Many college students decide to spend a semester or year studying abroad and this year I am one of 3,500 Irish students participating in the Erasmus programme. I am studying English Literature and French, in the University of Sophia Anitpolis, in Nice.
As well as studying, I’m going to interview other students who are on Erasmus to try and understand what it is about the Erasmus program that entices so many students to study abroad. Is it the foreign language? Or is it the chance to move to a different country and become totally independent? For many students a year spent abroad is the first taste of really living in the outside world, a world where our friends and family are literally miles away.
I want to find out a number of things in my interviews: the differences between the student’s home and host country, whether or not studying abroad encourage students to consider emigrating and finally I want to document the experience of discovering a new city or town from a student perspective (which is generally synonymous with being broke).
I’m also hoping to build a community of students who are on Erasmus, so we feel a little more connected as we’re dispersed across the globe.
Initial Thoughts
Traditionally students go abroad in third year, but the specific requirements of my degree meant that I had to go abroad in my second year if I wanted to go for the full academic year. While I knew I was going to study abroad from my first day of college (it makes sense to study French in France, if possible!), it did come as a bit of a shock that I would be leaving for Nice only a year after starting my degree - assuming I met the required grades in my end-of-year exams.
It feels strange knowing that I won’t be here next year. I accepted my place in Nice the same way I accepted my course in college a year ago – thoroughly excited but nervous that it won’t live up to my expectations, that it will be harder, or that I won’t find my own place.
Going to Nice is the logical decision (considering what I’m studying) and it has potential to be one of the best years of my life, however the prospect of starting over again in a new college and making new friends is a little daunting.
Although I have travelled a good bit, I have never lived away from home for more than a month. Needless to say, I’m quite excited at the idea of doing my own food shopping and paying my own rent (I also imagine that these activities will quickly lose their charm and become the bane of my life). It will be strange not to be surrounded by people I know and instead surrounded by the well-dressed French. I’ve never been to Nice, although I’ll admit to having spent a few hours on Google Maps Street View ‘walking’ the streets. Every experience will be new but at the very least I will have reliably good weather thanks to Nice’s Mediterranean climate.
Life en Français
The prospect of studying French as a first language and English as a second language excites me because I have always studied English in a first language context and French in a second language context. Having come from all-Irish primary and secondary education, I understand the importance of studying a language as a working, everyday language, as opposed to learning from grammar exercises and oral comprehensions alone.
My plan is to feign deafness whenever someone tries to speak to me in any language other than French for my eight months in Nice (aside from my English literature classes - I imagine that would become problematic quite quickly) and I hope to be dreaming in French come December and a fluent speaker by May. Anyone who’s spent time speaking a foreign language remembers the utter exhaustion that accompanies a week of trying to make yourself understood and never quite knowing whether or not you have succeeded. Outwardly, it takes a lot of smiling, nodding and enthusiasm but inwardly, a lot of screaming and hair-pulling.
So here’s to living nicely; I may return with an incomprehensible southern French accent, a newfound love of salad Niçoise and a tan. I may also decide that I never want to leave Ireland again, that the French are too difficult to befriend and that I have gained twenty baguettes in weight. Starting in September, I will be meeting students from across the globe and asking them my questions, all whilst I navigate the highs and lows of life in Nice.
