The Essentials of Project Management

The Essentials of Project Management is
always a class I look forward to.
***
It is held Monday mornings from 9-noon and is taught entirely in English by a French CEO (I have to double check his position, but he works for an airplane company). His English is pretty good (he has a huge vocabulary). He also expresses his disapproval of our in-class activity presentations with colorful English and French! Our activity groups have to present what we each worked on. We all usually do not meet his standards of performance. We usually accomplish no more than to making scheeeet.
***
Overall, this is one of my best courses. The lectures are good.
The professor makes powerpoints outlining his lesson and gives numerous examples. If you don't understand an example (which has been the case for me several times now), he tries another one and another one until you get it. Most of the examples have to do with organizing a project to build a plane (engine, landing gear, interior comfort, etc)!
***
As with all classes in France, no matter the year/level it seems, the students talk constantly. The professors cannot control the students, and most make a very weak effort to do so. My project management professor, on the other hand, is indeed a little more intimidating than the average, and manages to provoke about 5 minutes of silence at a time instead of the usual 1 minute.

Examens !

Today was the first test in our Français des affaires course.

After I spent hours reviewing the 3 dossiers and 15 chapters from the course workbook because the professor stressed the need to know all the vocab, the test turned out to be 6 fill in the blanks, a couple matching, one short definition, and a huuuge commentaire de graphique. This part only actually required knowledge of every day vocab words such as fluctuate (fluctuer), stagnate (stagner), drop (chuter), etc.
I am not necessarily disappointed that the test was so easy, but rather that it only covered a small, small portion of what we did in the workbook*. More importance seemed to be placed on knowing how to say "up" and "down" than on knowing the difference between different types of sociétés.

Last week I had a test in Essentials of Project Management as well.
It consisted of 10 essay questions. At first we all (the foreign students, but the French students too!) thought it was an open-book test, so we took out our notes. Then some goodie-two-shoes announced to the professor (who wasn't paying enough attention to notice everyone using notes) that, maybe some foreign students didn't understand, it's not an open-book test. So we were all told to put our notes away, and reminded that we were not five years old.
***
Then the professor left the room to answer his cell phone, which of course lead to masses amounts of answers being swapped as fast of possible. I would like to add, here, that I was one of the few students who did not actively seek or give answers. ;)
The professor returned after 2 minutes. What I find interesting is that he did not notice the entire silent classroom start to move and buzz before he had even made it out the door, and that it took a couple seconds for it to calm down again once he reopened the door and proceeded to sit at his desk.
After an hour and a half, we turned in our tests and took a 15 minute break. Upon returning to class, the professor announced that one honest student informed him that everyone had cheated like little children on the test and that he shouldn't have to babysit us and as a result, we were going to re-do anther essay test instead of having a lecture. This actually turned out to be in my favor, since I couldn't answer several of the questions on the original test (see, I left them blank, I didn't cheat). The new test only had two questions: describe a business plan and what does it consist of.
***
This week he returned our tests and said he had been "generous" with marks. I think the lowest grade (and I know what everyone's grade was because the professor announced them as he handed back papers) 10,5/20. This is just above the "average" cut-off (11/20 is considered "acceptable", 15/20 is "good!", 18/20 is "excellent!"). I found it interesting to note that 10 or so of the 13 Chinese students in the class got between 14-16, the highest grades.


* the amazing workbook must be stressed as the main learning tool in F.d.A. since only 15 minutes per class period (2x a week) is dedicated to correcting the exercises and the rest of the time to listening to personal stories from the professor on unrelated topics.

Preparing to leave AU

If you're getting ready to go abroad this January, you've probably already heard from Anissa R'Mili. She's the head of international students at RBS. She sent out tons of emails to help students along with dates, deadlines, housing, etc.

Anissa is very nice in person, too! She was the first person on campus I met - I went to her office to pick up my residence room key and other important papers. She even explained how to use the bus, where to buy a bus ticket, and much more!

Back to the original subject - preparing to enter French territory!

CampusFrance
The French government indeed asked for quite a few payments...They required at least $60 to sign up on the CampusFrance website, which just tells the French government that you are coming to their country and is not something you use ever again (except the CF email receipt to get a visa). Then there's the visa fee plus a nice $70 or $75 tax (the numbers might be off by a dollar or two, I didn't keep the receipts). I had a difficult time at first figuring out where to pay on the CampusFrance website, but after a phone call to AU Abroad, someone was able to tell me what was wrong.

***

French Consulate
I went to the French Consulate (on French Embassy property) while in DC over the summer to apply for my visa. At first I was slightly worried about the whole process, however, because AU Abroad announced that someone else had claimed that the Consulate might not give you back your passport!

Thankfully, this was false, in the end, and the choices I had were to leave my passport with a pre-paid and pre-addressed envelope for them to mail with my visa attached, or to take my passport with me, wait for a letter with a secret code from them, and then bring my passport + letter back to the consulate to have my visa put in. I chose the second, and got the letter really quickly.

***

Housing
The next step was to transfer $2200, or about 1600 Euros, into a French bank account given to me after I received my housing assignment. The money made it overseas safely within a few weeks.

***

Course selection
There seems to be a RBS course catalogue somewhere in Internetland, but I was not aware of it when trying to get my courses approved through Kogod. I found courses by emailing Michel Motte several dozen times about management, marketing, itec, etc., and one by one pieced together my options.

I am taking:

• Essentials of Project Management - once a week for three hours, taught in English by a French airplane seller
  
• Marketing - a first-year course, once a week for three hours, taught in French
• Français des Affaires - 2x a week, void of in actual in-class learning, but the book is great!
  
• Français des Affaires Atelier - 2x a week, fantastic French professor!
• Advanced Information Technology - 4-week course to begin mid-November
  
• Italian 2 - once a week for 3 hours (which I will stop once Adv. IT begins)
  
• Arabic 4 - once a week for however long we want!