The Formula... Learn it or Die

So "school" has started, yesterday we had a huge welcoming meeting in an amphiteatre where they gave us some useful contacts and... pretty much went over and over again at how awesome Sciences Po is.

Let me tell you something, I come from propaganda machine UBC "place of mind" where "from there" great and minds are forged in a global community (oh how they love to use the words international/global and community right next to each other)... but UBC porpaganda is nothing compared to this people. Boy they really take some pride on their stuff! Not so charmant, a little over pretentious and arrogant, but I sort of knew what I was getting myself into when I signed up for a school that defines itself as "an institution to train the French elite".

Be right back, I'm gonna puke.


We are receiving a special program for international students (Jump Startish) where we get one week of French and methodology classes. Sciences Po works with a very specific methodology for essay writing that's completely different from what's generally used in North American universities, and well I think all over the world actually.

There's a very specific "formula" on how to approach an exam question that requires knowing the "code" in order to organize an essay. The teacher explaining this to us used all these words, and some other that came up to my mind after learning the Sciences Po precious formula (which apparently other universities are now using because, again for them, ScPo is... da shit) were over-rationalization, schematic, formal, restrictive, and a big image of a boring grey wall.

So basically for them writing an essay is dividing your problem/thesis into two parts, both of these parts divided into two subparts. Each subdivision must be the same size, and the large parts as well. You just CAN'T ADD A THIRD POINT just... because... because it doesn't follow the formula. You can't add an extra line because it messes up organization. When I asked what was the point of this formalities the answer was along the lines of "you are here being taught how to think in a certain way, and for knowing this you'll be payed shitloads of money and be a rich politician so basically be happy an shut up".

...?

Indoctrination much? I continued to be unsatisfied with his argument to support the use of the formula and then he said: "Well, you like French philosophy? Like Foucault? Well they all learnt the formula and look at the books they wrote".

...?

Still NOT CONVINCING, but I'm just gonna learn the freaking formula... Now I understand why someone was telling that French society is extremely coded, that you have to learn the codes and work with them.

Fascist prick, I'm just hoping profs/essay writting methods are not actually this restrictive and that I'm just having sort of a bad experience with this prof. I may not have explained well how the formula works and it may not look that bad on my desscription abova BUT IT IS!! I just couldn't communicate it effectively.

I have nothing clever to say because I'm actually very tired and frustrated by the essay writting recipe, haha ok maybe I'm mking a big deal and I just dedicated a whole post to this, its just aaaaghhhh this type of mentality makes me sick... I'm really hoping not everyone, specially French student, are all these young-liberal-careerists-Sarkozys-in-the-making, cause it well looks like a production plant for this sort of specimens.