General life

So I realised a lot of my recent posts have been about exciting travels - let's be honest that's what you're all here for - but I thought I'd take some time to do a quick normal life update. I remember wishing there were more blogs about what day to day life on a year abroad is like before I started, so hopefully this will be useful for some of you! As with anything people's experiences of being abroad vary massively depending on country, personality, whether you're working/studying...so this is by no means a 'this is what your year will be like' because it may be nothing like mine. But this is what an average week in the life of me looks like in France.

I have around 6 hours of teaching per week, and although this is a similar amount to what I would expect in the UK, the biggest difference is in work outside of class. For a 1 hour culture seminar in Exeter I would expect to do a couple of hours of prep questions, possibly with required secondary reading, on top of reading 2 or 3 primary texts per module. Add to this the prep needed for my language classes and supposedly doing my own grammar and vocab practise (although if we're being honest this rarely happens at any time other than right before exams), and of course the dreaded assessment essays in the final weeks of term. In France, I rarely do much reading of the texts beyond what we cover in class, there is no such thing as seminar prep as the classes aren't discussion-based and although some teachers give out bibliographies they don't seem to expect many people to actually use them. Most of the hours I spend on work outside of classes is what I set myself: checking genders of nouns and irregular verbs for my notes, doing some independent research to supplement the lecture (especially if I feel like I missed some of it) and rereading texts we're given to be sure I understand them properly.

The other thing that makes the days less structured is the amount of time I spend on my own. I've always been a people person: I love spending lots of time with my friends and family in the evenings, chatting about our days or just all sitting together, doing our own thing. I went straight from doing that at home with my family after a day at college/work to doing the same thing with my friends at uni in halls and then in our student house, so this has been my first year of not having people to  properly 'come home to' at the end of a day. And also of not having a 'day' in the sense of being out 9-5pm and coming back tired but feeling like I've been busy and productive (well, at least one of those is usually true).

For me, this lack of structure has a few problems: I have way more free time than I'm used to and I'm rubbish at self-motivation, so I end up doing even less because I don't have a set routine of needing to work all day on campus like I do in Exeter. What does that mean on a day to day basis? A lot of procrastination and trying to motivate myself to get stuff done. And way more time on the internet than is healthy. Without deadlines to work to, things to look forward to and set plans to structure my days, I've discovered I lack any will-power whatsoever to stop my days spiralling into hours of procrastination. To try and deal with this, I've found planning evening activities really helps: for example I have a Zumba class once a week and church small group every fortnight, and Ellie and I try and do something like go out for dinner or to the cinema once a week or so too. And when I feel like I've done next to no work in ages I will take myself off to the library on campus and do an afternoon's work to catch up, or start the day with the easiest thing on my to-do list to guilt trip my brain into feeling it's being super efficient and would be ruining its productive streak if it stops now. This new routine has definitely taken some adjusting to, and although I feel like I have more of a routine now I will definitely be trying to reinstate that separation of work and home again next year!

So if that's my (ahem) 'working' week, what about the weekends? I've really tried to fill the weekends up with as much travelling as possible, not only so I can explore as much of France as I can whilst I'm here but also to give me goals for the week leading up to it. If I know I'm going to be busy at the weekend I usually get more done Monday-Friday, so it's a win-win situation. And whilst I do often get frustrated by the lack of routine the freedom of being able to do whatever I want is really nice, as is actually getting round to doing things I never had time for at uni, like reading the copious amounts of books I bought with my birthday money! And not many people can say their weekends are filled with visiting châteaux and amazing French cities (cheeky spoiler for the next few weeks there).

Anyway this may have been fairly rambly and potentially wholly uninteresting for some of you, but I hope it was somewhat insightful for any of you planning a YA! Next post will return to my tales of adventure, I promise.