Ranking

 In France everything is about ranking: who is the best student, which is the best university, which is the best faculty. They do this starting when they are little kinds at the age of 4 when they go to school and do this to the bitter end. In Finland we don't have this system: actually in Finland we don't have a thing called "a failing student".

At the university here all the notes you get are on a wall for everyone to see how good (or bad..) you did. They show everyone your student number, name and points you got. In Finland we have the same system with the difference that only you know your points because the paper shows only our student numbers and points.

For someone I guess this system is a motivation because you have to get a good note because everyone sees how you did. For me it was awful. I'm an exchange student so I guess everyone knew that I'm not going to shine with my numbers but I didn't like people looking at them. Only for one course here they showed only the student numbers when revealing the grades. But on an extra line before my student number there was a little text "Erasmus" and I'm the only exchange student here. Gee I wonder who that is..

In France you get points up to 20 and getting more than 10,5 means that you passed the course. For me this was really confusing because in Finland we get a mark from 1 to 5 and one means you passed. If you fail a course they say you did. So here when I looked at my marks for the first time I didn't know if I passed or not. And what's worse: they show everyone how badly you failed.

This week I also learned that the faculty of Uni Paris-Sud 11 is the best faculty of science and the ranking is really rough. I talked with some of the foreign students who have been studying here since their first year of uni and they told me that when they get 14/20 it causes a stir. "How can that person get 14/20!! He is not French! He doesn't almost speak French!" I think this gives an idea of how hard it is for the students here.

I was really confused when people came to congratulate me in person when I got 16/20 from German. But after finding out how the system in this university goes I'm not at all surprised.

So how am I going to get 45 credits when half of the French people studying here are failing their classes? Here we can try every exam two times and between these two times there are several months. In Finland we can try every exam 3 times and there is less time between each try so that we don't forget everything that we learned. I can try the exams that I failed here in 5 months and I'm really hoping to pass them.