Beware of Bureau­crats! (street art found in Ottawa)

I have never been lucky with bureau­cracy in France. In Fact, it’s almost a joke among my friends: my full name doesn’t fit on most appli­ca­tions, and I don’t fit in most boxes any­way. Some­how, I always ended up being the exception.

Mov­ing to Canada turned my luck around. I find the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment quite effi­cient and accom­mo­dat­ing and so far, I haven’t had any major problem.

Until I decided to take some classes at university.

Last year, I showed up at the uni­ver­sity to reg­is­ter for the sum­mer ses­sion and every­thing went fine… until the woman real­ized I was French. “You need to take an Eng­lish pro­fi­ciency test”, she said. “Sure, where can I do that?”. She looked up at me, prob­a­bly sur­prised by my eager­ness: “the TOEFL will do”.

I came back home and reg­is­tered to take the TOEFL test. It was early June and the clos­est test date was late August. I had real­ized, by then, that I wouldn’t be able to attend sum­mer classes, but I didn’t mind too much. I spent the sum­mer prac­tic­ing for the TOEFL instead.

But two days before the test date, I received an email from TOEFL say­ing my test had been resched­uled… to Octo­ber. Bye bye Fall ses­sion. I went back to the uni­ver­sity and begged: “please, let me attend classes, and if I don’t pass the test in Octo­ber, just kick me out!”. But the uni­ver­sity was inflex­i­ble. I missed the Fall session.

I stud­ied for the TOEFL again. It was resched­uled. Again. I was finally able to take the exam in Decem­ber 2008, a few days before our Latina Amer­ica trip. I passed quite eas­ily: 115/ 120. Gee, thanks, I can speak English.

In April this year, upon com­ing back from the trip, I went to the uni­ver­sity again, my TOEFL scores in hand. “Can I reg­is­ter now?”. “Sure, but in which pro­gram? Do you have the pre­req­ui­sites?”

I explained I had a three years degree from a French uni­ver­sity. That I had been work­ing as a teacher for the past four years. That I had taken a few addi­tional classes in lin­guis­tic and in his­tory here and there, but hadn’t been able to com­plete my French Mas­ter degree because I had moved to Canada in between.

“Make a for­mal appli­ca­tion and we will see if we can give you equiv­a­lences… oth­er­wise, you will have to start from the scratch”.

Ouch.

Not will­ing to start in under­grad year 1 again, I gath­ered all the paper­works. It wasn’t easy: in France, uni­ver­si­ties are “free” but we have no ser­vices. My tran­scripts are just print outs with a half-erased stamps from the reg­is­trar office. I had to pro­vide all the classes’ descrip­tions — this is where I real­ized that my degree didn’t exist any­more, thanks to last year’s reform in France. I had to pre­pare a resume because I’m con­sid­ered as a “mature stu­dent” (at 26 years old!) and show my moti­va­tion to take classes.

I printed and copied until both machines died and applied.

I’m sure most North Amer­i­can are famil­iar with the process, but for a Euro­pean, it is quite daunt­ing. It is nec­es­sary to apply online, and then to bring all the doc­u­ments at the uni­ver­sity, where they are cer­ti­fied. Then, you just wait and see…because you may not be accepted.

So I sat and waited. Until the day when I logged on to the intranet to see my appli­ca­tion sta­tus and saw it was “incom­plete”. I was miss­ing… the results of my TOEFL test. See, nor­mally, TOEFL send the results to four uni­ver­sity of the applicant’s choice. I had listed the two uni­ver­si­ties in Ottawa, so the results must have been there. Quod erat demonstrandum.

I went to the uni­ver­sity with my own TOEFL report in case of. The copy of the report wasn’t accepted, but my orig­i­nal was taken.

I sat and waited some more.

A week later, my appli­ca­tion was still incom­plete. I went back to the uni­ver­sity: “we don’t accept appli­cants’ reports, score reports must be mailed by TOEFL”. “But I already requested a report for you!”, I pleaded. “We don’t accept appli­cants reports…”. Gotcha. Since the uni­ver­sity is bilin­gual, I asked if I could reg­is­ter in French instead. “You have to prove you speak French”. “But… I’m French”, I stated, unsure of whether is was a joke or not. “You have to prove you speak French any­way”. “I’m French”, I repeated, this time a bit louder. “How can I not speak French?”. “You have to prove you speak French”.

I was so frus­trated I almost bought every choco­late I could find on the way home. I asked again TOEFL to send the results to the uni­ver­sity. I paid again, of course. Appar­ently, it would take about 6–8 weeks.

I went back to the uni­ver­sity with the print­out of my test reorder. “See, I reorder the scores. Given that you already have the orig­i­nal of my test results, could you please make a deci­sion on my appli­ca­tion?”. “When we will receive the offi­cial scores”.

I argued that I was due to start the sum­mer ses­sion soon, and that I was not going to take sum­mer classes if my appli­ca­tion for Sep­tem­ber was refused, that it was a waste of time. “Your fault, you should have applied ear­lier”.

As a Cana­dian, I’m way too polite, so I kept my mouth shut. But the French in me was seething with anger. I need to have some kind of Cana­dian edu­ca­tion to improve my chances to get another job. I am will­ing to pay to go to uni­ver­sity. I made it through immi­gra­tion (and almost cit­i­zen­ship). I speak both offi­cial lan­guages. And yet, I’m fac­ing a wall of bureau­cracy.

I really, really hope I even­tu­ally get accepted and get cred­its for my degrees in French.

Related arti­cles:

1. From Teacher To Student
2. Pic­ture of the Week: Chalk
3. Free Stuff in Ottawa… and in Canada!
4. School’s Out
5. The Alien Student