First, I just want to thank everyone for the overwhelming amount of love and support I got from my last post (if you missed it, you can find it here). Unfortunately this post isn’t going to be as personal, but if you’re interested in what school is like, go ahead and read on!

Starting school here was like going through Freshman year again. I didn’t know where any of my classes were, didn’t know anything about the school, and I didn’t know anyone. Being in France, most of the communication regarding orientation and information was either ambiguous, in French or nonexistent. Once again, I probably should have been close to a breakdown. Let me breakdown what it was actually like. Hopefully someone reading this is needs to know more about GEM so they aren’t as lost as I was.

My Classes

Thankfully, the setup of my class schedule made this all much more manageable.  Grenoble École de Management (GEM) organizes their undergrad, or BIB (Bachelor in International Business) students into cohorts of about 35. Then you have all of your classes, excluding foreign language, with this group of students. Every semester you have a different cohort. Within these cohorts there are a couple different groups of students.

There are students who go to GEM for their entire BIB, which are called progressive. These students take their first two years completely in French or completely in English. The semester I went on exchange, I was mixed in with third year students. Thus, the French and English students had just been mixed together for the first time. As a result, some of the students were taking classes completely in English for the first time, which I cannot even imagine (some of our teachers were really hard to understand, and this is my first language).

Within my class were many international students. Some were on exchange for a semester, like me, and some were progressive students. There were students from the US, France, Switzerland, Egypt, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, China, Singapore, Ireland, and more. With this many countries represented, classes felt like the UN, minus Robert’s Rules, at some points (haha that’s a joke). But honestly, group projects were really difficult at times because of cultural differences, so I cannot stress how important it is to actually have skills in that buzzword, cultural intelligence. My class got pretty close, which made for some pretty good in class discussions and fun nights out.

Class Schedule

The schedule for courses here is somewhat stressful if you like routine. We had a different schedule every week, with different courses in different rooms. The cohorts had slightly different teachers for different courses, and some of our courses had multiple teachers. The nice thing is that we would always have class from 9am-12:15pm, 1:15pm-4:30pm, and/or 4:45-8pm. We would only ever have two of those time slots in one day, and we got a 15-minute break between. Overall, I felt that this schedule was a nice change from the normal routine.

Our courses were focused on international business, which made them feel repetitive at times. However, since we were able interact with and learn about so many cultures at once, the content was more applicable to our actual experience. One of my favorite courses was Intercultural Business Skills. While it was a pretty common-sense class, the professor helped us to understand cultural differences in a really applicable way. Actually, one of the most enjoyable assignments (aside from it being due at the end of the week with the heaviest workload), was a paper comparing our own culture to another. Another fun class was Innovation Management, where we got to create a new, innovative product and present it to the class. Additionally, out professors for this course were amazing. In the first half, we had an energetic ex-pat American who encouraged us all to be more creative in our daily lives (we played with legos in class one day with him). The second half was a no-nonsense Italian who sounds just like Gru from Despicable Me. He would run around during his lectures and try to keep the whole class engaged. While intimidating, he had a certain candor with the class that made us feel like we were his colleagues in some sense (maybe that’s why he thought tossing candy across the room was a good idea, until he hit me in the head…).

Our language classes are kind of cool in that they mix together all of the masters and bachelor students, and then place them depending on a test score. French students take English, and all other students take French. If you are already fluent in both, you take a third language, such as Spanish, German, or Chinese. While the content wasn’t the most interesting, I really enjoyed that this class was taught completely in French, and that I had a different variety of students than in my other courses. However, living with a host family, I didn’t exactly need the practice as much.

Student Life

The way clubs and social life at GEM is so different from UW-La Crosse, where I go in the states. First of all the student associations are quite difficult to join, and even more difficult if you aren’t French. I would compare joining them to joining a fraternity (I am in a co-ed business one, Delta Sigma Pi, so this is my frame of reference). You need to apply, interview, and hold a position to be in one. For most of them, you need to be friends with people already in it, and be able speak French to have a chance. Others, such as the international student one, are nicer about publishing information in English and accepting students their members don’t know. This was a very big surprise to me, as in the US, you can just show up to club meetings for most clubs, without officially being a member.

Even though they are selective, the student associations at GEM are highly active and put on cool parties, called SAT’s or OB’s (open bars). These are usually themed, and you buy a ticket for about 15-20 euros that covers all your drinks for a night. The tickets go on sale at a certain time, and you have to buy it right away. This is called a shotgun (French people use this word for everything, I guess you could say they’re trigger happy hehe). Then you also have to shotgun a bus time later in the week. Overall, I find this process very stressful, but the parties are cool. On the night they take place, you get bussed to the place, usually a warehouse outside Grenoble. Once there, you are drinking whatever mixed drink they have, and probably getting it thrown at you. The last one I went to only served tequila and orange juice, and I am not sure I can handle the smell of either for a couple months…

The other one I went to this semester was called Wall to Wall. Everyone wore white t-shirts and then went around writing things on each others’ shirts the whole night. We got a big group together to go, so we mostly just wrote on each others’ at the pre-drink (they don’t call them pre-games here). Here’s a picture from our whole group that night!

Soooo…

…this is getting a little long, and honestly there isn’t that much more to say. If I don’t drown in studying for finals, I’ll post about some winter activities here (aka my Alps ski survival guide).