From Atheism to Faith in God: Part 5 - Learning the meaning of hard work - Preparatory classes

My testimony: From convinced Atheism to joyful fellowship with God

Part 5: Preparatory classes - Learning the meaning of hard work

As I finished high school, I desired to become a scientist. I wanted to work in the field of artificial intelligence, to build robots that would do a better job than humans. This seemed to me a good and logical direction, since I did not like people.
I was judging other humans in general, thinking that I could help build robots which would do better, forgetting that I myself was a human. The irony of this logical contradiction, with its inherent pride and foolishness, did not reach my mind for a long time. Pride can be so subtle, and hide under so many different mantles.

I was a good student and, in France, most good students don’t go to the University but rather to “classes préparatoires” (preparatory classes), to prepare for the very challenging national exams of the “Grandes Écoles.” You have such classes for science, business, or literature.
Preparatory classes are an old institution, dating back to the XVIIIth century. Their creation was justified by the apparition of national competitive exams (concours) for future army officers and civil engineers. With the French revolution and the creation of the Ecole Polytechnique, designed to prepare civil and military experts for the French state, the preparatory classes would flourish. The Grandes Écoles, with their preparatory class, would become a hallmark of the French meritocracy. Since the French revolution, personal merit would be a major indicator to how high you could raise in the republic, and no more the privileges of nobility or wealth. It implied that the Grandes Écoles were free of charge and that any French citizen could take the exams (I should precise: as far as you were a male. In this domain, the discrimination against women would not be dealt with for almost two more centuries).

It is noticeable that these Grandes Écoles were first for training military or civil servants, with a strong emphasis on science. They appeared in the XVIIIth century, the century of the Enlightenment, promoting this idea of equality in education. This emphasis on science is very noteworthy, specially in comparison with countries like the United States where the best students will often focus on Law or Business studies. In France, still today, the very best students will be encouraged to study science before anything else, to become what is called engineers. In France, the word ‘engineer’ mostly means a scientist with business and people skills, with sometimes not much practical knowledge on how to make an engine work or how to repair a specific mechanism. We even have, for the diplomas of the best Grandes Écoles, the term of ‘ingénieur généraliste’ (generalist engineer) which is a diploma for persons who can evolve in the leadership of large French companies.


My adoptive great-grandfather on my mother’s side, the ‘général Parvy’ (Maurice René Pierre Parvy), had gone to such a preparatory class, then entering the military Grand École  ‘Saint-Cyr,’ a school designed for training future military officers. He fought in the first world war, and at the start of the second world war, the general Parvy (63rd division d’infanterie), would be captured and stay in a German prison for the whole war, like more than a hundred other French generals. The famous general de Gaulle would avoid imprisonment and escape in Great-Britain, continuing the fight from abroad up to 1944, with the fundamental help of Great Britain and later the United States.

The general Parvy had an adoptive son, my maternal grand-father Roger Ascencio-Parvy. Roger’s natural father was Spanish (Ascencio), dying when his son was one year old. My grand-father Roger had gone to such ‘classe préparatoire’ and entered one of the ‘Grandes Écoles’ called ‘Sup-aéro’, the first and still today the most renowned French aeronautical school. My grand-father would then start a plane factory just before the Second World war, a factory that would be destroyed. He would then become a captain in the French ‘free’ army during the Second World War, fighting alongside American and British soldiers.

My mother also went to the ‘classes préparatoires,’ one of the first women in France to enter this old institution. She could not finish the exams and enter a Grande École, because she needed to take care of her destitute grand-mother. She rather entered a new school from the Bull computers company, that prepared the first French programmers in 1960, a school that paid its students - so that my mother could provide for her and her so dear grand-mother.


With such a family history, I also wanted to follow this direction and go to a ‘classe préparatoire’. When I was 12 years old, I already wanted to become an engineer from such a Grande École. I studied during all my high school years with the clear goal, one day to enter a Grande École.

About a year before finishing high school, with the help of my mother, I had already written to different possible preparatory class, with the details of my grades, to get what was called a ‘pre-inscription’ that would secure my place there. I was accepted to a good preparatory class in Lyon, in the Lycée La Martinière Montplaisir, section T’ for students of the E baccalaureate (science and technique).
I did not pursue the then more renowned baccalaureate C, because it allowed me to avoid the history subject, since I was only interested in science in these days. Many years later, when I became for five years a teaching assistant in Church history, this past choice would make me smile.
Since I already knew that I was accepted in a preparatory class, I did not need to perform well for the baccalaureate (the final exam at the end of the high school). I only needed a pass grade. For this exam, I did well in science (with a 19/20 in math), and struggled in philosophy (8/20) or in French (10/20). I also did well in English (16/20), thanks to the many weeks spend in the UK.


