Laughs

Hello people! This post may be long but i hope you will laugh at it as much as i did. Not that I am the best story teller in the world, but maybe some of you will recognize some little things here and there. So. Today, I had to drive to Eskilstuna for work. I will hold a meeting tomorrow early, so I wanted to be on stage on time.

It was a perfect occasion to meet my friend A for the dinner and tell her everything that happened the past 6 months, since the last time we met and also to listen to her stories as well. We shared a lots of laughs I tell you, no need to go to the gym to train the stomach tomorrow! I specially wanted to tell A my story about getting registered at an university to study some laws and stuff next spring. I mean, I need it for work and since I had to stop my song career (another story, not for tonight), I thought it would great to ally useful and interesting and go to school a little. So I looked, found a good courses at Lunds university, with the advantage to be on the internet, with just the final test to write in Lund. Perfect: I plan my time as I want and learn myself something, hopefully.

When I thought that, I did not know that I would learn more about the Swedish society than about law, but in a way this is a kind of law too, you will see. I was researching a little bit which documents I needed to send in order to register and the list was long… The grades and diploma from college, the grades and diploma from high school, a grade in English, a grade in Swedish and a proof that I don’t need to pay the fee for university (which in my case is the proof that I am a Swedish citizen). You may think: EASY as in butter! It took me almost two evenings at home of speleological investigations
to find all my grades and diplomas back. Who knew that one day, I would need to take a copy from an exam passed 99?

Well, first point! Checked! All the copies from documents have to be “vidimerade”, which means signed by another person than me and the name and phone number of this person had to be on each copy. It’s to avoid that people cheat with grades of course. Who would cheat with my old papers from 99? Like if it would have been better for me to have a 19 in philosophy instead of the 12 I got? Or maybe I would increase the grades for sports? Like once in my life, I would have been worth at some sports which were not riding! I remember how much I sweat to put all the material in place when we had sport in order to get good along with our teacher and maybe get some good will points there. So you see, someone needs to be involved in this copies, no way that I would cheat with my sports grades! With all my grades from high school (some in
French and some in German by the way, lucky me, these two languages don’t need any translation for the registration), it makes like 50 pappers to sign with a name and a phone number. Which of my friends has 2 hours to kill to sign these copies? Maybe I could make it myself, who would check that it was a real people signing everything? But how good does it look to register to a course about juridical matters with false paper? Not very clever… Well, maybe if I am very nice to M, he would make it?

Ok, so I maybe can check this point. My grade of English: super easy! When I was making some archeology in my papers, I found back this stamp with my toefl level on it. Checked! My grade in Swedish. Here you go. My 7 years and two weeks spent in Sweden are not enough for this administration to let me register to this course (and every other course by the way). I need to prove my level.

For the record, I have now been working more than 6 years for the Swedish state or commune and even if the beginning was painful language talking, I m not sure that I am that bad now wether for talking or writing. My English is much worse but ok, I need a grade. Which kind of grade? Jo this is an exam happening twice a year, the next time being 15 days AFTER the registration limit for next spring course, that costs 1600 SEK and takes a whole day of vacation. Lucky me!

I can take the test in Linköping… if … if … if… I only find the registration paper on some internet… I googled like a crazy and I did not find any recent paper to fill in and send somewhere in order to register to the test. Plus that I let you know how ridiculous I think this is. I called the administration and the lady was strict: I really need this exam. This exam is about testing how much written and spoken Swedish I understand, if I distinguish humor and irony. For real also, all this is not a joke, this is the reality. Oh and the last point to check: a proof of my swedishness? Ah yes, I almost forgot, it has now almost been a year that I am a Swedish citizen. Happy birthday to me! So this is it. Me being smart because I went to the university, it’s not for tomorrow. I will sleep on it I think and see what the day of tomorrow will give me.