Campus Cosmos, Crepes, and Championships

There are ordinary school weeks, and then there are BDE campaign weeks—the kind that turn a campus into a festival ground and make even the most serious students pause, laugh, and remember that university is supposed to be lived, not just survived. When Fruitloop logged in to speak with Maxime, he was not tucked away in a quiet study corner. He was sitting in front of his school, in a car, waiting for a meeting about his apartment in the UK for the following month, while all around him campus life was in full swing. The connection flickered, the cameras nearly went off, and the conversation began with the easy chaos of real life. It felt fitting, because the subject of the day was not discipline or deadlines alone. It was fun.

Maxime explained that the week was special because of the BDE campaign, a tradition deeply rooted in French university life. The BDE, he said, is the student association responsible for creating a good life for students. It organizes events throughout the year—integration weekends, parties, after-work gatherings, activities during the day, and affordable food at the cafeteria. Every year, a new BDE is formed by around twenty to twenty-five students, and during the campaign period they go all out. For three days, from Tuesday to Friday, the school becomes something close to a celebration village, covered in huge decorations, filled with music, and charged with that unmistakable sense that something bigger than routine is taking place.

Classes do continue, technically. But during BDE week, “continue” is a flexible idea. Maxime described how students still go to class, but if they are not in the mood to stay, they can call the BDE, who might arrive, bring the fun directly into the classroom, and even lure students outside. Sometimes, he said with amusement, they can even “capture” the teacher and take them away. Fruitloop loved the image. It was the kind of playful rebellion that makes academic pressure feel human again.

And the BDE does not stop at decorations and disruption. Each morning during the campaign, students are welcomed with breakfast—crepes included. After school, there are after-work events from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., and on that particular evening there was even a big celebration with an open bar. Fruitloop immediately recognized what that meant: a long night ahead. Maxime laughed, but he was careful to add an important detail. He would celebrate, yes, but not too late. He was preparing for the French Championship in gymnastics, and that meant his choices still had to be responsible. Fun mattered. Discipline mattered too.

That balance—between joy and responsibility—became the heart of their discussion. Maxime admitted that this moment with his friends was precious because it was the last year they would all experience this together. In only three weeks, many of them would no longer see each other as they did now. So yes, he wanted to enjoy the campaign, to laugh, to stay present, to share these last bursts of student life. But he also knew he had important things waiting for him: exams in two weeks, the search for an apartment, training, and the constant push toward his larger goals. Fruitloop understood immediately. After all the hard work, and just before exams begin, perhaps this was exactly when fun mattered most.

When Fruitloop asked how university could be made more fun, Maxime answered without hesitation: the BDE is the solution. He described it not simply as a party committee, but as a support system. In France, he explained, nearly every university has its own BDE, and its role is not only to organize celebrations, but to reduce stress, help students build connections, and create a better overall experience throughout their studies. They help first-year students feel less overwhelmed, create links between older and younger students, and serve as a bridge between students and the administration. If someone has a problem, they can speak to BDE members, who may help them find solutions or connect them with teachers and responsible staff.

What does fun mean, exactly? For Maxime, fun is something that makes you smile, something that makes you laugh, something you enjoy doing. It can be little jokes, playful mischief, shared moments with other people. It can also be bigger experiences—going to a theme park, seeing a film, partying with friends, or transforming a familiar place into something absurdly unforgettable. And that last idea was not hypothetical. Maxime had once been part of the BDE himself, two years earlier during his second year, and he remembered one of their most memorable ideas: they created a pool party in front of the school.

The recipe was beautifully simple. They went to a nearby store, bought a lot of inflatable pools, set them up in front of the school, and after classes—especially when the temperature hit around 25 degrees—students jumped in and had fun. Of course there was music. In fact, music is a constant part of life on campus. During campaign week there is music all day, but even during the rest of the year there is often music at lunch or during breaks between classes. The BDE owns several large outdoor speakers—what Maxime first called “soundboxes,” then corrected, with Fruitloop’s help, to “speakers.” These are big, resistant, battery-powered speakers designed for outdoor events, and the school has had the same ones for five or six years. At around 800 to 1,000 euros each, they were expensive, but Maxime considered them a good investment. When your after-work events last four or five hours, battery life becomes surprisingly important.

