Orientation Day One

Watta day, I'm spent. And I didn't even set foot in the lab... For the next three days, I'm attending an orientation meeting for my Fulbright scholarship. There are about 20-25 of us I would estimate--Americans who have obtained funding to perform some type of research in France. I am in the "scientific minority"....with the vast majority of Fulbright grantees coming from backgrounds in the humanities or social sciences. What's cool is the incredibly broad array of projects that people are working on. For example, just for starters I met today a dude who is interested in applying mathematical models to literature (don't ask me how the hell he plans to do that), a clarinetist from El Paso Texas, and a professor who studies how animals think. I have the distinction of being the sole M.D. in the group.

Part of the orientation this morning was describing the differences between the French and American university systems...a topic with which I was only vaguely familiar. To sum up what I learned this morning: the French system is infinitely more complex than the American one, with a number of different "pathways" one might take to achieve academic success. In the U.S., most fields can be summarized according to the same general trajectory: go to high school, go to college for four years, then choose to an advanced degree of some sort (PhD, Master's, Law School, MD) depending on your specific focus. In France, you can bounce around between the standard University system, "les Grand Ecoles", different trade schools, etc in a seemingly endless number of ways. Also, while the French system has the advantage of being basically free to everybody, there is an intense "weeding out" process that occurs throughout the educational system...it is not uncommon, for instance, for students to drop out after 2-3 years of unremarkable academic success and take a menial job, leaving without any type of degree or anything else to show for it. It's an interesting topic, and it's in general good for me to realize that there are radically different philosophies which pertain to the purpose of the educational system and universities than those of the U.S.

Another talk was interestingly entitled "French-American Relations: Irrevocably Damaged?" which was also quite enlightening.

After the first day's orientation, we were invited to attend a dinner at the Palais Luxembourg, where the French Senate meets, along with a large number of Fulbright alumni and a bunch of other important academic types. The funny thing is that Claire and I spent so much time chatting and hobnobbing with other folks that in fact we completely missed out on the dinner (served buffet-style, and which I'm sure would have been quite wonderful)! So the night in fact ended with a late-night trip to a McDonald's, quite ironic given the otherwise superior quality of food to which we should have had access. And for the record...this was the first time I've eaten "McDo" since being in France. I was thinking of trying to hold out for the entire year just to prove that I could, but the lure of salty fry goodness was just too much to take...