This Week In School: Bloody Calculator!

This Week in School wasn't the best of Weeks, I cocked up a bit in a few Tests (there were seven Tests this Week, SIX! EIGHT if you count the Tests in Sport) but on the whole it wasn't terrible I suppose.

Monday started off with....German! Yes Miss Battle Axe is BACK! And she seemed all the more grumpy, despite having just been to Paris and back on a School trip. Nothing much happened, we just did a few exercises to catch up on what we did before the Holidays (which was a month ago may I remind you). Technology was next, we wrapped up our chapter on alarm systems. For the Test in two Weeks time we have to identify all the different components in a system and what they do. It won't be based on an alarm system though, that was only used as an example. In Art we were supposed to be re-dubbing our short films but seen as the computer room was already taken so we instead watched the 'rushes' from our films and started a new project were we had to create the front page of a magazine. I'm calling mine 'At The Movies', a magazine that will show off and 'Review' our short films (pretending like they were real Films of course). I'm crap at drawing anything though, and I've having trouble drawing that stylised font that most magazines have. Maths was nothing short of a disaster, I just didn't know it yet! I F*CKED up big time on the Test, because I was cheating by using my Calculator. Although does it count when you don't know you're cheating? So normally in a Maths Test, there's a line at the top the page saying 'The use of a Calculator is not authorized' or 'The use of a Calculator is authorized' but there wasn't anything on this Test that said eitherwise. Nobody mentioned the Calculator at all and I didn't need it until the question that said 'find three consecutive numbers that add up to 183'. Well I thought you had to use the calculator for that one so I got it out, plopped it on the table and started tapping away. I didn't even check to see if anyone was using the electronic device, it just didn't occur to me at all. There was a girl that seemed to be laughing at me, but I thought she was laughing at the person next to me who was groaning in faustration (of course she laughing at me using the Calculator). It was only when I handed the Test in to the Teacher (and my calculator was on my table and CLEARLY visible at the time and she still didn't say a thing!) that she blurted out 'By the way, you weren't supposed to use the calculator in that Test, you don't need it. And don't think I won't find out cos' I can tell!' And I'm like: 'NOW YOU TELL ME?' Cheating in my School gets you a 0/20 and a word to your Parents (not to mention -5 taken off my Life In Class score) and even though I only used it for that one question (I couldn't get the answer outright cos' my Calculator only does multiply, times and +/-) I was still well aware that I had seriously violated School rules...and I wasn't even aware that I was doing it! Heck I didn't sleep Tuesday night cos' I was so scared she'd caught me out! Well I'm telling you now thats the last time I use a Calculator in a Test! History after lunch was seriously boring, we're moving away from the fighting in the revolution and more into politics. And anyone that's watched the Star Wars prequels knows that politics is boring. French was the dictation Test that I was nervous about. I think it went fine, but I could have made any number of mistakes. After that we continued the Story about that 'possesed jacket' that brings doom to whoever wears it. Really, a possesed Jacket? Whats it gonna do, squeeze you to death with its exquisite linen embroidery? Actually every time you pull a check out of its pockets, the money amount on that check disappears in the real world, which makes anyone the greatest thief the world has ever known. So for example the Narrator pulls out a check for fifty thousand pounds and in Japan somewhere theres a fire that destroys that exact amount of money, but also claims the lives of a few people. Of course the Narrator doesn't know this so he's becoming the richest guy in the world while everyone else is dying left and right from freak accidents. But every time he uses it it makes him for frail and closer to death so its effectively a lose-lose deal with the Devil (the mysterious bloke that sold him the jacket). It was alright I suppose, a bit like one of those old Twilight Zone episodes. 

Tuesday was fine, if exruciatingly boring. I was bricking Maths: will she catch me out? Will she realise it wasn't on purpose? What will the consequences be? Heck I even imagined me on my knees, pleading her to give mercy. But no, nothing happened. Instead we had a surprise Test (it was easy, no worries) and things continued as normal. I think I might have just dodged a bullet with that Test. History was the LOOONG delayed Test on Germany, and if we had it a Week ago I think I would actually get a better score. You see, I forgot to learn a map on Germany that detailed the economic state of the country (citing main city's ect...) which I had learnt off by heart two Weeks ago but because it was delayed for such a long time I forgot most of the stuff on it. Of course I had a little recap the previous night before to see if I remembered everything but I forgot all about that map. DAMMIT! And that map was on 5,5 points! So lets hope I was perfect on everything else or my score will be less than 15/20, which is disastrous for my Overall average for the end of the 3rd Trimestre!French was two hours of Grammar mixed in with more boring exercises. Tis' truly hell on a Tuesday' mornin. Tuesday afternoon wasn't that good either, apart from English. This time he would be explaining something about adjectifs to the Class and all of a sudden just pull out his IPHONE to check if New Zealand had lost their cricket match! When the French asked him who was winning he said something about '25 strikes down, but theres still 250 points in the running which would mean they have only 12 outings left maximised by the intake of the....*ENDLESS DRIVEL*....' What the hell was he saying? Anyway English seems to be now all improv, the lesson doesn't seem to have any sort of Schedule to it. Which I kinda like. German was up next, and much to the disdain of my Class there was a SURPRISE TEST! ARGGH! AND IT WAS FIVE PAGES LONG!!! No worries though, because it was pretty easy. It was five pages of 'Cercle the right answer' questions. I'll be astonished if I get lower than a 16/20. It really has to be said how sharp The Teacher was in this lesson. She almost smashed the windows in the Class screaming at us to pipe the hell down (everyone was complaining about the surprise Test at the time calling it 'unfair'). Extra Maths has officially become my most hated lesson. It is by far the most boring, least interesting and most tedious thing on the planet. I will refuse to even mention it on this Blog now its so bad. Just burn it. BURN IT! 

