Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Administrative anguish
As all of you certainly know, the French administration is rather special. And slow. And quirky. And so outrageously complicated David jokingly suggested it was part of the citizenship test to be able to find the right office to go to in the right order and at the right opening times. Except I don't believe it's a joke because getting citizenship must be an administrative nightmare!!Anyhow, I needed to get some paperwork done to establish what teacher "échelon" I'm at, or in cruder terms, how much I should get paid. The difference in salary between the first three échelons is huge, about 400 a month from échelon 2 to 3. I'm currently at n°2 and hoping to get to n°3 if this admin process does work (it's out of my hands now). Now to get this magic échelon jump, you need to fulfill a certain amount of conditions, one of which being to have gone to a foreign country as a French assistant as part of an exchange with a French University. Which I did. Last year at SLC (yah never know, you could have short memory). Then I need to ask SLC to send me a specially formatted letter saying yes yes she was here and she even taught. And then I need to send this letter to the ministry of foreign affairs to have it approved. And then they need to send it back to me so I can send it to the ministry of education with the rest of the dossier.
This looks easy, and it is, given time and precise and clear indications.
Most people get warned in October about this process. I received a phone call end of November asking me where my paperwork was. To which I answered huguhwhat? I hadn't received anything. By the time they send me the info it was the 27th of Nov. The deadline to hand in the completed file is Dec. 19th. I received a very aggressive phone call from the woman at the ministry of Education on the 17th saying "you're late you won't get paid as much" as though it were all my fault and I should get hung for losing money because of their mistakes. I got super stressed out and started frantically looking for any proof in my papers that I'd gone to SLC (no success and useless idea). Of course, this was just before I had to go and teach my class and for some reason my brain translated "Wednesday deadline" as "tomorrow deadline". I was about to call SLC, email my contact there, ask her to send a scan over, write a letter to the Education woman begging them to be kind, when David had the good idea of checking the mail. Where lay the expected treasure from SLC: the letter!! So instead of waiting for the scan I photocopied it and joined it to my plea for more time. I then expedited the filled file with everything about me BUT the form from the ministry of foreign affairs, saying please please gimme time to get it to the ministry of FA, and ran to class.
This morning, I went to my early class and then to the French partner Uni that I did the exchange with SLC with to get a certificate from them because it said on the instructions "get it from all the concerned Universities". I got there before closing time (open only in the morning), bargained to get the paper immediately and found out it was probably useless to get it and that I could have gotten the one from SLC in Paris the whole time because they have offices here (DUH!!). I still got the file and hurried over to the next step. Indeed, in order to skip postal delays, I had the brilliant idea to go to the ministry of FA in person, hoping the person would agree to seeing me without previous appointment (I didn't have a phone number). Thankfully, the woman was there and agreed to seeing me and said she could get the approval signed and faxed to the Education woman by tomorrow. Which is the deadline. So I should be good... And yeah the French Uni paperwork was useless, but it was a "concerned Uni" so why ain't they clear? Ah well better too many papers than too little! So I can relax and breathe.
Now I'm going to pray for paydirt!
Btw, if you've reached the end of this post and actually have understood the whole thing, chances are you're French!!
This looks easy, and it is, given time and precise and clear indications.
Most people get warned in October about this process. I received a phone call end of November asking me where my paperwork was. To which I answered huguhwhat? I hadn't received anything. By the time they send me the info it was the 27th of Nov. The deadline to hand in the completed file is Dec. 19th. I received a very aggressive phone call from the woman at the ministry of Education on the 17th saying "you're late you won't get paid as much" as though it were all my fault and I should get hung for losing money because of their mistakes. I got super stressed out and started frantically looking for any proof in my papers that I'd gone to SLC (no success and useless idea). Of course, this was just before I had to go and teach my class and for some reason my brain translated "Wednesday deadline" as "tomorrow deadline". I was about to call SLC, email my contact there, ask her to send a scan over, write a letter to the Education woman begging them to be kind, when David had the good idea of checking the mail. Where lay the expected treasure from SLC: the letter!! So instead of waiting for the scan I photocopied it and joined it to my plea for more time. I then expedited the filled file with everything about me BUT the form from the ministry of foreign affairs, saying please please gimme time to get it to the ministry of FA, and ran to class.
This morning, I went to my early class and then to the French partner Uni that I did the exchange with SLC with to get a certificate from them because it said on the instructions "get it from all the concerned Universities". I got there before closing time (open only in the morning), bargained to get the paper immediately and found out it was probably useless to get it and that I could have gotten the one from SLC in Paris the whole time because they have offices here (DUH!!). I still got the file and hurried over to the next step. Indeed, in order to skip postal delays, I had the brilliant idea to go to the ministry of FA in person, hoping the person would agree to seeing me without previous appointment (I didn't have a phone number). Thankfully, the woman was there and agreed to seeing me and said she could get the approval signed and faxed to the Education woman by tomorrow. Which is the deadline. So I should be good... And yeah the French Uni paperwork was useless, but it was a "concerned Uni" so why ain't they clear? Ah well better too many papers than too little! So I can relax and breathe.
Now I'm going to pray for paydirt!
Btw, if you've reached the end of this post and actually have understood the whole thing, chances are you're French!!
# posted by V @ 2:20 PM 
