The professors come in and lecture, for TWO HOURS....it's infuriating for a student like me who needs to interact with the material to learn it. Out of my 6 courses, 2 involve active participation, and that participation is in the form of translating between French and another language.
The 'cold' feeling of Le Mirail also stems from it's location. Far from shopping or fun cafes or cute french 'places' (squares), the students only hang around the school for class and class only. No sports arenas to cheer on sports teams. No cafeteria in which to eat with people while you study or commiserate over an upcoming test or paper. No student union where you can sign up for fun events or check your student mail box.No lounge areas where you can sit in an armchair and finish your homework or wait for a friend. You sit next to people in class that may live outside of Toulouse, and almost everyone takes the metro to get to Le Mirail from other parts of the city and surrounding area.
Trust me, I wish I could gush about how pretty the school is or how great the atmosphere is, but I stand by my honesty. If I've painted a dismal picture of Le Mirail, it's because for me, an American southerner from a small, private college on the top of a mountain in Tennessee, it is dismal. But I'm getting a challenging, good education here and improving my French day by day. Here's to silver linings !
~Tam in Toulouse
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