The slump

Short of the Christmas market, things are pas bien here.

My sleep habits have completely changed. I stay up late because it takes awhile to wind down from school and then "wind up" again in order to work productively. This, obviously, makes it hard to wake up in the morning and stay awake in the boring classes. I have, on the bright side, been drinking more water because doing something helps keep me awake.

Our schedule/due dates are so insane that it's hard to keep them straight, let alone work productively. I've managed to keep up decently, based on what I've heard from the other Americans. Don't get too excited, however, this simply means that I've actually finished  few papers, while others loom ahead of me. We have these evil little seminars that take up entire days and include a "dossier" (a paper of at least 5 pages in length) due shortly thereafter. These utterly interfere with our already disorganized schedule.

For example, this past week we had negociation and complex selling. I am an awful negociator, to the extent that it was one of the personality faults I named during our equally pointless seminar on finding an internship. So you can imagine how much I loved this class... The first day involved a case where we had to negociate the contract between a star chess player and a company who wanted him to play against their super-computer. The second half of that day was a case that insulted most of our German classmates because it was a replay of the end of WWII. Reading the terms used, you can well imagine why they would've been insulted. The country that was obviously Germany was called "Bierland," and the representative was named "Holger Wurst." The case went on to describe how Bierland had utterly destroyed Europe. Now, you and I both know that all of these things actually happened and that it was horrible. However, to bring up the issue in a class full of people who have dealt with the stigma of their grandparents' actions their whole lives is not exactly the most politically correct option.

Day 2 was better/worse. Our professor was much more interesting and shared more stories of his experience. However, he unfortunately took a liking to me and called on me all the time! One of his main points was that a negociation isn't truly successful unless everybody wins. However, in reality I've always found (thus the reason that I hate negociating) that everyone involved is concerned only with his own interests and is constantly trying to trick someone in order to come out ahead. We did several practice rounds in groups, and had only 20 minutes left of class when he decided that we were going to have a special negociation with one student against him. The only thing he told us what that he would be a buyer for a large chain of 2 * hotels, and the lucky student would be a seller of signs (like the kind that point you towards the ball room or the toilets). After what was supposed to be 10 min of prep, but was really only 5, guess who he chose?! Since we hadn't had any guidelines or any real prep, everything said was basically bs and could be whatever the speaker wanted it to be. So, for example, he had offers from another supplier, whereas I made up the fact that there were 150 rooms in each of 10 hotels. 30 years of experience vs someone who hates negociating is really no contest, and even though I tried my best, I just got so nervous and said the wrong thing several times. Afterwards, we discussed it and I was so upset that I started tearing up, so I didn't even participate in the discussion. I, thankfully, waited to cry until I was outside the classroom, but he must've seen the waterworks coming and tried to apologize as I was on my way out. He even went so far as to tell my friend, Harriet, that I'd done a good job and shouldn't be upset. This is the second time this semester that I've been in front of a group actively trying to find fault (even though it was a role-playing situation) and it's ended in my crying. Having never been like this before, I've decided that the camel back-breaking straw is French. In a similar situation in the United States, my language skills would at least be strong enough that I could fake my way out of "trouble." In French, however, I can hold a conversation, but can't react quickly enough to formulate the best possible response.

To top things all off, we finally received a response (after over a month) from Northeastern regarding which classes we'll be transferring back. The answer is: all of them! Since the credits are different among classes, some of them will be combined and the grades averaged in order to transfer them over. Unfortunately, the goal of French students is just to pass the class. Employers don't look as much at your grades as at the university you went to. For the Americans, however, we have to worry about grades in 17 classes! While a class may only technically have 2 credits, we still have a multiple hour exam and a 20 page group paper + presentation to do in many of them, so the work load is the same as a 4 credit class, we just see the professor (aka the only person who can advise us) less often.

Needless to say, it hasn't been an especially wonderful week.

On the bright side- I found out last week Thursday (hadn't posted about interviews for lack of time and for fear of failure) that I am officially going to be an employee of the Corporate Finance and Developpment department at BNP Paribas- the largest bank in France and I believe the 7th or 8th largest worldwide! :-)