Lille (AFP)

"In the morning, I turn on the computer, but I am unable to follow the lessons. I have more strength", sighs Sarah, in engineering school in Lille.

After months of distance learning, many students feel like she "flops", worn out by loneliness and lack of prospects.

"Eight hours alone behind a computer, it's endless. Attention is lost, you feel completely lost," says Sarah, 19, her voice tired after more than three months "without setting foot in progress".

Since the physical closure of his school in October in the face of the resurgence of the Covid-19 epidemic, his motivation has died down: "at the start, I clung, I said to myself + it will not last." But in December, it is became too difficult, I really dropped out ".

In first year and "locked in a 30 m2" with her boyfriend, the Lille girl suffers from isolation.

"It is the most difficult, the lack of social bond with the others, the teachers. I do not even dress any more, I stay in my bed", she breathes.

Math, computer-aided design, "it's not suited to distance at all!"

As for the exams, in addition to some supervised homework, most of them take place "in continuous assessment" with "a lot of homework to be done, it's super stressful", laments this student who suffers from insomnia.

"I tried to catch up during the holidays (...) But today I understand that it is far from over," she chokes, "discouraged and angry".

- "Hecatomb" -

For other young people like Léa, in the 2nd year of history in Angers, this "moral and physical exhaustion" has been going on since March, accompanied by financial difficulties.

"I had a waitress job, so as not to be a burden for my family. At the first confinement, everything stopped," regrets Léa.

Grant holder, she recently benefited from an aid of 150 euros, however insufficient.

To pay her rent and "favor the purchase of school books", she admits sometimes eating "only once a day".

After having "held up well for several months", the young woman was finally "diagnosed with depression" before "giving up almost everything" during the winter.

"It was a slaughter (...) half of the 220 students in my class dropped out," she says.

"We lack prospects, there is the anxiety of not finding internships, opportunities" with this crisis, explains the student.

For a time interested in a career as a teacher, she is now considering "an L3 pro, in apprenticeship", to "find human contact".

Among the hundred students of his promotion from Lille business school, Damien (first name changed) sent him a "survey" to alert management: "50% of the students complained of daily physical pain, a quarter was missing more half of the lessons each week ".

- Forgotten -

The students "feel abandoned", Léa enrages, evoking "the recent speech of the Prime Minister in which he spoke of ski lifts, football stadiums, but never of the universities".

Collectives and student unions from Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin) sent a letter to Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, calling on him to hear their "calls for help" and demanding a "face-to-face return as soon as possible" for "save what remains to be saved".

In Lyon, emotion also seized on Saturday in the student community after the suicide attempt of a law student who left his residence hall, without anything at this stage to explain his gesture. .

"Suicides among young people unfortunately there are all the time, every year (...) it is always multifactorial" but "yes, we are monitoring that", reacted in Cergy the Minister of Higher Education Frédérique Vidal.

"The psychological impact is perhaps even stronger at an age when we create links, where we make friends, where we build our social network", she noted, expressing a "request for consultation of psychologists which increases enormously ", in front of which the ministry" has decided to double the number of psychologists within the establishments ".

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