MTL part dix-sept

Dear UQÀM,

Lots of people know you as Université du Québec À Montréal. I'm renaming you today Université de Quelque sort de (à becomes de here) Maudite merde.




I'm not feeling very benevolent towards you. And I hope that I don't have the same feeling upon leaving here that I did upon leaving York. (that of being happy it was over with and not wanting anymore to do with such a place and being so jaded to go as far as to not attend graduation, against the wishes of my mother my only living relative who would have wanted to see me graduate!)

But I want you to know that no matter how many times you push me down, turn me away, leave me waiting, no matter the length of the silence, or misunderstanding, or inability to communicate, you will never win.
You will never get rid of me.
I'm here to stay.

Quitting is not in my nature. No matter how hard you make it, and you are making it very difficult, (so difficult that I would like to find a reason to quit right now,) no matter how little support you offer me, no matter how long I have to wait in endless lines for endless number of telle choses to be refused, turned away etc., I will stay here till I have my MA en Histoire de L'art (since you also phased out my original program). I will do an exchange to Iceland or Italy, I will excel, I will eventually write my papers in French, I will win bursaries and research grants, because I know that even when all the odds are against me, I am a good student, that I have done important projects, dehors Québec clairement, but that doesn't diminue their valeur.

You may not realize it now, but the world goes on outside the provincial walls. And the world outside the provincial walls doesn't know really that you exist or care. Get off your high horse and accept reality. I have. I'm an outsider here who is unwanted, despite the fact that I am making the very difficult effort of learning entirely and de totalement maîtriser our second national language. Even though I decided to go against all odds and do my masters degree at a Francophone university - and the English French dichotomy is maybe the most tabou of all the dichtomies - you seem to have little respect for this feat, for the amount of respect I have for your language, your land, your culture. Even though I could have gone to an Ontario university where I would not have to face all these hardships, I chose this, the most difficult of all défis I've yet set out for myself. (Here's a little peak into the complicated psychology of maëva - I choose difficult things to do and then I do them. why, I haven't figured it out. But this is by far the most difficult).

Thanks for making me stronger by pushing me down.
Thanks for making me see just how far I can go.

Yours not sincerely, or cordially or with any of that politesse je vous en prie remercie shit de merde that I hate trying to remember to put in letters to people,

Maëva