Deep thoughts for a Monday

My mind has been somewhat preoccupied for the past few weeks.  You see, my dear husband would like to go back to school and start a masters degree in the fall. It's a subject he absolutely loves and is passionate about, and the program director is someone who is really well-known in his field. Sounds good,  what's the issue you say?  Well, luckily, this being France, it's not cost!  It's that this is an after-hours program.  It would be a minimum of three nights a week (and sometimes four) for the next two years, with C getting home around 9:45pm each time.

But ksam- you did your own masters and C was so supportive!  I know.  I know.  But I hunted around and chose one 1) the shortest master I could and 2) the one that encroached the least on our time together. I was lucky and had class every other Friday and Saturday, so it really only ate up two days per month of our time together.  And because I work from home, I was able to do all of my studying during the day, so it didn't really impact our time together.

This would be most weeknights, and then weekends spend studying. For Two Whole Years. I feel so selfish even writing this. My husband is one of the most selfless people I know, and has never once complained about all of my travel or asked me not to go on a trip.  He turned down a job that he really wanted because it would have required him to travel too.  When I am home, he does everything to ensure that he is home at nights so we can be sure to spend time together given my crazy travel schedule. He constantly accompanies me to the airport/train station, and is there waiting for me when I get back, even if it's just so we can take the RER together.  He spends most of his vacations on location with me, while I work.  So he deserves this. 

But I can't help be worried about us - our time together is already limited as-is, and this is going to cut it back even more.  I feel we have a strong relationship, but I also firmly believe that relationships take nurture.  We have been very thoughtful thus far about ensuring we spend enough quality time together. And C, bless his heart, is convinced will we still be able to do that.  I on the other hand am not so convinced. Out of the 30 people in my masters program, 8 people had divorced by the end of our program.  And they were all in situations closer to C's, ie needing to do all of their studying at night and on the weekends. Two more are still in an on-going affair with each other, four years later. C's take on it is that they must have already been in 'fragile' couples going in, but I saw firsthand how much time the program took up for them outside of class, and how much pressure it put on their personal life.

So I don't know. I want to be able to support him on this.  And it's really important to him that I do.  We've made my career such a priority for the the past five years. It almost hurts me to even write this, but is it time to think about slowing down on travel?  I've worked so hard to get where I am, and to establish a 'real' career in France. And I love my job and all the crazy opportunities it has afforded me. How can I give that up? But then the other half of me says "That's so selfish! You're a team. It's his turn now."

I guess the good thing is that we've got the rest of the summer to figure out how to make it work. And at least 50% of us is convinced that we will. :)  But if anyone has any suggestions about successfully combining working full-time+studying+family, I'm all ears!

There was a good idea in there somewhere...

I swear I woke up in the middle of the night last night with an idea for the most amazing blog entry.  I remember thinking "Yes!  Definitely!  I have to write about that!".

Except this morning, when I woke up, it was gone.  I was only left with the shadow of that great idea, the knowing it was a good one, but it was still just out of my reach.

So instead, I will write about what I have been up to.  I defended my masters thesis two weeks ago. It feels so great to finally be done. I was most worried for the 1.5hrs of questions after our defense, but the jury was very civil with us (according to my teammates, they were distracted by my dress and peep toe shoes - hey, I'll take any extra points we can get lol).  I don't have our final grade yet because it will depend on how the others do, but I do know that the jury found our thesis & defense very well-thought out and that we will get at least a 15.  That's good enough for me.  And in keeping with the style of my masters program, we celebrated afterwards with champagne, macarons & other goodies from Pierre Hermé.

Things are rolling along with our apartment renovations.  It's ending up being a lot more work than we thought it would be, but C took the whole month off and he and his dad have been working 12 hour+ days like troopers.   It's getting to be crunch time since he has to go back to work soon, but what they've done so far has been pretty incredible considering they are/were both mainly office-goers.  Thank God for youtube videos like "How to Break down a Wall" or "How to build a false ceiling".  (No, seriously)

Meanwhile, my poor father-in-law has basically been living with us, sleeping on our couch, bless his heart. Having a spare bedroom is one thing I am really been looking forward to, for exactly that reason.  It's been interesting having him here though, and I'm pretty sure he finds our eating habits bizarre.  He tends to eat like an old-school Frenchman, ie "Eat like a prince at breakfast, a king at lunch and a pauper at dinner", whereas we tend to have our big meal at night. 

