French Connection
why some gallic students say ‘oui, oui’ to columbia
Those with friends who are juniors have certainly gotten used to the many photo albums featuring the Mona Lisa, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and whatever else those studying abroad curiously forget that most people have already seen before their camera has captured it. With all the Parisian flight that is study abroad, Columbia students may seem to forget that some Frenchies actually choose to take the opposite travel route. We spoke to two French students at Columbia to find out how our country’s premier city has been treating them.
Franc-ly Speaking
Youcef Draia came to the United States from the City of Lights with high expectations for the Big Apple.
“I came with the allusion of finding love, but it was very delusional,” Draia says, typing away his frustrations as we sit together in Butler Café.
“I am in shock,” he adds dramatically. “At first people are very nice, welcoming, spontaneous. Especially when they find out I am French, foreign or whatever. France is supposed to be so sexy here,” he muses.
Draia came to Columbia from Sciences Po, located in Paris, for an entire year of study abroad. While he is in junior standing at Columbia, the equivalent three years mean that at the end of this semester he will have completed his college degree requirement for France.
“This is my last year, then, I am heading back to France to get my Master’s in International Affairs,” Draia says.
Draia has only been speaking English for the past five years, but he finds that the transition to an American school has not been that hard for him.
“I didn’t find it very difficult because I study the same subject, international relations. Yet, in America it is interesting because it is from an entirely different perspective, so I like that about it,” he says.
As far as language barriers go, Draia has not had much of an issue, save for a few instances.
“Only when professors use colloquial vocabulary does it become a problem, like, ‘the U.S. and Soviet Union butting heads.’ What is ‘butting heads?” he asks.
Yet overall, Draia has found that the learning experience at an American institution has been a particularly rewarding one for him.
“In France we don’t have campuses, we all live at home. It’s not the atmosphere you find here, so that’s why I enjoy it, the American college life.”
But while Draia has found some level of comfort here, especially in terms of academics, he has learned to give up on his rather high expectations of life in New York City.
“New York is very exciting, but it is too stressful,” he says.
He returns home to Paris in May and tells me: “I am impatient. I miss home.”
French Kiss Goodbye
Jessica Schinazi, CC ’11, said farewell to friends and family in France when she was only in high school. The French freshman attended Lycée Francais de New York, a private French-language school based on the France educational system, located in the Upper East Side.
“Since I went to school in the city, I’ve spent years speaking the [English] language,” Schinazi explains.
When it came to deciding whether or not to return to France for higher education, Schinazi was definite in her desire to stay in the United States.
“A lot of my senior class went back to France,” she says. “But, the American system of education, I liked it better than France.”
She says that after speaking with her friends who did return, she was glad she made the decision to stay in the states.
“They are dying,” she says of these returned friends. “All of them have told me they want to come back and have the American college experience,” she adds.
In particular, she says she chose to attend Columbia because “it is a very well known school and the best alternative in America to a French education,” and here she plans to study economics.
Schinazi has no plans to return to France after she finishes college as America continues to be the place she most wants to live. Yet, she still finds it necessary to maintain a connection with her home country.
“I connect with French people, through the French Society, movie screenings. I still have friends in the senior class [of high school],” she says. In particular, she enjoys simply being able to speak her first language with them.
“It’s difficult to have to speak English all day,” she says.\\\