During my years in preparatory class in Lyon, I was to learn what intellectual hard work means.
We would study 40 hours a week in the classroom, and about 50 hours beyond the classroom in a normal week. We were more than thirty students in our class, with two girls.
We had many bursary students, coming from humble origin. In my case, my parents were not wealthy but still in the upper-middle class, so that I did not need financial help. Once, a bursary form was distributed for application in the classroom, and my neighbor was surprised that I did not take it and said to me: you should apply, we all got it! With a physician father and engineer mother, it was not necessary for me to even try. My parents provided for the expenses (for housing and food, the studies being free).

We were living in rooms of four, of a size of about 15 feet by 15 feet, each having a small closet for clothes, a table, a bed and a lamp. Some slept later than others, so most of us learned to sleep when there is still light or when others still speak near you. This means that, during these years, I learned to sleep or take small naps in many setting, for instance, sitting in a car or on a bench . This would prove handy to me, with the ability to take micro-sleeps even while standing in line.

Most of us had been either the first or the second student of our class in high school. It meant that some previously first students would end up last.
In the first year, nationally nicknamed “Math Sup,” Math was the most important subject in my class. Our math teacher, Genoud, was a dedicated man who poured his life in the students of this preparatory class for many years. We all respected him, for the quality of his teaching and his commitment to make us study well and prepare well. In the first months, I did not get very high grades in math, being in the average, and because of lack of a clean writing (striked words on the page, for some mistakes while writing), Genoud put me on his ‘black list’. This meant that in the next math tests, if there was even a single word striked on the many pages of one of our regular four hour exams, the teacher would stop reading and give me the 0/20 grade. As you can imagine, I instantly improved the cleanness of my exam pages, doing every calculation on a draft paper before copying it on my clean exam paper.

After a few months, I was frustrated of only getting average grades, so I decided to work even harder for the coming exam on ‘vectorial spaces’ that I knew would be difficult. For about a month, I slept only about four hours a day, thus working about 130 hours for four weeks. I took some vitamin tablets to sustain me,; yet I looked pitiful. When the exam came, I finished second of the class, with a grade of 11/20. The first, Romain, was by far the best student of the class and he got 16/20. All the other students had grades between 1/20 and 9/20.
In the following months, I would return to a more regular 6-8 hours of sleep, studying ‘only’ 100 hours a week, but remained the second in math. This gave me a new respect in the eyes of our esteemed math teacher Genoud, which was precious to me. I would then remain the second in math for the whole year.

As you perhaps remember, I was not very good at human relationships. When I entered the preparatory class, another student from my high school class, Vincent, had joined with me this same ‘prepa’ (a nickname for ‘preparatory class’). When I would pass in front of a group of students, I would tend to avoid eye contact and say nothing. One day, I was going up the stairs and Vincent was going down with a few of his friends, and he saw that - as usual - I would avoid eye contact. He said to me:  ‘mais qu’est-ce que tu es con!’ (what a fool you are!). This made me angry inside, although I did not show it. I had no idea of how rejecting my body language was. It is only years later, when I had learned to relate more healthily with people, that I became grateful for Vincent’s remark, realizing that he did not try to humiliate me, but to make me aware that I did not communicate well at all.
When I would simply see students playing with each other and pushing each other, it was like if inside of me anger would well up, in reaction to body contact. It would take me many years before reaching the aptitude to interact peacefully with others, and even hug people, not to speak of the aptitude to have a girlfriend.

As I became a better student, the best student of the class, Romain, befriended me. He was a good student in all the subjects and a good friend to most. I was a good student mostly in math, and had no real friend. He helped me to be integrated in the classroom and to have friends. Still today, I am grateful to Romain for the blessing it has been to be his friend during the prepa.

In the prepa, there was no alcohol and no smoking, and no girlfriend.
One student of our class was a the exception, nicknamed Chacha. He would drink, smoke and even sleep with a girl from another class in his bed. He was then fired from internship.

The week-ends were work as usual. We would sometimes have a break for going to swim or to watch a movie. On Sunday, in my prepa class, only one student went to Church, all the others studying diligently between breakfast and lunch.

The second year of prepa, named ‘Math spé’ (for: mathematics special), we had a significant improvement of our life condition: we would have a personal room, about 4 feet large by 10 feet long, with just enough space for a bed, a closet and a table.
At the end of the year, we had the national exam in Paris. I was accepted in a good school, the ENSIMAG (Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Ingénieurs en Mathématiques Appliquées de Grenoble). Yet, I chose to repeat the class, with the hope of entering one the even more renowned top Grandes Écoles.

During this third and last year of prepa, I had a good friend, Philippe, and since both of us were repeating we were a little less stressed than the others and could relax a bit.
At the end of this last year of prepa, after so many weeks of about 100 hours of intense studies, I was accepted at the École des Mines de Paris (now part of Paris Tech), one of the top Grandes Écoles preparing generalist engineers in France.


Before describing the years in my Grande École, I will describe in the next post a key event that happened to me during these three years of prepa. This event would have a deep impact on my life, preparing me to open the inner prison of my heart to the light of God's love, and leading me to my first direct contact with a Bible.