Last night, I made a vegetarian lentil soup that I usually serve with rice on the side for C since he eats like a horse.  Even though it literally was just red lentils and vegetables, for him, it was 1) not a soup, 2) those couldn't be lentils since they weren't green, and 3) it was a hearty meal since there were chunks.   He tends to eat pureed or broth soups at night, so he found it too heavy (same with last week's chili).  I have long given up on trying to convince him that it's the same darn thing, just not pureed, and that chunks don't automatically equally fat + high calories, but what can you do?  And don't even get me started on how confused he was by the idea of cauliflower rice...I thought his head was going to explode.  I often wonder what kind of stories his brings home for his wife on the weekends.  But he is a lovely man, and we are oh-so-lucky that he has been so willing to help C out with all of the work. Hopefully we'll be able to start moving in about two weeks...

Oops

This past weekend, I realized something that will likely negatively affect my final grade for my masters....Duh duh duh.....

You see, we only have one week of class left (unbelievable, right??), and that last week includes our final exam.  I was thinking I was sitting pretty good because my average grades for the first two weren't too bad, so I haven't exactly been studying like I had for the first two.  However in talking to my classmates on Saturday, I realized two things:  1) some of our classes were more heavily weighted than others, and that 2) the grades our director had given us had not yet taken this into account.  

So I start looking back at the classes that were deemed most important (finance, accounting, etc) and saw those were the areas where I had the lowest scores.  Doh!  Suddenly I realized that I had gone about studying for my tests all wrong.  We had six subjects per exam, and I had been studying for them all equally, whereas I should have been focusing most of my time on the heavily-weighted subjects.

Cue mega panic about the third exam.

So my classmates start trying to explain how to go about calculating the minimum grade I needed to have on the third exam, and after a few minutes, my head was absolutely spinning with numbers and advice.  I finally asked my tablemate to help me figure out exactly, and the formula he wrote down was something like this:

M= (Axy + Bxy + Cxy)/Z

And I was like "WTF is that??".   He then went through this complicated (to me anyways) system of calculate M, A, x, y, B and Z, so that we could figure out C, ie the minimum score I needed for the third exam. I guess it's probably easy if it's something you've been doing it since grade school, but I'm still not sure I could do it on my own...

Luckily it turned out to be a fairly low number, so I should be alright (though it was not as low as my tablemate, who could get a -2 on the exam and still average more than 10).  As a disclaimer, I realize that I may just be slow, and that the idea of "pondération" is completely obvious to those of you who have grown up with this method and/or have done schooling in France, but figured I would put it out there just in case I can help someone prevent making the same studying mistakes I made.

Flash quoi?

For the first time in a long time, the start of the new school year actually has importance for me, besides just meaning that hoards of foreign nannies and yuppie mummies will once again be crowding the sidewalk in front of our building.  This rentrée marks the last semester of my masters (hallelujah!), and our director decided what better way to kick it off than with a six-subject exam.

Cuz everyone wants to spend the month of August studying, right??

Six subjects was just seeming too much for me, and reading my notes wasn't really getting my anywhere, so I decided to go the old school route and make some flashcards.

The added bonus was that they were easily transportable during my travels, so I didn't have to be hauling huge stack of notes and books with me on the road. 

Our test was scheduled for Saturday, so every break we had on the Friday before was spent studying my little cards.  What I wasn't expecting however was the reaction they would get from my classmates.  Every single one exclaimed "What on Earth do you have there?".  When I explained what it was, they would go on and on about what a fantastic idea it was, and ask if it was an "American" thing.   Here it turns out that almost everyone else in the class had neatly rewritten their notes on these 5x7 note cards, and they were all studying off of that. 

The news of the flashcard revolution quickly spread, with some people even copying my cards on to paper so that they could make their own that night.  And I was the most popular person at lunch - everyone wanted to sit with me and see the flash cards in action, so they could make their own for our last exam in December.  I found the whole thing hilarious because flashcards are such a simple concept. Who would have ever thought a little ol' stack of cards could have such a big effect?

When in Rome....

I spent last week's long weekend in Romania for my master's program.  I had a great time, and I'll probably write more about it later, but I wanted to share quick some of the funnier moments that came with spending five days non-stop with a group of 30 Frenchies.

Every morning, we would meet up at a certain time to began the day's activities, and there were systematically one or two stragglers.  When they would finally make it out of the hotel and board the bus, everyone would start shouting "Wooooo!".  The first time it happened, I thought they were cheering because we could finally take off.  But as the week went on, I realized that their joyful Wooo! was actually the equivalent of our low-toned Boo.  It was pretty disconcerting - 1) because how could I not have realized this after ten years in France?  and 2) it was just so darn happy sounding.

