PSU vs. UPV

Some fun differences between my school here, and dear old state:

1. School spirit : The fact that it took me a minute to think of the initials of my French school says a lot. There isn't a commons area, bookstore, absolutely no t-shirts sporting the name of the school. Lil bit different from Happy Valley.
2. Dress code: Black coats, leather boots, leather bags, tight jeans (if you're not wearing boots for some reason, you have to cuff the bottom of your pants to be cool), black (maybe dark brown) sweaters. French students do not wear baggy sweatshirts and sweatpants stuffed in uggs to class. I definitely like the more respectful dress code here; and it gives me a chance to wear all of my clothes. Penn Staters dress on the sloppy side (during the daytime!).
3. Campus/overall feel: Here, a university is just somewhere to take classes and earn your degree. It reminds me more of high school than college in the US...French students don't walk from class-to-class with iPods, but they actually chat with friends! Oh our three hour classes have breaks....for smoking/getting espresso from a machine (which is actually semi-decent and only 50 centimes).
4. 24/7 strikes: Penn Staters flock to the HUB lawn to tan (jk nice weather happens like 2 times in the spring), but the UPVers congregate in one of the two lecture halls on campus to plan for te next strike. University professors and researchers have been on strike since last Monday-ish, protestingn against job cuts and Sarcozy's planned reforms of the education system. All of my classes are still on (professors for the specialized American courses don't strike, and my French profs are not on strike).
5. Organization: There is none at UPV. No eLion, no ANGEL, nothing. It's a free-for-all trying to register and trying to figure out the schedule of classes. For example, on 2 different occasions my classroom was double-booked, so we had to cancel class and then change the time. If you need copies of a reading or something for a class, you usually have to go to a copy center or to the library. Except the copier is always broken, so we resorted to taking pictures of the papers we need. Teachers do not use email. I don't even know if our school's website has any useful information on it...definitely nothing like PSU.

What has all this taught me? To stop being so anal about classes, to be more flexible, to deal with things as they come...as Mama says "let's cross that bridge when we come to it."