Fun, however, is not just noise and spectacle. The BDE also uses games and rewards to encourage participation. During this year’s campaign, the theme was Cosmos—aliens, intergalactic decoration, and a general feeling that the school had drifted into outer space. They had bought 5,000 little alien tokens, and students could win them by taking part in activities. By the end of the campaign, the person with the most aliens would win two places at a restaurant. Maxime himself was not competing; as a fourth-year student, he felt the prize should go to younger students. But he readily admitted that rewards like that make people more likely to join in. Fruitloop agreed. A good prize does not force effort, but it can turn curiosity into participation.

Still, Maxime was clear that the point of these activities is not to make students struggle or perform. The aim is to create many different possibilities so that each student can find some version of fun that suits them. That is especially important in a school of seven or eight hundred people, where tastes and personalities vary enormously. Finding something enjoyable for everyone is difficult, but that, in a way, is the BDE’s challenge.

Their conversation then widened into the idea of team building. Fruitloop asked whether the school organized team-building trips like bowling, camps, or shared activities. Maxime said yes, though in different forms. Sometimes the BDE partners with outside companies, including a place called Monkey, which offers bowling, escape games, arcade games, karting, and other activities. Sometimes team building happens on a smaller scale, with project groups of four or five students deciding to do something together. For Maxime, go-karting makes particular sense, because many students at his school specialize in automobiles. It is not just entertainment—it is almost part of the culture.

Fruitloop, however, had a more complicated history with team building. She told Maxime about the camps she had attended in primary school and later in leadership programs: muddy obstacle courses, crawling through unpleasant water, and one especially awful memory involving stacked tires, a water-filled hole underneath, and being pulled through the mud. It had been safe, she admitted, but she hated it. She much preferred bowling or go-karts. Maxime understood immediately. Some activities are fun for some people and miserable for others. He himself did not remember having team-building experiences before university, which made the current version—shared games, partnerships, and freedom to choose—feel much more appealing.

They also spoke about field trips, which Fruitloop had to define first. For Maxime, there had only been one major visit during his studies in the automotive specialization. He visited a company that transforms utility vehicles for special use, especially for the French state. The company modifies vehicles for firefighters, police, and other services, including reinforced windows, special racks, adapted systems, and other functional features. It had even worked on vehicles for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. The company also adapted cars for people with disabilities. Though Maxime said this was not the kind of work he personally wanted to do, he still found the visit very interesting. What made the memory more striking was that he had done the entire visit on crutches after breaking his leg the year before, covering perhaps eight to ten kilometers in a single day. By the end, his arms and shoulders had taken the real punishment.

That led naturally into gymnastics, injury, and the strange courage of athletes who knowingly flirt with danger. Maxime explained that he had broken his right leg the year before and his left one this year, both through gymnastics. The first injury had been more serious and had taken a full year before he felt truly back to 100 percent. The accident happened during a floor routine: a full back flip tuck at the end of the movement, complicated by a new 2024 regulation that required a double rotation at the end. Without it, gymnasts lost points. The rule had been introduced because judges were tired of seeing the same triple-twist ending in every routine and wanted more variety. But for athletes like Maxime, the result was brutal. They all knew they might break their ankles trying. He was simply the first.

Fruitloop was shocked that the regulation had been added despite the obvious risk. She mentioned a gymnast she follows online—eventually remembering it was Nile Wilson, the English Olympic gymnast—who had suffered a serious injury and no longer competes, though he now creates playful content with friends on social media. Maxime knew him well and said he had become very active online, sharing videos across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and elsewhere. They also briefly admired another American gymnast who had performed two triple backs in the same floor movement without injury, a feat Maxime considered extraordinary.