One of the female administrators of our program had a thing for one of my fellow students, and it became blatantly obvious during this trip. But the thing is - this guy is newly married with young children.  So many debates were held about whether what she was doing was immoral or whether or not he was a grown man and it was his choice. I'd say about half the group thought he should keep it in his pants and the other half thought he was free to do as he pleased.
 
Probably one of the most common complaints I heard throughout the trip was about the lack of coffee after meals. It was pretty hilarious - most people took a sort of "I mean, really - how dare they not include coffee in the menu??" attitude.

After the trip, a bunch of us were on the RER heading back to Paris, and the main topic of discussion was whether or not the women had done "la bise" with the program director.  None of us had - we all stuck out our hand, but several felt he had been hoping to do the cheek kisses. No one had wanted to set a precedent though, because then we would all have to bise him at the university as well.

The director also started tu-ing us during this trip, so the discussion then turned to whether or not each of us had tu-ed him back.  A lot of the older ones said yes, because they tu people who tu them, whereas myself and some of the younger ones said no.  I just didn't feel comfortable saying tu to him yet since he is older than me and the program director and we're not really buddy-buddy yet, so I am still vous-ing him for now.

As people were saying goodbye and getting off at the various RER stops, there was a lot of confusion about who had already done la bise and who had not.  And it's true, when you're with 30 people, it can be hard to remember who you've already bised and who you haven't.  I had to laugh and point out to the group that things were a lot simpler in that respect in the US - there's no formal and informal you and no bise-ing.  Those who hadn't been to the US were like "Well, what do you do then?".  I replied that we either just say hello, or wave our hand or sometimes hug.  And once I explained what hugging was, a debate began on whether it was more personal than biseing...

Et voila - a few of the "only with French people" moments I had during our trip.

A real eye-opener

This past weekend's classes were on the Droit du Travail (French labor laws), and while it sounds boring, it actually turned out to be very interesting.  We covered everything from hiring to firing, and all the hiccups that happen in between.  For example, we learned about "droit d'usage", which means that if you, as a company, provide your employees with something (like a bonus) on more than two occasions, but then you don't the following year, your employees can claim it is a hardship and take you court (and will most likely win).

*As side note, this principal also exists in the countryside, so be careful if you have land and your neighboring farmer asks if his animals can graze on it....if you let him do it, it will be almost impossible later to reclaim that land back for your own use!  I saw it happen with my own two eyes in Bretagne....

We also talked about things like CVs and resumes, and whether or not nowadays people still needed to put things like their picture, marital status, age, etc on them.  A few of the larger, foreign companies have moved away from this, but most French companies still want access to this info.  It was actually quite funny to see my classmates reactions to this -like "If you take away all of that information, how are you supposed to evaluate a candidate?"  And I was like "Um, how about on their actual skills?"   There is still a phenomenal amount of discrimination in France when it comes to addresses (avoid le 9-3), being a woman of child-bearing age, having foreign names and different skin colors, etc.  This is slowly changing of course, mostly due to lawsuits, but it definitely still exists. 

And I don't know how many of you have run it to it, but when I first moved to France, when you applied for a job, you had hand-write your cover letter, mainly so that they could do a hand-writing analysis on it.  I used to find that so crazy - and even more so that some of my classmates said their companies still practiced it today!

Religious issues were also brought up.  How do you deal with an employee who needs to pray several times a day?  On one hand, you want to respect his religious beliefs, but on the other, if he's praying out loud in an open space, he's potentially bothering other employees and creating a disruption.  And prayer times usually don't correspond to break times, and you can't take away his break times in exchange, so the other employees will be upset because he gets to work less than they do for the same salary. 

Another one of my classmates brought up the case of an employee who was on extended sick leave, and at what point could they fire them.  The answer was - if the person can do a job that is easily replaceable (secretary, salesman, etc), then you basically could never fire them.  But if they do a job that is quite complicated and that a temp worker could not do, you could eventually fire them after a few years, after showing that it was hurting the company by not having a person in that position (though in the mean while, all of that work is being split up amongst the other employees in the company and putting additional stress on them).

There were also other questions about firing people, and how extremely difficult it was. For example, let's say you have a horrible employee who is not doing their job (of which you have repeated evidence), so you fire them for faute grave.  But if you word things wrong in your lettre de licenciement, the employee could take you to court and a judge could rule that the firing was illegal and then make you pay all of the things that come with laying someone off (= mega bucks).  Our prof says that this happens way more often than you'd think....