Wednesday was still the best day of the Week, and I was quite literally thrown into a proper wrestling match at 8.30 am in the morning! Now this was Part 1 of the Test, which acts like a tournament of sorts. In the middle of the gym there's a center of mats that act as the 'Ring'. Two opponents names will be called (its boys vs boys, girls vs girls by the way, so as not to make it unfair) and they have to duke it out for 45 seconds trying to gain the most points possible in that alotted time. Its -1 for falling down, exiting the ring, being lifted off your feet for a few seconds and being held on you back for five seconds (its called a 'finishing' move) and +1 if you manage to do any of these things to your opponent. I was actually quietly confident about this, mainly because on my legs I just loom over most of the opposition, although I admit to being a bit of a wimp aswell (or 'weakling') so it seemed a bit two-sided. My first match was against the 3rd best in the Class and I was still getting a bit warmed up so I lost 2-4. The guys tactic was to grap hold of one of my legs and just ram into my chest, which as the saying goes 'The bigger they are, the harder they fall'. My second match was against the best of the my Class and I didn't stand a chance (the fat guy is a real sumo, I can tell you), lost 0-4. My third and final match (at least for this session) was against one of the weak. Heck even my grandma could grab this guy and toss him up into air like a rag doll. My belly helped here cos' he kept bouncing off it, no work needed he just charged at me and flew like a leaf! I won 7-0 in 45 seconds! That was quietly some of the most fun I've ever had in Sport. Its the adrenalin that goes with it aswell I suppose. Technology was up next, and we now have to make a 3D rendering of our maquette in the Computer. It was safe to say there were a few....Technical issues with the 3D programme. As I said last Week the whole designing, building thing just isn't up my alley. We had a extended playtime after that for some reason (the Teachers showed up on the Playground 25 minutes late!) so French was cut a bit short. I continued to write the story on 'The Living Statues' but encountered the most common problem I've ever had in School: That blasted language barrier. I truly believe that I could get great marks (or better marks) in French if I really could just write what I wanted to write. But when you want to translate your words to the page it doesn't work, cos' the whole French grammar/writing system is different from the English language! Even after five years of living in this baguette consuming country I still have trouble deciphering even the most basic of texts. In my mind, it really is the one thing that is holding me back in everything from Test scores to even social matters. And quite frankly its bloody annoying! 

Thursday was passable, I don't remember anything really bad about it. Maths didn't start off very well at all though, when the Teacher announced that the highest score in the Class for the previous Maths Test (the one where I accidentally cheated) was 11/20! Yes, that means that EVERYONE in my Class including me, (and I had help) bombed massively on this Test. To the point where the Teacher even called it 'castastrophic'! So now we're having another Test on equations and try to boost our score up a bit. This Test has single-handedly destroyed everyone's score in Maths for the third Trimestre! I daresay my score in this subject is insalvagable now, I'm going to have get some seriously good Results if I want to make up for the lost points, and in a subject that seems to get increasingly more complicated and complex as time goes on that doesn't look at all likely. Could the battle for Maths be lost? The Teacher did try to get us back up on our feet with the new Test (apparently it will be 'easier') and she halted her planned lesson on geometry so we could 'go back to the basics'. I'm a bit shocked that I got such a low score (not that I deserved it, because whether it was conscious or not I cheated) because although its true that at first it seemed impossibly complex and faustrating, by the end I think I had it all covered because I always got everything right in Class (I suppose you could say that all those boring and tedious hours of Extra Maths hardwired it into my brain). So what went wrong in the Test then? Was it too hard? Well, I didn't think it was hard at the time, but I actually made a few stupid mistakes that I WOULD HAVE NEVER DONE IN CLASS! Apparently the Test made us all avert our programming... Sport was the start of the Test on acrobatic gymnastics, where we have three Weeks to come up with a flawless routine comprised of three Duos, Trios and Quautrios. It didn't start off well because one of our Team was off with a bad leg so we had to sort of organise our schedule around a missing part of the team. We need to make an entrance and an exit to bookend the routine aswell, and I can only do Rolly-pollies while everyone else on the other teams are coming in doing bloody backflips! How the hell can we do this? S.V.T focused on how puberty effects our minds, like the sudden urge to try drugs and smoke and our inceasing grumpy-ness. Now grumpy is definately something I think I'm guilty of, but I have yet to snort crack up my nose and drink Whiskey. Best bit was when the Teacher asked us what where the effects of puberty on our brains and a kid replied: 'We all basically become assholes.'    
The Afternoon was boring, German was a few grammatical lessons and Music was the Teacher evaluating our sound bites (the Class had to give their opinions ect...)

Friday was pretty good. The story in french went along slowly, I was still having difficulty making it not the most simplistic essay ever made. History was us studying the final days of the Revolution, which was basically Louis XVI having a bit of a tantrum. Maths was boring, but we got the 'surprise' Test Result from Tuesday back: a 3,5/5 my main error being that I a called a Tangent a 'perpendicular line...' when technically a 'line' could just be a squibbly mess and not necessarily a straight line. