Les Devoirs

I have officially finished my exposé and my oral presentation of my fiche de lecture in my law class. I also have finished my synthèse in my Professions Politques class.  I have an exposé left in that on one Wednesday.  In my French Defense Policy, I have finished both my press review and my exposé.  I've done a lot of work so far.  And yet it doesn't really feel like it.

Something that is very peculiar about SciencesPo and their methodology is that everything is graded based on presentations.  I have to turn in very little written work.  The only exception is my Social History of the US class, which is based on my midterm and my final.  I have a final essay in my French Defense Policy course, but that will be the only piece of work I turn in for a grade.  I have three written assignments in my law class and none in my Professions Politiques course.  There are no tests, no midterms, no quizzes.

I have two finals, one for my law class (which is just an oral defense of a paper I have to write) and an essay for Social History of the US.  But other than that, there doesn't seem to be that much work.  But the work that they do give us is time consuming and intense.  Like I said when I first got here, the SciencesPo methodology is very different than anything we have in the states.

Right now, I am sitting in the library trying to get started on my midterm paper for Social History.  I have to write it on Prohibition.  Literally the only instrucitons my professor gave the class was to "write a sensible paper commenting on the documents, and demonstrating your knowledge of American history."  I have no idea what that even means.  There is no prompt, no further explanation.  I don't know if I can use the same style I would back at UCSB or if I have to figure out how to incorporate it into the SciencesPo method.

Don't get me wrong, I really like this course.  It is the only course I'm in where I feel comfortable and have not once ever dreaded going.  But it is just a little unnerving not knowing what I have to do...  We all know how well I do with uncertainty (just look how I handled not having a place to live...).

Well, I should go work on this paper.  I need to get a lot of work done today because I am having my host family over for dinner tomorrow and I don't want to have to be stressing to finish my hw.