The craziest thing I heard however was about the French version of Temptation Island (the reality TV show).  Apparently the participants from the 2003 season took the producers to court because they said they should be considered employees of TF1 instead of contestants.  Their reasoning was that they were "kept" onsite and could not go home at free will, they were told what to say and wear, they were housed and fed, they were on camera for 20 out of 24 hours a day, and they should have had rights to unemployment afterwards  And they won!  TF1 ended up having to pay them (including overtime), and the poor guy who actually won the show had to give the prize money back since he was now considered an employee.

My main takeaway from this was that as an employer, you have to be super careful about what you do. Even hiring a contractor can come back and bite you in the butt because if the contractor can prove that you have any sort of authority of them (be it by telling them what to do or by 'sanctioning' them for poor work), they can ask that their contract be re-qualified as a CDI, and then you're stuck with them and all the costs that come with having a full-time employee. It definitely makes me understand why so many French companies are hesitant to make changes or hire people long-term.  And it also explains why so many unions exist - the laws are so crazy that there is no way that a single employee could know all of their rights, and employers often take advantage of that. Which leads to constant distrust between the two and strikes and all the rest.

Either way, after all of this, it's definitely made me rethink my idea of opening up a European office of The Company in France.....

Give me an A

Right before Christmas, we handed in our first assignment for my masters program.  It was a 15 page business case study on "la success story" of Franck Provost, analyzing how he went from a simple hairdresser to the head of an internationally-renowned group, with several different franchises covering all price ranges (Franck Provost, Jean-Louis David, Saint Algue, Fabio Salsa, etc).

Yesterday, our program director came by during the break with several galettes des rois and some champagne to wish us "Bonne Année".  He also handed back our reports and gave us our grades.  Once everyone realized that he was planning on announcing our grades out loud, in front of the entire class, a nervous twitter started around the room.  I'd say the average age of my classmates is probably 45, and I had to laugh at the effect it had on them, even at their age.  As soon as they saw him holding a piece of paper with all of our names on it, I started hearing choruses of "Oh non...non, pas comme à l'écolé, s'il vous plait".

It brought me back to my previous experiences with the French school system in Bretagne, first at the University of Rennes and then as an English teacher.  I remember how horrified I was the first time a professor read our test scores out loud - not because I had bad grades, but because I felt so bad for those who did. I mean, how mortifying! 

It took me years to understand that it was just a different way of going about things, and that the French school system often used "shaming" to try to keep kids in line.  I rationalized it by thinking that the kids eventually grew a thick skin and go used to it, but seeing how my fellow students reacted made me wonder if it wasn't just skin deep after all... But then again, the French trounce the Americans on an annual basis when it comes to standardized testing, so who am I to judge?

For those of you wondering what my grade was - I got a 15/20, which I am very satisfied with. I know we all put in a ton of work on this - time estimates ranged from 50-100 hours, but I am still thinking they graded us easy for the first assignment. The lowest grade given was a 12 and the highest was a 17.....and even if I care more about how much I learn than what grade I get, part of me still hopes the easy grading continues for the rest of the year!

Color me confused

You know, I've been here a long time now, and most of the time, I think I have the French figured out.  But every once in a while, someone or something will throw me for a loop...

For the past two months, I have been sitting next to the same French woman every time we have class. Often times we will eat lunch together too. I wouldn't go as far as to say we are friends (we are in France after all), but I did feel that I was starting to know her fairly well.

Until this past Saturday when she told me she had American citizenship. I was like "Hold the boat, what??" She replied with a very short "I was born in the US". I was completely flabbergasted and said "And you're just telling me that now, after all this time?". She simply did the French shrug and said "Yes", without giving me any additional information.

I swear, I will never understand French woman. 

It actually perturbed me for the rest of the day.  I mean, can you imagine spending that much time with someone and never bothering to mention you share their nationality?  It blows my mind.

I guess it just underlines one of the main differences between Anglo and French cultures....when we meet someone new, we tend to look for anyway possible to connect with them, whereas as the French just....don't. 

Also, at the end of class last Saturday, the majority of my classmates started pulling out bottles of wine or champagne, chocolates, cakes, etc and all of the sudden we had a little party going. I had to laugh about how it was just plainly obvious for them to all bring something to share the last class before Christmas - no need to send out a group email to see who would bring what.  Luckily I had stuck a box of Christmas peeps in my school bag, so I had some "American candy" to share with the brave few.

