A hundred French students await a visa to return to the training in which they were registered before the health crisis. For two and a half years, they have been taking their distance lessons at night, in sometimes drastic conditions.
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For them, distance lessons have never ended and look like a nightmare: jet lag requires, they connect to their computers in the middle of the night, in sometimes drastic control conditions. For two years, a hundred French students have been waiting for a visa to be delivered to them to find Chinese campuses where they are supposed to study.
In February 2020, Cédric (none of the students interviewed wished to give his name) took the latest plane for France, via Shanghai, before the city of Chengdu, in the center of the country, closed. It was there that he started his computer license, six months earlier. “We had left the choice between isolate ourselves in the establishment, in very spartan conditions, and return to our country,” says the spokesperson for the European collective Eu Students China, who brings together 77 French people including 25 registered in a course Completely Chinese – the others according to a university exchange in partnership with a French establishment.
Two years later, the student, who had first returned to the parental home in Versailles, ended up taking a studio in Pau, “where the rents are cheaper”, to continue his distance studies. “For two years, I have been sleeping the day and lives at night, he narrates. The conditions for validation of the courses are strict, with open camera and light in the face.” To control attention, at regular intervals, the Professor asks the assembly at a distance to type a number on the keyboards. When face -to -face courses resumed for the Chinese, foreign students had to take hybrid courses, filmed in the class. “The microphone was of very poor quality, and I had to go back to catch up because I did not understand what the teacher said,” continues Cédric.