Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi universitari

Sometimes people ask me some variation of the question "what's your school like?".
I will henceforth direct them to this post.

**What follows are observations, not judgements.  If you by chance detect irony, sarcasm, or criticism, just remember that it brings me one step closer to many French students I know who never cease to complain about their universities.**

Let me tell you about the Italian department at the University of Paris III - The Sorbonne Nouvelle.
First of all, the department is not located in the same building as most of Paris III.  It is located just down the street on the other side of an apartment complex.  Just a two-minute walk, though, which is more than I can say for the German department of Paris III, which is not located in Paris.
The Italian department of Paris III is located on the fifth floor of what must be one of the ugliest buildings in the city, with thick brick-sized windows cut in an irregular pattern on the top two floors.  The department is accessed via a mysteriously wide stairway or an elevator (which you can reach only by a different entrance) whose control panel looks like this:

Exit the elevator and you find yourself in a small room with plastic walls (what are those called?), linoleum floors, and a column in the center.  The only hint that you're close is the long lists of grades taped up on the wall to your right.  The place is dark (lights that turn themselves off and which I never bother to turn on) save the tiny rays of sunlight that might be streaming in through about 6 of those brick windows cut randomly into the left-hand exterior wall.  Make a u-turn to the left and head down a long hallway.  Again, signs with arrows urging you forward are the only indication that you're not in another dimension.  Turn left and walk down three stairs and a shorter hallway before you get to an unmarked-door that is, as it turns out, the Italian Department (which is also the Romanian department, but nevermind about that). 

The department is composed of approximately 8 rooms: bathroom (one sink, two stalls - one men, one women), teacher's lounge (with an annoying code-lock which you'll read about later), the director's office, the secretariat (department secretary), the Salle Polyvalente (the only classroom in the department), two spaces that I'll call "anterooms" which connect the various other ones, and the library, which is technically composed of 5 "spaces", indicated by an arrangement of shelves or a partial wall - "the library", "the reading room", the librarian's office, plus a corner divided from the rest by a free-standing screen, behind which you'll find everything necessary to watch a movie, and a trapezoid-shaped office that seems to have been built off of one of the walls and which I assume to be the vice-director's space.  

Most department classes are held in Paris III's main building down the street, but my 8:00 AM Monday morning class last semester was held in the Salle Polyvalente.  The room is at least three times as long as it is wide, with 2-foot tall windows lining the entire periphery of the two exterior walls.  There is ragged netting strung up outside all department windows.  There is one small heater in the Salle Polyvalente which has usually been left off all weekend (and Texans, no matter how cold your winter was, ours was colder).  The Salle Polyvalente is connected to the rest of the department only by a small door at the back of the room which leads to the bowels of the secretariat.  You're supposed to use another door across the landing to get to the other rooms, but when this second door was locked even after its appointed hour of opening on Monday mornings and our professor needed to grab a book from the library or access the photocopier found in the second anteroom, she would hammer on the door at the back of the Salle Polyvalente until the department secretary emerged, dreary-eyed and somehow always surprised to see who it was.  Other than desks and a blackboard, there is a computer which I have never seen used and several file cabinets which may or may not contain something.

The secretariat of the Department of Italian at the University of Paris III is open two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon on Mondays, Tuesdays,  and Thursdays.  It is closed Wednesdays and Fridays.  During peak periods such as "registration" - current college students in America, whatever images this term provokes in your heads, imagine something 50 times less organized than that, and you're probably right on target...Anyway during peak periods it is sometimes possible to see the secretary who to my knowledge is always in her office whether it is one of the indicated six hours of the week when she should receive you with open arms or not.  I've only met her twice, once in September when I was attempting to register for classes and she had me fill out extensive paperwork and write a letter of intent (in French of course, and on the spot) to enroll in classes (both of which, I was later informed by the director, were unnecessary), and another time when I convinced her (with some difficulty) to open the teachers' lounge so that I could put an assignment in one of the teachers' boxes. Let it be noted that was the third trip I had made to the department over the course of a week: the other two times the teachers' lounge was locked, the department was a ghost-town, and the secretary wasn't answering her door.  I know she was there.

The library, definitely the heart-beat of the department, is open from Monday to Friday 9 AM to 6 PM.  If you are one of the lame stragglers still there when 5:50 rolls around, you must clearly indicate - usually by glancing at the clock overhead - that you are aware of the time and by 5:54 you must be finishing the last sentence of the last paragraph and demonstrating full willingness to return your book to the shelf within the next 30 seconds, lest you suffer the wrath of the grumpy librarian (there is also a nice one, although I have inferred that Grumpy is in charge) who is definitely foreign and presumably Italian (or Romanian?).  I once made the mistake of attempting to stay until 5:58 and Grumpy hasn't liked me since.   

At mid-day the library is a-buzz, usually with the chatter of several students who take no notice of the sign out front which reads "Nous vous prions de respecter le SILENCE" and circle up around one of the larger tables to "study", an annoyance excused only by the fact that there really is no other place for them to meet.  The only other regular noise is the high-pitched whine of the security posts at the door to the library; unfortunately the photocopier is located outside these doors, and the librarians are so habituated to the alarm by now that I'm sure stealing books would not be a problem.  The photocopier is in that second anteroom, where there is also a small table surrounded by bulletin boards covered in posters for events, most of which have already passed, books which have come out sometime in the last year, course schedules which were put up the day before classes started, etc.   A couple months ago I noticed a petition asking for signatures in support of a Turkish (?) student who had been too sick to renew his student visa and had been deported in the middle of the school year.  On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I usually lunch at this table amidst these bulletin boards, accompanied only by a flickering light overhead.  

As I did this last Wednesday I took a look around.  My first thought: it's amazing how fast we adapt.  My second: I'm going to appreciate being back at UT.  

Are the differences somewhat artificial?  Yes.  Does learning still happen here?  Absolutely.  But...

University tuition in France: negligible

University tuition in the States: not so much.

Not having to consult your watch, your calendar, and possibly the phases of the moon to be granted a hearing with the department secretary: ...priceless (?)