I guess it just goes to show that I still have a lot to learn about this country...

Five heads are better than one

One of the reasons that I chose my masters program is because there wasn't an individual thesis to do - quite frankly, I just didn't see myself spending months researching a topic and then reading 100 pages about it.  Instead, we have more of a final project, where we choose a company and spend a year doing a business analysis on them.  It's very labor-intensive, but has a lot more practical application for real-life scenarios, and as you all know, I am all about the practical side of things.

Last week in class, our program director announced our groups.  Leading up the announcement, I looked around the classroom and decided that there wasn't really anyone I would mind having in my group, with the exception of one guy.  (There always has to be that guy).

Well our guy thinks he is an expert on anything and everything. He claims he is an astrophysicist, yet he is unemployed. I believe his previous job was for Peugeot - and don't even get me started on the argument we got into about why so few French cars are sold abroad.  I wasn't thinking about who my audience was and basically said "Well duh, they are ugly and up until recently they were very basic and didn't even have any options like A/C, cruise control, or cup holders.  They were adapted to the needs of the French only, and not the rest of the world".

*Cue the stares of an entire classroom of French people"

But anyways, back to that guy.  He is constantly arguing with the professors, and he dominates any and all conversations he participates in during breaks and at lunch.  I have often thought that he should be a professor since he likes to hear himself talk so much.  Fin bref, I basically avoid him as often as I can.

And guess who I have in my group?

You got it - that guy. 

I came home that night and was talking to Chris about how unlucky it was and how I had a 1 in 30 chance to have him in my group, and C interrupted me and said "Well, actually if there are five per group, that means a 1 in 6 chance blah blah blah", and I was like "Okay whatever, I suck at math, but it sucks even more that I am going to have to work with him on a weekly basis for the next year!"

But so we all had lunch together as a group the next day, and of course Monsieur completely dominated the conversation, with no one else getting a word in edge-wise.  Monsieur has done a PhD, so he knows all about defending a thesis and he will so very graciously share his experience with us, ie tell us what to do.

The thing is though, the director made it extremely clear that we need to equally divide up the work, and that we also need to equally divide up our défense du projet into exactly ten minutes each.  Afterwards, we will have a 60-90 min grilling by a jury and each member needs to answer an equal number of questions, and if we don't, we will lose mega points. This is frustrating to me, because knowing that guy, I don't think he is going to be able to stop himself from interrupting us and shouting out answers.  So I'm worried this is going to be a long year....

All complaining aside, I did want to throw out there that we have to find our own business to work with. It needs to be a PME (petites et moyennes entreprises), with a chiffre d'affaires between 5-20 million and between 50-200 employees.  We will do a full analysis of the business's strategy and at the end, give 2 or 3 suggestions of where they could improve or expand.  So if any of you know of any businesses in the Paris area that fit the bill and who would like some free advice, please send me an email!

2 days down, 56 to go

I am happy to report that I survived my first two days of class, including 8.5hrs of French economics (which was about as fun as it sounds).  I showed up about 20 minutes early, to find that most of my classmates were already there, snacking on coffee and croissants.  I guess that's one of the perks of doing an 'adult' masters - though with how much we are paying them compared to a normal student, they can probably afford it too! 

Almost everyone was wearing business attire - from casual business to a full-on suit and tie.  I went with dark jeans, a nice top, a black blazer and ballet flats....and ended up being the only person wearing jeans, but oh well. It didn't bother me enough to not wear jeans again Saturday - if I'm going to sit at a desk for 8hrs, I want to be comfortable.

As I mentioned the other day, I was really curious to see what the others would bring for classroom supplies.  We were provided with a folder, a notebook and a pen, and pretty much everybody used that to take notes (minus one guy on a laptop). I didn't see any sign of rulers or pencil cases anywhere, but maybe that will change as time goes on.

We have lunch provided as part of our course fees, and the first day, we had sort of a buffet-style lunch with everyone from last year's group.  They have about two months left in their program, so the director encouraged us to mingle and learn from their experiences.  Their average age looked quite a bit older than our group, but as the director reminded us earlier in the day, you only get out of an experience what you put in, so I sucked it up and first went to talk to two women near the bar. One of them ended up being super friendly and so, so enthusiastic about the program. She's a cancer surgeon at Curie Institute and very willingly answered the questions I had about the year to come. Funnily enough, we got to talking about the entrance interview too, and she said that the director was so mean to her as well and that she was convinced she wasn't going to get in.  So that made me feel better about the whole interview process.  I also asked her if there were any foreigners in her year so I could talk to them too and see how they were holding up, but unfortunately there weren't.

