2023-08-11 10:59:00
It was while trying to re-enroll at the University of Liège that Martin Karaziak discovered that he might no longer be financed. “I press the button and the computer tells me: ‘It’s not possible, you haven’t had enough credits for the last three years’. I should have passed half of all my credits, and I didn’t.”
Martin was then a sociology anthropology student at ULiège. “After my rhéto, I started studying communication in Seraing, in 2017. Then just before the Christmas session, I decided to reorient myself.” In High School, sitting in a class, he has the impression of experiencing exactly the same thing as in secondary school. At university, he finds courses that interest him and challenge him.
He succeeds in part of the credits for this year started, and begins a course “straddling two years”, which he drags to the end. With saucepans clinging to his coattails, like statistics class. But above all, like many young people, he finds himself in the middle of Covid: “I had to do fieldwork in ethnography while staying at home, it made no sense!” So Martin postpones, procrastinates, without realizing that he has the sword of Damocles hanging over his head.
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I had to carry out ethnographic fieldwork while staying at home, it made no sense!
What does it mean to be fundable?
In French-speaking Belgium, the cost of studies is borne for a small part by the minerval – the registration fees that students pay to their school or university –, and, for the most part, by a subsidy granted by the Wallonia Federation. Brussels.
This grant is only paid for students who are considered “fundable”. When a Haute École decides to grant a derogation to a student, it pays for it “at its own expense”, without receiving the subsidy.
“When I received the message of refusal of registration, I received a proposal for an automatic exemption request. It was refused by the faculty. I went to see the bachelor’s coordinator, I explained my situation to him, I wrote a letter… But it didn’t work out.”
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When I received the message of refusal of registration, I received a proposal for an automatic exemption request.
From sociology student to glass blower
For Martin, the only way to become fundable once more is not to be enrolled in higher education during the 5 academic years.
No question of waiting with folded arms for 5 years, the young man, 24 years old then, looks towards the IFAPME, attracted by the trades of crafts, creativity. “I wanted a know-how that is transmitted, a human sharing. No longer be a number on a school bench, weave a human-to-human relationship.”
He set his sights on the profession of glass blower, and the IFAPME sent him to Val Saint Lambert. “I went there in October 2021 to discuss, I sent my CV. Then when I came back to the studio following a week, the glassblowers said to me, “Go back to school. Don’t come here, there’s no future!”
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Go back to school. Don’t come here, there’s no future!
But Martin hangs on. The administrative work takes months, because there is no repository for this training, but in May 2022 it can start. “In the beginning, it was a lot of observation, small tasks like detaching the part that was still red with heat and putting it in the cooling oven. It’s not a job you learn in a year.”
The young man still has a little trouble with the theoretical courses in law, taxation, management, which he follows at IFAPME. But the transmission of knowledge that takes place at Val Saint Lambert occupies his neurons 100%. “You have to understand the material and how it reacts, synchronize the right hand and the left hand, have the patience to let it take, blow while turning”. Far from burying it in a hole, the end of financability allowed Martin to be passionate regarding other horizons.
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