… Write about my university (after almost ten months, you kinda need to...) … Which is in fact (en effet) not a university… why? Cause nous sommes français and in France (içi) a university is something with a wider approach on teaching and learning blah blah… No, this is what they call ‘grande ecole’ (high school you mean?). Here, they mock you with their bloody system…Because, you see, dear reader, to be in a ‘grande ecole’ you have to do a ‘cycle preparatoire’… oh, dear… quickie… I forgot to introduce my grande ecole… Institut National de Sciences Appliqués… Insa… if you manage to get through the 5 years of Insa, you get to be an engineer… So, as I was saying… usually, les cycles preparatoires are not part of the grande ecole…you do them before and then you get into a grande ecole… Insa has it as a part of it… now, what exactly is a ‘cycle prepa’? Well, it is something like a high school…ah, desolée… lycee, car nous sommes française… just that you have to work all the time (morning, day and night, how New Order would say). If you don’t work, you get a 5/20… if you do work, you get a 10/20… Insa will basically be the death of you… You have to figure things mostly by yourself… and work, because that’s what an engineer has to do… work work work (maybe sleep) (sorry, Rakes, no pub and no club – prietenii stiu de ce- engineers must has no free time to party). After you’ve worked like a mule… you get to pass this sort of mid-term… yes, normal universities have mid-terms… they usually take place all in the same time, nice and neat… here you have them spread through out the whole semester… these test have been brilliantly named ‘INTERROGATION”… more commonly know as interro… when you have such a thing, you DO NOT have time to think.. You should’ve worked enough in order to apply standard patterns of exercise solutions… like a perfect future-engineer who do things like a little perfect machine… de plus/moreover, these interros are designed so that you do not have the time to finish … Still licking yr wounds after such a massacre, you head towards the wonderful travaux practiques (physiques and chemistry… a true joy) aka the experiments… this turn into a true holocaust… as a foreigner, it is the first time you do it… and you have to do it with a French person… the little prick who’s gonna be yr co-TP is familiar with the horrid techniques… they’ve already dome this at lycee… wankers! The truly fun part is the ‘cahier de TP’… you have to write down what you did during the three hours of sheer hell… and you get graded… and then, they heavily amuse themselves by making you pass a test… you have to do one TP all by yrself… go figure… The fun part comes when you actually think you know… guess what, you don’t! (such a cliché, but so true…)… Il faut que tu bosse plus… Mais je peut plus… Hein? Ah, on s’en fiche… Then you get one week of final exams… each semester… when you work you arse out and still get a mediocre grade… nothing new there… If you didn’t find this frustrating enough, wait till you get to yr language class… because at Insa you have to have 6 hours of sciences d’humanite… I don’t care what the French do during these 6 hours, I am here as a foreigner… so, as a foreigner… if you suck at French, you do 6 hours of French… pas d’probleme… if you have 4/2 hours of French or if you are so good that you don’t have to do French, you do English… it’s a must… and you usually get frustrated… cause you are not English, thus cannot speak as well as an English person, thus the maximum you get as a grade is 15… Bite me! … the true and outstanding entertainment starts for 2 to zero hours of French…you get to do ‘communication’(also known as ‘stupidisation’) with the French… and you have this huge amount of presentations and you end up being fed up with life… however, I cannot guarantee for this one, I have 4 hours… I am sure there are more thrills to come next year… however, right now I still have about 15 more exams… the first is on Friday and is in chemistry… well, it’s thermodynamics… so it’s more like physiques… ah, ça me soule... and I think I smoked a little too much this evening… I need some decent sleep… maybe some foot therapy…
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