Speaking of which though, we actually have five foreigners in my class. Besides me, there's the Romanian woman I mentioned previously, an Italian woman, a Lebanese guy and a Russian guy.  There are also a lot more women than in the previous years, and a handful of people my age, so I don't stick out as much as I thought. Though I have gotten quite a few friendly digs from the professors during comparisons between France and the US...so far, it hasn't bothered me, I know the US is an easy target.

Another funny thing that I have noticed throughout my time in France is that people look disappointed whenever I tell them where I am from.  It starts out "Hey! You're American - which state do you come from?"  And then I reply "Minnesota" and they're like "Oh...." *crickets chirping* since most people have never even heard of it.  And then I find myself justifying my home state by saying things like "There are 10,000 lakes!" and "Prince lives there!".  It makes for an awkward pause in the conversation though, and I always feel though that I'm letting them down by not saying something cool like New York or California.

Lastly, during one of our breaks, we saw Sarko jogging down the street, followed by two bodyguards and a limo.  We were laughing about the bodyguard part, or at least until the following morning when one of our fellow classmates got carjacked when getting out of his car!  At 8am on a Saturday morning in the 16th arrondissement.  Apparently he got beat up and even had to go to the hospital. How crazy is that?? Some people thought maybe he had parked in the Bois de Boulogne and that's where it happened, but we won't know for sure until the next class....

24hrs left of freedom

This morning, I woke up with a start, realizing that tomorrow is October 5th. I'm sure most of you are saying "Yeah, so what?", but that just so happens to be the first day of my masters program.  As in my classes are starting TOMORROW. 

*cue minor freak-out*

This time around, I'm not so much worried about whether or not my classmates will like me, nor what to wear for my first day of school, but whether or not I will be able to cut it.  Can I really handle 12 hours straight of classes in French, on subjects like Business strategy or Financial Diagnostics?  These topics aren't exactly the things I am most passionate about in the world, so how will I stay focused?  Especially since now my whole company knows I am doing this thanks to the monthly newsletter, so they will be expecting to see some results of my studies in the near future.

And then there is the practical side of things - what exactly does one bring to class?  I have gone to a French university before, but I can't exactly see my 50 yr old classmates showing up with graph paper notebooks, rulers, and tiny pencil cases filled with multicolored pens and highlighters.  Though I guess this is France, so you never know....

For now, my plan as usual is to "Fake it until you make it", but that doesn't mean I won't be shaking in my boots come this time tomorrow. And crossing my fingers that my classmates won't look down and notice!

Right here, right now

Is anyone else feeling like it's crazy that summer is almost over?  I had all these plans for Paris fun in mind, yet so little of them have come to fruition. I guess the weather hasn't helped - first too cold, then too hot.  But after five years in Bretagne, French météo no longer really has an effect on me, so I guess I "weathered" the extremes better than others it seems.  Plus we are lucky enough to have an air-conditioner to help on those oh-so-hot days.

But time is just going by so fast. I often think of how when I was little, sometimes days just seemed to drag on and it took forever to get to summer vacation or Christmas break.  But now they're here in the blink of an eye.

I'm starting another big traveling spree - between next Monday and September 13, I will be home for a grand total of two days. I have a quick trip to the US squeezed in there too. And then it will be mid-September all of the sudden and only two weeks until my masters starts. 

I received my first few books for the course and they are LARGE and SERIOUS looking.  They cause these moments of minor freak-outs - like "What on Earth were you thinking going back to school? And in French? While working full-time? And with whole bunch of grown-up, businessy-type people?"  And then I remember that I too am technically a grown-up and that everyone else will be working full-time, and we will all likely get through it together.

In the mean time, I am just trying to make a conscious effort to be appreciative of what I have right now.  There have been several deaths of people around my age in my hometown these past few weeks, and I can't get their spouses and their families out of my mind.  Like one minute these people were here and the next they're not, and it's so crazy.  So I am trying to take a few minutes every day to focus on the good things in my life - my wonderful husband who notices the bottle of water on my nightstand is almost empty, and gets up to fill it even though he was already in bed, just in case I get thirsty during the night. My new job title, while sometimes intimidating, that is pushing me to grow & get outside of my comfort zone. My friends, who despite my crazy travel schedule, still make an effort to keep in touch. 

