestly such a great class for learning the kinds of things you need to know for when you go back home and your family asks you really random questions about French culture that you should know because you lived there for 4 months.
This layout allows for an abundance of free time during the week, which is perfect for when you want to be exploring the city that you live in. In terms of workload, it is again very clear that the course coordinators understand the priorities of exchange students are potentially not entirely academic. The largest, and almost only, portions of work outside class hours come from the midterm week (the week before mid sem break) and the finals week (the final week of semester – the SELF course doesn’t have a separate exam period). This isn’t to say that learning is not prioritised, I actually found that I was perhaps more engaged than ever in all of my classes, because of the fact that it felt like I was learning for the fun of it, not learning solely for a grade – I’ll talk more on this in a moment.
One major difference between UoA and Lyon 3 is mandatory attendance. There are no lecture/class recordings – if you miss the class you miss the class. We were allowed two unexcused absences in the semester, and if you were to go beyond those two, you would be unable to pass the course. To be very honest, I did not find this to be an inconvenience at all. I was there to go to university in France, so I did actually want to go to university while in France. It was such a wonderful cohort, so going to class was truly just a lovely social occasion.
It was such a wonderful experience having my close friends in the same classes as me, something I didn’t really have in Auckland. I really was just getting to hang out with my friends and learn some interesting things!
I realise this sounds like the concept of having friends is new to me… but I can’t even lie, the concept of having close friends in my classes or even in my degree is completely new to me. My university experience at home was really not very social most days. Crazy to say – I genuinely became a girl who completely seriously could not wait for Monday to come around. I genuinely loved uni in Lyon. I am getting sad now so I need to move onto a more admin related topic and not dwell on the fact that all my friends are scattered across the world and I won’t ever attend a class with them again. Anyway.
So, another large difference in the two uni experiences is the fact that these courses in Lyon are transferred back to UoA in a pass/fail format. You just have to pass. Contrary to what you might think, like I was saying earlier, this format actually made me even more engaged in class. I felt like I was actually enjoying learning for the sake of learning – I didn’t have the looming pressure of keeping my grades up. I could take risks, ask silly questions, delve into random side topics – and for a girl with some pretty high standards and a touch of perfectionism, this was a wonderfully freeing experience! I was really curious to see how I would handle motivating myself when grades weren’t on the table, and I am so happy to report back to myself that I can actually do work because I am interested in the topic!! I am not only capable of working for a grade!!
Alright, I think that’s most of what I wanted to cover in the university side of life.
I’m going to move onto the choice of Lyon as a city now. I know that for me, I didn’t really actively choose Lyon, it was just the only French option that worked for me – and I was pretty set on going to France. However, I cannot tell you how grateful I ended up in Lyon. I’m going to put aside my soppy gratefulness about all the incredible people I have met by choosing Lyon, and focus on the city itself.
Lyon is set on two rivers – the Rhône and the Saône, and I do feel that the rivers are such a heart of the city. It truly is a wonderful city to just wander around. It’s bustling, it’s alive, and there is always something happening – in the best way possible. I never felt like it was a city that was too busy or intense, and I always felt like I had somewhere to go if I wanted to have a peaceful afternoon – something I was honestly concerned about because at home my peaceful place to go is normally just the beach. I can genuinely see myself returning to Lyon for more than just a holiday.
I know I have mentioned the public transport system before – but that really is a big selling point for the city – it succeeds in being widely accessible.
Just briefly on the cost of living – I found it to be very manageable! I saved up for a long time before I left, and I had a strict(ish) budget, and there was nothing that shocked me or made me feel like I was being ripped off. Obviously being in the CROUS accommodation was very helpful for the budget, at €330/month, but in general I do think it was easy to live well on a budget.
I’m actually going to briefly go back to university, but to talk about food. I cooked pretty much every meal (what no I didn’t cook €1.30/kg spaghetti every night) – aside from the occasional dinner out and my lovely Monday lunches on campus. There is a cafeteria on campus (there’s actually two but I’ll get to the other in a minute) that serves a classic American high school cafeteria style eat-in lunch. Every day there’s a different combination of some kind of meat, carb, and vege. For €3.30 you get a meal (the meat, carb, and vege), a side salad, and a little dessert – absolute bargains. You do need your student card to get this price, but you get given that at the start of the semester so it’s easy peasy. The other cafeteria I mentioned is a more cafe style one, without the eat-in meals, it has a selection of sandwiches, paninis, muffins, cookies, etc. Once again everything is at a discounted price with your student card (which I think is weird because both of these places are literally inside the campus so why would you not be a student and is it that deep to let people who aren’t students save €1?). I quite genuinely think that the triple chocolate cookie from this café is reason enough to choose Lyon. Seriously, I have withdrawals already.
The final on campus thing I will talk about, on the topic of having withdrawals, is the hot drink vending machines. A delightful cup of hot chocolate, ready made in seconds, for the price of €0.45. It’s a utopia. I genuinely developed an addiction. Arrive at uni – hot chocolate, mid class break – hot chocolate, hanging around for a chat after class – hot chocolate. Obviously €0.45 is free so none of this is costing me anything (my entire weekly bank account is just 1000 hot chocolates).
If you’re not totally blogged out by now, I would love to go a little further into my language learning journey before I say goodbye. The reason I was set on France as my exchange location is really because I wanted to improve my language skills. I have been on and off studying the language since I was in year 8, and there’s simply no better way to learn a language than to up and move to the country itself.
As I mentioned earlier, the French classes at the university were absolutely brilliant. Listening, thinking, and speaking only in French for 4 hours a week not only drastically increased my confidence, but also my motivation to keep immersing myself outside of class.
Unfortunately for me, I have found there’s simply no more effective way to learn than just speaking – ugh so embarrassing. You simply have to get over the embarrassment and remember that no one actually cares, and so many people are in the exact same boat.
I tried to just take every opportunity I could to switch my brain into French. Don’t get me wrong, it is exhausting sometimes, but there’s ways I found to make it less totally daunting. I listened to a podcast specifically for beginner/intermediate French learners, I put my tv shows in French with English subtitles, and I narrated my life in Franglais – using French where I knew it, but not getting annoyed when I didn’t have a word yet, just using English to fill the gaps.
This might make me sound a bit bonkers, but sometimes when I would get completely exhausted and overwhelmed by the language and its many rules, I would just pretend in my mind that I was in a learning simulation, and every single person was here to help me learn French. So every person on the street, in the shops, they were all there because I want to be immersed in the language. Essentially I would pretend that the world did in fact revolve around me.
Sometimes you just need a reminder that you are so totally capable, and it’s okay to be overwhelmed.
That was a mighty long blog post, so thank you for reading. I hope it answered some questions, and perhaps gave a convincing case for choosing Lyon to study abroad.
À plus tard,
Happy Holidays,
Johanna (no longer in Lyon) xoxo