My years in my Grande École - fighting for inner freedom.
A. Intense practice of sports
As I finished my national exam, the period of 'Classes prépa' finished and the season of studying in a Grande École opened.
I was admitted at the École des Mines de Paris, a renowned French school that was created about 200 years earlier.
For many French students, the hard studying takes part in the Classe Prepa, and the degree of seriousness in the Grande École depends on each student. For instance, in the École des Mines de Paris, to get your diploma after the three years of study you need to simply avoid fail grades. To not receive your diploma in such a school is a rare exception, since the minister of the industry has to personally sign a paper for this to not happen. Needless to say, in the French Grandes Écoles there is often much partying for many students, and the students who continue to work as hard as in the Classe Prépa are a tiny minority. Out of the 100 first year students at my school of Mines, probably 10% continued to work hard, and probably 3 or 4 worked as hard as in Classes Prépa - the ones who targeted the very renowned 'Corps des mines de Paris', who can then join the best students of Polytechnic (arguably The most renowned engineering school in France) and top students of Normale Supérieure (arguably the best school for scientific researchers in France).
I was clearly not part of the 10% who continued to work hard during the Grande Ecole year. I was much aware of my inexistent people skills, and of the painful consequence of it. I had almost no friends, and as soon as I saw a girl that I liked, I was so paralyzed by fears that I could barely mumble words. What became the driving goal of my three years at Ecole des Mines was to develop more assurance and be able to interact more easily with people, with the hope to have one day a girlfriend who would become my wife. This dear hope would have to way for ten more years, but I could take the first steps in learning to better relate to other humans.
Since I did not like people and saw science as the solution to all human problems (either problems humans face, or problems created by humans), I logically choose the Robotics major, focusing on artificial intelligence during the hours I would spend studying.
A cultural note here: a 'generalist' grande ecole like Mines de Paris is different from most anglo-saxon engineering schools or degrees, it is much more theoretical and thus much less practical. In order to deal with this difference, the diploma it delivers is now called a Master in Executive Engineering.
The kind of majors we could choose, beside robotics, were: finance, sociology, mines, business, to name a few. We studied science, French history, geology, sociology, business. One of my classes was an architecture class at the Louvre. Another one was, for two weeks, to study at the London Imperial college, to learn from specialists about the methods of communication with satellites. This school was free, and we had a stipend when we went for the class in London, with the trip paid.
Understanding well English was a requirement. We had to take at least one class fully in English, with the test also in English.
We also had to take a second language. Since I wanted to try something different, I looked at the most exotic languages available, and chose to study Russian for the next 3 years. We were in 1990, the Berlin wall had fallen a few months before, and I was interested in learning more about Eastern Europe and Russia.
To develop more assurance and deal with my crippling fears, I chose two approaches: sports and psychology.
The first approach was to invest a lot of time in sports to become stronger and thus less frightened in front of agressive people. I became part of the rowing team, becoming the only first year student to join our then-renowned school team of the 8 rowers (huit de pointe in French). Seeing my determination and passion, the coach then asked me to become the first rower in my second year and the team leader. In the three years I was there, our sports team would become the most renowned of the school, with the largest number of recruits, and we would go each year to the final of the French national competition for university teams, with one or two teams each time. In France, a Grande Ecole is considered like a university for sports competitions. This is a challenge because in the case of my school we have only 100 students entering each year (so about 300 total for all the years), while most universities (and most grandes écoles) have at least a thousand of students who can join the sports teams. Yet, we were very proud to reach the final stage of the national competition each year. During my years of rowing with my school, I became friend with a fellow student of Mines of Paris, Jean-Philippe Uzan, who is now a internationally recognized French cosmologist and research director.
In parallel to rowing, I also invested a lot of my time in Karate, learning to fight in front of aggressiveness and to no more shut down, paralyzed by fear. I would spend hours to practice “katas,” choreographed moves that you memorize and learn to practice with fluidity, up to the point of making these moves almost a second nature. I did get wounded a few times, once I broke my wrist while falling, yet continuing to fight for a moment. I only stopped when the swelling of my wrist was so big that I had to leave for the hospital, brought there by one of the karate students. Another time I received a punch in the face and I had the impression that I had a broken glass in front of me, except that I did not have my glasses. Happily, this brain problem disappeared in the next days. In these days, I saw my body as a slave who had to do whatever I want it to do, with not much kindness toward it, a foolishness that I would take years to recognize.
After about 2 years, I received the brown belt, beating in a combat the assistant of my teacher. This assistant was preparing for his second dan black belt. I practiced more than 2 hours almost every day, going to the gym to develop more strength and endurance. This means that in an average week, between rowing, karate and gym, I spent more than 20 hours practicing sports. My karate teacher, Serge, liked me and considered having me become his assistant. He was a 5 dan black belt, a world vice-champion in Shotokan Karate. It is very possible that the fact that my father was a Jew from Tunisia, like him, played a key part in this. One time, as I was practicing with his assistant in fluid moves (called randori), his assistant hit me with a flip and back foot kick (ushiro geri) so violently that I flew in the air 1 meter above the ground and fell on the floor so hard that I wounded my heel and felt pain for weeks, as well as a broken rib. I was very disappointed, because the assistant was not supposed to hit in such part of the training. My karate master, Serge, did not say anything, but as soon as I could train again he took me with him in the gym and told me he wanted me to fight back his assistant and neutralize him. His words were ‘tue-le’ - kill him - happily not to take literally. (This is one of the difference of communication between French and US people: in France, you have to interpret the context of a saying much more than in the US - we are what some call a high-context communication people, while the US is the most low-context communication country of the world: everything is spelled out, and for instance a written summary and action points are written down and shared after a meeting, something really strange for most French people)
I was concerned by the reaction of my karate master. I expected him to scold his assistant for hitting me violently when it was not allowed. Instead, I was supposed to be the one fighting back harder and wounding him back. I did not like this retaliation path, thinking that even if I 'won' it could lead to worse. I remembered a saying of Ghandi, a man I had much respect for: 'an eye for an eye, and the world will end up blind'.
In the third year at my Grande École, after I physically recovered, I did not go as frequently to the karate dojo (training place), and soon stopped practicing karate.
In the next post, I will share about my discoveries in the field of psychology and how this opened me to be more open to at least some forms of religion.
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