Student in France Backpack Essentials: The Six Things You Need
As master’s degree students in France, Jalen and I have got our backpack contents down to a science. However, the items we carry with us on campus in France are a bit different than the things we had in our backpacks during undergrad in the United States. What are the must-have items in our backpacks? Read on to find out!
Student Card
Our student cards are the first thing we always keep in our backpacks. At our school, our student cards give us access to the library, serve as identification before taking exams, and can even double as public transportation cards in our city! Furthermore, keeping our student cards with us ensures that we can benefit from student discounts at local restaurants, museums, and more.
Laptop
Our laptops are the next essentiel item in our backpacks for two reasons. While certain classes that we took in undergrad in the United States required us to take notes by hand, doing so in our graduate classes in France would be practically impossible. The amount of information we learn in one class and the pace at which we learn it necessitate taking notes with a computer. Additionally, many of our classes are currently online, which means we need our computers to participate in them!
Snacks
Snacks are the next must-have thing in our backpacks. Our school days are often very long, reaching up to eight hours of in-class instruction on certain days. Having something to snack on during breaks between classes can serve as an energy boost and can make particularly dense days more bearable.
Chargers & Adapters
Our long days of classes mean that packing our phone and computer chargers in our backpacks is a must. Since we’ve had the same phones and laptops since before we moved to France, we also need to bring our outlet adapters so that our American chargers work in the French outlets!
Spare Change
Spare change is important to keep in our backpacks to benefit from an awesome feature of French university campuses – hot drink vending machines! There are vending machines for coffee, hot chocolate, and tea in many of the buildings on campus, and the drinks go for under a euro per cup. Jalen and I love to have a coffee after eating lunch on campus or between classes.
Umbrella
Though weather in France varies by region, winters are generally very rainy. In our city, Reims, it rains 158.9 days of the year, or 44% of the time! That’s why we always keep umbrellas with us and consider them a crucial item in our backpacks.
No Books Necessary
We’d like to conclude our list with one thing that we don’t keep in our backpacks – textbooks! Though we can only speak for our master’s degree programs, the idea of buying and using multiple books for each class is largely absent at French universities. In fact, neither of us has had to purchase a single book, and all of the optional textbooks can be borrowed from the university library!
What items never leave your backpack or every-day bag? Let us know in a comment!
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