Life is good now, and I need to remember that, instead of constantly looking forward and imagining what it will be like once I'm done with my masters, once we finally buy our own place, once we have the fancy car I want, etc.  Once, once, once.  But what about today?

Show me the money

The last part of this whole process was finding funding.  Now The Company is all for its employees furthering their education - they are currently funding the MBA's of two co-workers, and at $50,000 a pop, that ain't chump change.  But the key word there is employees.  Technically, because of French labor laws, I am not an employee of The Company, I am a contractor.  I use what's called a portage company - they gave me a CDI and bill The Company monthly thus I get all the benefits of being a French employee without The Company having to set up an office here or me working illegally.  The downside of all of this though is that I don't get any of the benefits The Company offers, in this case - their continuing education funding.

However I consider myself to be an employee and they do as well - in fact most of my co-workers don't even realize I am not.  But because of this technicality, The Company cannot get a tax break on paying for my education and thus the CEO said no.  And I gotta tell you, this made me pretty darn angry.  I love my job, but I make a lot of sacrifices for it - many nights I am on the phone in meetings until 10 or 11pm and my blackberry is practically glued to my hand.  I invest so much into my work and was pretty frustrated that they were not willing to invest in me, especially since I was wanting to learn these skills in order to better do the new job they had assigned to me.

And thus began several months of back and forth between me and my employer.  I finally ended up putting together a powerpoint showing just exactly how astronomically the market had grown since I was hired and how much money I was bringing.  My boss went to bat for me several times and in the end, they agreed to fund me if I would stick around for X number of years.

In the middle of it all though, I wasn't sure we would ever get to that point, so I started looking for other options out there, and realized I had a lot of DIF saved up.  The DIF stands for le droit individuel à la formation, and it is basically hours/money saved up for continuing education. If you have a CDI, you earn 20 hours of DIF per year, which you can accumulate for up to 6 years (so 120 hours total). People on a CDD also accumulate DIF credits, but in a lesser amount.

As a side note, your employer has to approve you using your DIF. But in my understanding of it, if they deny your request twice, you can transform your request into a CIF, le congé individuel de formation, which means you take a leave of absence from your job to do a training program. Your employer can't refuse the CIF but he can delay the start of it under certain circumstances.

Luckily it didn't get to that point with me and the portage company was perfectly happy to help me explore my rights to the DIF.  I have been working for them for a long time now, so I had 120 hours saved up. They helped me complete the application to use those and two weeks later, I received a letter saying that I had been approved and they were going to provide full funding for my masters!

So all of that arguing with The Company had been for naught....

That's part of the reason I wanted to post about it here, because it seems that a lot of foreigners working in France aren't aware of the DIF, and I wanted to give it a little more publicity.  It doesn't have to be for a long, official program either - a lot of French people use it to take English classes for example, and there is no reason we can't use it too.  Plus the application process was pretty easy - just the name & logistics of the program, the reason I wanted to do it and what I hoped to get out of it.  So if you're working in France and want to improve your French or learn a new skill, I'd encourage you to check it out - they're taking money each month out of your paycheck for it, so you might as well take advantage of it!

**If anyone wants anymore info about the portage company, just send me an email. They are a great way to start off working in France legally as an interpreter or translator (or other work-from-home type jobs), without having to deal with all of the hassle of signing up as a French business and having to deal with l'URSSAF, etc.

Where's the dunce cap?

As I mentioned yesterday, there was an entrance exam to go through. I didn't really get any kind of information beforehand as to what I could expect, besides that it was a mix of multiple choice and essay questions. So after the interview, they left me in the room with the test and said "You have 45 minutes".  I asked "Where should I go if I finish before time is up?" and they basically said "Bwahaha" and walked out.

I started flipping through the test.  The first question was "Will managing people be easier tomorrow than it is today?" Answer in ten lines.

Since the French have a very specific way to answer essay questions like this, I decided to skip that one and come back to it later.

Next page: "Which of these five cities are cities in Iraq?"
1. gobbledygook
2. gobbledygook
3. Baghdad
4. gobbledygook
5. gobbledygook

Hmm...okay, let's jump ahead some more.

If f(x) = │(x² – 50)│, what is the value of f(-5) ?
A. 75
B. 25
C. 0
D. -25
E. -75

Okay, yeah....moving on.

What is the average (arithmetic mean) of all the multiples of ten from 10 to 190 inclusive ?
A. 90
B. 95
C. 100
D. 105
E. 110

Next please!

