Le laisser-passer A38 - la version moderne.

[cerealjoe]

And the gods of French bureaucracy descended and they deemed that Gali had suffered enough and they decided that things could get done over the phone (and through snail mail with thousands of repetitive sending of copies of things). Under the cut below you'll find a nice summary of the bureaucracy I thought I had to face (typed up about a month ago). Dear French bureaucracy, Every single time I think you can't outdo yourself, you do! All the stuff I had to do and fill out and scan to confirm the fact that I will be attending the same doctoral school here in France this school year again should be turned into a comic strip. I've already mentioned that the formalities in my Finnish school for the confirmation of the same thing are exactly: a). get an email reminding you that you need to confirm attendance and b). click on a button on the school website that says "yes, this year, again, I will be attending as a PhD student". That's it. Total time: 3 seconds if the browser is slow. Now for my French school it's a whole different business. You should know that at the moment when I first signed up as a PhD student I had already to fill in tons of information and scan every possible document one would want. And the miracle of French bureaucracy is that they somehow expect that information to change every single year! Trust me, my date of birth, my place of birth, the year I got my bac, the year I first attended a uni, etc. will not change that easily so why are you asking me again? The worst part is that you're sent a PDF file you have to fill in... but it's not a form PDF file and therefore not easy to fill in. Plus you have to sign it, you have to find your thesis supervisor and have them sign it and then you also have to have the director of the laboratory sign it! Basically what you have to do is print out the sheet, fill it in, have everyone sign it and then scan the whole thing along with all the other documents you are asked and send everything to the secretary (given the other stages of the registration process I am rather certain that all these documents are never looked at). I finished all that filling out, signing, scanning in the middle of September and at that point I was rather happy with myself thinking that everything has been turned in and everything is fine and I'll get my student card soon. Oh no, no, no, miss! This is France! This is a doctoral school that respects itself! Your nightmares will be haunted by everything you have to do every year to confirm attendance! Yesterday I got an email telling me that I have between now and mid-December to go to Paris and finalise my registration in person and there are multiple steps and I have to bring in some documents which were already asked the first time and I have already scanned them and heck why the hell do they need them again? Anywho, as I said there are clear steps... the first of which is to go to the ECP main offices which are not even in Paris, they're located in the middle of nowhere! You have to take the RER to way the outskirts of the suburbs of Paris and then a bus and then walk some. Obviously they're only open from 10am till 3pm so I should already plan on losing a whole day on this, but hey they're nice they don't close for lunch. After making it there I have to go first to this office (which conveniently is not really named in the email, just a weird acronym is given) and get a sheet of paper named "feuille de route" which I suppose will explain to me the next steps. At the same time I have to get a sheet of paper where I'll be told how much I have to pay (or maybe not, I am so not familiar with all that jargon). Then I have to go this other office (with another weird acronym but this time it's so weird that they were nice and wrote out what it means) on the third floor of this random building (heck, we're even given a room number! how nice of them!) and "proceed with the registration". What the hell? What were all the papers I had sent you before for? And the best part is the last one: "at the end of your registration round" (loosely translated but that's what it means, it makes it sound like some kind of battle!) you should bring back all the papers you were given to the first office and then we'll get our student status sheet (and probably the card will come in about three months, if at all). Reminds you of anything? Le laisser-passer A38. But finally I got through to the people in charge on the phone and when asked if I really had to do the final thing and come up to the school to get things finalised, they laughed and said that I could just send them copies of everything short of Linda the bunny's birth certificate* and a check and they'll take care of everything. Unless they can't. At which point they'll call me and now they have three phone numbers on which they can contact me. (*no really, I have to send them copies of things which they should already have and things I've already scanned and sent over and things I've already made photocopies of and sent) BTW, they're making me pay 50 bucks to get a new "official" email address. 50 bucks. Hum. Right. What? (The photo above is probably my favourite one from Paris from last time. Only two more and then that's it for this round.)

Comments

[mittelfeld.livejournal.com]

Yikes. Maybe you should send Linda the Bunny's birth certificate too, just in case.

[cerealjoe.livejournal.com]

I'm considering doing it along with lighting up candles and foods as offerings.

Yes, I love bureaucracy very much... which is why I never did register at the French embassy in Finland. They wanted copies of my national card, birth certificate (which is necessary to get the card so why do they need it again?) and a copy of "livret de famille" (why?!? I'll never know).

[theidolhands.livejournal.com]

lol!