What To Expect On An Erasmus Year In France*

1. You will attend a meeting, where a lot of big, scary forms will be mentioned, along with Very Important Deadlines. These warnings will be as ominous as they are vague; big on the fear, light on the actual detail.

2. If you choose to check your university's website for the forms, you will find all of the paperwork necessary for an erasmus student... in 1986.

3. You will eventually track down a Learning Agreement, and be instructed to choose your modules, get it signed off by your departmental co-ordinator and post it to France before a given date, or you will be flayed/thrown off the programme. This will be twelve hours before said deadline.

4. Your departmental co-ordinator will blithely inform you that he/she is in fact in Cyprus for the next fortnight, and suggest just posting the form after their return. If you harass them sufficiently, you should be able to get your hands on an emailed course list at this point.

5. Your host university will attempt to hawk a Highly Recommended Language Course. This will not be massively helpful, but is a good way to meet other erasmus students.

6. You will finally meet with the co-ordinator, get your Learning Agreement signed and post it nect day delivery to France. This will cost you whatever remains of your overdraft.

7. Nobody at all will care that you missed the deadline.

8. If, on the advice of previous erasmus students, you chose not to live in halls you will spend you summer searching the internet for somewhere to live and cursing those who gave you advice. You will find that your budget increases dramatically as your departure date looms closer. Eventually you will either resign yourself to searching on arrival or agree to live with a totally random french person.

9. You will spend the last night in the UK trying desperately to make your life weigh less than an easyjet baggage allowance, swearing at your family and contemplating illnesses which would be just serious enough to stop you going without inconveniencing you too much.

10. You will spend an incredibly stressful day hauling all manner of luggage through an exciting variety of transport systems. If you haven't found somewhere to live yet, this will be followed by an equally stressful day or two of attempting to understand french estate agents' abbreviations.

11. Eventually, you will move into a room, unpack and feel vastly relieved.

12. You will phone your mother and tell her how wonderful it all is.

13. You will realise that you have absolutely no idea where, when or how to enroll and start your course. You will contact the host university's co-ordinator and any other students you may know before collapsing in exhaustion.

14. The next morning nobody will have replied. You will be mildly hysterical at this point, and your google search history will be full of such gems as 'can I quit erasmus?' and 'why does anybody live in France!?'.

15. Another student will find you, through facebook or something. They will calm you down immensely, introduce you to others and show you around. You will never hear back from the university co-ordinator.

16. Eventually, you will find out how to enroll and get started, but only because you and a group of your fellow erasmus students stormed the faculty and refused to leave until clear instructions were given.

17. There will be an erasmus social event. People will sing karaoke with amusing accents. It will be hilarious. The highlight of the evening will almost certainly involve Celine Dion. This will be followed by a trip to a club with a group of your new BFFs, where you will receive a flattering amount of attention. You will feel highly exotic.**

18. Courses will begin, and you will realise that the course list you were given in the summer bears no relation whatsoever to the courses actually offered. You will choose new courses.

19. Two weeks after the start of term your faculty will hold a welcome meeting, during which they will instruct you on how to attend the courses you've already started and give you a map detailing how to reach the Fac. This meeting will be held in the Fac. On the bright side, there will be free Orangina.

20. By now you will be beginning to realise that attention from guys is not reserved for appropriate places, like bars and clubs. You will be being hit on from dawn till dusk in every imaginable place. At least one of your friends will be being stalked by a guy she inadvertentl encouraged.**

21. By 'encouraged' I mean 'did not shoot in the head'. If they find out you speak English it gets worse. Learn Slovak, or Dutch. Or at least how to make a string of nonsense words which sound passably like a real language.**

22. You will realise that, while a lot of the people you have met are great, some you either actively dislike or at least have little in common with. Simply not being French does not provide the basis for a lasting friendship. Slowly, the erasmus group will break up into smaller groups of people who actually like each other.

23. Your 'skipping of the occasional lecture' will snowball wildly.

24. If you opted to live with a French person you will know by now whether you hate them or not. They will make it extremely clear if said hatred is mutual. If, like me, you managed to move in with a total crazy you will probably be kicked out.

25. Should this happen, you will be fine. Househunting is much easier when you know the area and your French has improved. Speaking of which

26. After a month, your French will have improved. You will also have fallen into a routine, and learned to accept that 'France Rage' will ebb and flow continually, depending on whether or not you've had a good day.

27. A trip home or a visitor from home will simultaneously cheer you up and make you nostalgic. Afterwards, however, you will settle back into your French life surprisingly quickly.

28. It will take a minimum of seven weeks to become accustomed to the ludicrous price of beer, but eventually you will be able to simply sigh heavily when faced with a drinks menu instead of exclaiming over it to all of your friends. One day this may even be reduced to an eyeroll, or perhaps you will start handing over your money without batting an eyelid. I have yet to reach that stage.

29. You will realise that you do actually have exams in January, and make thousands of empty promises to start doing your work and attending your lectures. If you have paid a visit to your home uni, you will be smugly aware that academically you are having by far the easiest year of all of your friends. So you won't be too motivated (and, in all honesty that probably won't matter).

30. By your third month, you will be well and truly settled, and probably fairly confident in your own ability to do this. However, you will note that at some point you have stopped thinking of the whole affair as an amazing opportunity for adventure, and instead as a 'worthwhilelife experience' to be endured. In short, it'll have become mundane. But at least mundane isn't, you know, hellish or anything. C'est la vie.


*Disclaimer: Many of these points may not be applicable if your home university, your host university or you yourself are in any way organised. If you have never spent two days making increasingly hysterical phones calls to the passport office because you sent your renewal request in less than two weeks before a holiday, you'll probably be ok.

**These points are (probably) only really applicable to girls. I have a feeling France is a very different place to those endowed with a penis.