Woo hoo! Time to celebrate the end of our first week of class!! Granted, we only have our 5 classes spread out across Tuesday and Wednesday, but sitting in a classroom for 9 hours straight today was exhausting nevertheless!
We went to orientation for the ESSEC exchange program on Monday in Cergy, which is an hour-long commute from our flat in Paris. We met about 40 other students during the 4 hour orientation. The most hilarious part of this day was when we had training on how to use the systems at ESSEC. We watched a Google Docs video to learn how they use Google Docs (which is no different from how we use it anywhere else) and watched the instructor, who wore 5 bright shirts one on top of the other, take a layer off every time she finished going through a few slides in front of the class. We don't think she meant for it to be funny, but you can imagine, that watching an instructor strip down 4 times over half an hour is quite entertaining to say the least.
After our trip on Monday, we got ready for our first day of class on Tuesday. Mana is taking Luxury Retail Management and French while Sahil is taking Consumer Behavior and Business Analysis and Value Creation. While Mana found her French class pretty intense, we both found our business classes at ESSEC to be...well...VERY different from the classes back in the States. Between the students who snored as the professor spoke, the professor who read 1 slide word-for-word per every 5 minutes, the other students who talked loudly throughout the class, and the funny comments the professors made about American students being overachievers compared to European students, we knew this would be an interesting academic experience. :)
In the evening we had our friend Elena come over spontaneously and we chatted about photography, music, skiing, and business over some French wine. It was a great way to wind down and we followed it up by going to hang out with some of our Kellogg friends who had us over for some more food, drink, and fun!
Today, we started our day bright and early at 630am and left to take the RER A train to Cergy and arrive at ESSEC at 845am for our first class, International Cultural Management. This was the first class that we have ever taken together so it was fun to be students side-by-side. The humorous aspect to this class was while we thought we signed up for International Business, we in fact seemed to be learning all about investing in the arts and how culture and money tie together. Our professor began by telling us we would have a break after an hour and a half to smoke a cigarette before continuing the latter half of the class. Haha - oh Europe! During the second half of this class we watched a video on the Medici family in Florence and their involvement in the arts and Mana literally nudged Sahil every five minutes as he nodded off to sleep. Sahil later said he had a hard time staying awake in what he likes to call "Arts and Crafts time." Mana responded with, "Oh, if only you appreciated the arts the way you obsess over sports!" We then looked forward to the next class, Management of Organizations. We found our professor in this class to be quite quirky and decided to get vocal in class to bring energy to the classroom. We then sat in on Brand Strategies, which we found out again, was actually Advertising Strategy in content. Our professor in this class had a very dry but hilarious sense of humor...or we were just delirious at this point and laughed nonstop as he told us we could have an exam if we wanted to and all that we were really evaluated on was participation.
All in all, we walked away at 830pm tonight realizing that these 3 months would be an "embrace Europe experience" rather than a challenging academic complement to our education at our home schools. Even so, we both agreed that studying abroad in Paris was the best decision we made and these three months would be an experience we would value and appreciate for the rest of our lives!
Tomorrow and into the weekend we are hoping to explore Paris on a deeper level and look forward to sharing more soon!
We went to orientation for the ESSEC exchange program on Monday in Cergy, which is an hour-long commute from our flat in Paris. We met about 40 other students during the 4 hour orientation. The most hilarious part of this day was when we had training on how to use the systems at ESSEC. We watched a Google Docs video to learn how they use Google Docs (which is no different from how we use it anywhere else) and watched the instructor, who wore 5 bright shirts one on top of the other, take a layer off every time she finished going through a few slides in front of the class. We don't think she meant for it to be funny, but you can imagine, that watching an instructor strip down 4 times over half an hour is quite entertaining to say the least.
After our trip on Monday, we got ready for our first day of class on Tuesday. Mana is taking Luxury Retail Management and French while Sahil is taking Consumer Behavior and Business Analysis and Value Creation. While Mana found her French class pretty intense, we both found our business classes at ESSEC to be...well...VERY different from the classes back in the States. Between the students who snored as the professor spoke, the professor who read 1 slide word-for-word per every 5 minutes, the other students who talked loudly throughout the class, and the funny comments the professors made about American students being overachievers compared to European students, we knew this would be an interesting academic experience. :)
In the evening we had our friend Elena come over spontaneously and we chatted about photography, music, skiing, and business over some French wine. It was a great way to wind down and we followed it up by going to hang out with some of our Kellogg friends who had us over for some more food, drink, and fun!
Today, we started our day bright and early at 630am and left to take the RER A train to Cergy and arrive at ESSEC at 845am for our first class, International Cultural Management. This was the first class that we have ever taken together so it was fun to be students side-by-side. The humorous aspect to this class was while we thought we signed up for International Business, we in fact seemed to be learning all about investing in the arts and how culture and money tie together. Our professor began by telling us we would have a break after an hour and a half to smoke a cigarette before continuing the latter half of the class. Haha - oh Europe! During the second half of this class we watched a video on the Medici family in Florence and their involvement in the arts and Mana literally nudged Sahil every five minutes as he nodded off to sleep. Sahil later said he had a hard time staying awake in what he likes to call "Arts and Crafts time." Mana responded with, "Oh, if only you appreciated the arts the way you obsess over sports!" We then looked forward to the next class, Management of Organizations. We found our professor in this class to be quite quirky and decided to get vocal in class to bring energy to the classroom. We then sat in on Brand Strategies, which we found out again, was actually Advertising Strategy in content. Our professor in this class had a very dry but hilarious sense of humor...or we were just delirious at this point and laughed nonstop as he told us we could have an exam if we wanted to and all that we were really evaluated on was participation.
All in all, we walked away at 830pm tonight realizing that these 3 months would be an "embrace Europe experience" rather than a challenging academic complement to our education at our home schools. Even so, we both agreed that studying abroad in Paris was the best decision we made and these three months would be an experience we would value and appreciate for the rest of our lives!
Tomorrow and into the weekend we are hoping to explore Paris on a deeper level and look forward to sharing more soon!
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