Even in a conversation about fun, injury, and celebration, Maxime’s personality kept returning to structure. Fruitloop asked if he had any personal traditions with friends, perhaps a weekly routine or a ritual. Maxime said yes—but his tradition was his own. Every Sunday morning, he wakes up between 7 and 8 a.m., goes running, then heads to a restaurant near his apartment right at opening time for a hot chocolate. There, on his laptop, he works on his personal motorsport project. Sunday morning is reserved for that alone. It helps him relax, focus, and protect a piece of time that belongs entirely to him. The afternoon depends on the week ahead. If exams are near, he studies. If training requires it, he goes to the gym. The schedule changes, but the morning ritual stays.

When Fruitloop asked about his ideal amount of fun, Maxime hesitated—not because he did not enjoy fun, but because he finds it hard to relax when serious responsibilities are waiting. That is perhaps one of the clearest portraits of him in the entire conversation. He likes to have fun, but while he is laughing, part of his mind is already thinking about what still needs to be done. During this particular period, he knew he had too much on his plate to indulge freely: apartment hunting, exams, championship preparation. Later, when he would be in the UK, when the fourth year was finished, when exams were over, when the internship at Continental and his English immersion became the main focus, he believed he would allow himself more space for parties and relaxation. For now, his ideal was one or two fun moments per week. In easier times, perhaps one or two hours per day.

The conversation then shifted into sillier territory, the kind of playful rapid-fire exchange that reveals just as much about a person as any serious interview. If a teacher offered a prize for the best joke of the day, what would Maxime want? More points on his next exam, of course. In fact, he had already attempted exactly that strategy by giving a teacher a cookie from the campaign. Whether it would influence the grade remained to be seen.

If he could bring any animal to campus to make it more fun, Maxime chose a chicken—or better yet, three chickens, numbered one, three, and four, so that everyone would spend the day desperately searching for the missing number two. Fruitloop was delighted by the prank and suggested that the next day they could simply relabel one of the others as number two. When she asked whether he would choose hens or roosters, he admitted he did not know the difference at first. Once she explained that roosters were more aggressive, he seemed even more interested. More chaos, more fun.

Asked about a snack competition, Maxime described a very specific school tradition built around mussels and fries. During these games at the university restaurant, the goal is to eat as many mussels as possible. The winner is the person who ends up with the biggest mountain of empty shells. It is exactly the kind of strange, joyful competition that only makes sense inside a close student community and feels unforgettable because of it.

If the university hosted a talent show, Maxime would do a gymnastics performance with flips, naturally. If forced to choose between singing and dancing, he said he would dance alone, but sing if he could do it with all his friends. And if he could press a button to interrupt serious moments with a sound effect, he would choose an intergalactic sound for the current BDE campaign—and perhaps a chicken noise for himself, if actual chickens were not allowed on campus.

Finally came the pajama question. Would he ever wear pajamas to university? Maxime said yes, absolutely—though not that day, since he was in sports clothes. At that moment, many students were already wearing pajamas on campus, and in his view no one would say anything about it as long as you still showed up to class. Fruitloop laughed and remembered a themed school week involving orange clothes, favorite foods, and a pajama day that her son had hated so much he called it the worst day of his life. For Maxime’s campus, though, it was simply one more expression of the same philosophy: university should not feel like a machine all the time.

By the end of the call, they arranged their next meeting for Wednesday at noon because Maxime would be on the train on Thursday. It was a practical ending to a conversation filled with crepes, pool parties, giant speakers, aliens, cookies, chickens, crutches, open bars, and championship discipline. But perhaps that is what made it so true to student life. Between pressure and possibility, Maxime seemed to understand something many people learn only much later: fun is not the opposite of ambition. Sometimes it is the very thing that keeps ambition alive.

In Maxime’s world, university is not just lectures and exams. It is music between classes, inflatable pools in front of the school, a hot chocolate after a Sunday run, and the wisdom to leave the party early because tomorrow there is training. And in Fruitloop’s warm, curious questions, that world came fully alive—messy, funny, disciplined, and wonderfully human.