I have a Tiger, a Lion, a Bunny, a Sheep, a carrot and a cabbage. The bunny and the sheep will eat the cabbage or the carrot, the lion and the tiger will eat the bunny or the sheep, and the lion will fight the tiger. If I have cages that can fit 2 animals/vegetables each, what’s the minimum number of cages I need to fit all of these without any fighting going on?

	3: lion and tiger, sheep and cabbage, bunny and carrot
	4: lion, tiger, sheep and bunny, cabbage and carrot
	3:lion and carrot, tiger and cabbage, sheep and bunny
	3: lion and tiger, sheep and bunny, cabbage and carrot

Crap, these aren't getting any easier, I better just go back and start at the beginning.

I also didn't dare use my iphone calculator in case they were secretly watching, but seriously folks, when the last time you did long division and multiplication by hand??  It took me a few minutes to get back into it.  Luckily I had stuck some scratch paper in my purse at the last minute, so I was able to at least do all of my scribbling there rather than on the test.  Especially since the French have a different way of multiplying and dividing than we do, so I probably would have lost points had they seen my work, even if the answer was correct (this has actually happened to foreign students before).

Which brings to mind another dilemma I had - if I wasn't 100% sure about an answer, should I give my best guess or leave it blank?  You see, some French tests knock off points for wrong answers....but there were no instructions on this test, so I no way to tell and I didn't want to leave half of them blank either. In the end, I just decided to go ahead and answer them all to the best of my ability, hoping that there would be a balance in them being impressed enough by me finishing the test (take that Mr Bwahaha) and the amount of wrong answers. I guess I must have done okay since I got accepted, but too bad they don't share the scores, I would love to know how on Earth I did...

More changes in our lives

I have some big news of my own to reveal (and no, not baby news)...this fall I will be starting a Masters in World Domination (ha, almost, but not quite) at Paris Dauphine University. I'm a mixture of excited and nervous about this new undertaking...the whole thing is quite intimidating as it's a selective program and I'm still not sure how I got in.  You have to be a minimum of 30 years old to apply (check), you have to have a masters (nope), you have to have been a cadre for five years (nope) with five years of managerial experience (nope).  They also only accept on average two foreigners a year (out of 20 students) and less than 30% of the participants are women.  And based on the list of past participants they handed out, the average age was at least 45 plus.

Not looking too good for me then, right?  So why on Earth did I apply?  To be honest, I don't know - I guess I figured qui ne tente rien n'a rien, and it was the only program that had everything I was looking for, in the length that I was looking for and at an okay price.  And there was no application fee, so I figured I didn't have anything to lose besides a bit of time.

It was a bit of a strange process - first I had to send in my CV + a letter of motivation for why I wanted to do the program.  Once I made it through that round, they sent the application and I had to collect a whole bunch of documents, including a letter from my employer saying they agreed with my participation in the program.  And then once they approved that came the scary part - a 45 minute interview with a jury and a 45 minute entrance exam.

I'm telling you, that interview was bad.  They were so rude to me, saying things like "Wait a minute, explain to us again how YOU are able to do your job?" as if they couldn't believe I was actually capable of it. They were also really confused by my parcours, not really understanding how I had gone from a dietitian in the US to an interpreter in France, and then moved on up in my company to my current role.  I get that my job history can seem strange in France and that it is fairly rare for a woman to be doing what I'm doing, and that it is even more rare for someone my age to be in the role that I am now (again, in France anyways), but still, I really didn't appreciate their attitude, it was almost like they thought I was lying.

And then there were the questions like "Well what does your husband think about this?  You travel a lot already, how will he feel about you being even busier? Who will do the cooking and cleaning?"  Well geez, I suppose attitudes like that are the reason there aren't many women in this program!  I mean, it's true that this is going to be a big time suck, but normally I will be traveling less once the program starts.  And for the record, C is perfectly capable of doing the cooking and cleaning and does so willingly, especially when I am on the road.  He is also super supportive of my doing this and he would have actually liked to have done the program with me, but hasn't been at his company long enough. So in your face interviewers!

Anyways, after 45 minutes of grilling and a crazy entrance exam (more on that tomorrow) I walked out of there thinking I had about zero chance of getting in, especially since they told me they had already approved two other foreigners.  One of whom was the uber annoying Eastern European chick who sat next to me at the info session...yippee.

But for whatever reason, they decided to take me and I will be signing my life over to them for the next 14 months.  Or I guess not my life, but two Fridays and two Saturdays a month plus the study time.

Little did I know that getting accepted was the easy part, and that getting the funding to do the program would become a three-month long process!