Welcome to the “Clusian Goulag!”

When I was in 8th grade at the Saint Jean D’Aulps middle school I wasn’t doing anything or going anywhere. Perhaps, not motivated, bored and uninterested by the teachers and the subjects taught to me. Very soon my scholastic performance when from good to terrible to the point that going to school became a deep, constant and daily anguish. 

One day of May or June 1961, as I was sitting in the school bus next to Marcel Losserand, then in 7th grade, he told me that he had applied for the entrance exam at the “Ecole National d’Horlogerie de Cluses” (Cluses’ National School of Watchmaking). Since I desperately needed an exit strategy from that middle school and the inner workings of clocks and watches had always intrigued me, I see that opportunity as perfect a match for me. 

Marcel and I took the exam and, lo and behold, I succeeded while he flunked. So, without a known buddy of mine, I went to the Cluses boarding school the following September. I quickly discovered that this place was hell. The discipline was harsh, we couldn’t wear blue-jeans, just a drab gray overcoat, and had to wear a military type uniform when we left the perimeter of the school.

We also had to work hard (40 hours of tuition per week), deal with a variety of cruel punishments pushed on to us, plus widespread hazing administered liberally by the senior students. At first, I was to come home (20 miles away) every two weeks and the weekends in the school enclosure were awful. 

This is what I titled this blog the goulag of Cluses (the town) and Clusians (the inhabitants, anglicized). Now, some folks that are placed into delinquent camps will testify how much good it did to them while others will simply loathe these institutions. For me, it was a godsend as it finally told me order, discipline and organization that have served me well all life long. In spite of all that suffering, 

I must admit that the venerable Cluses’ institution contributed enormously to my professional success! So, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche first stated in 1888, “Out of life's school of war—what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger.”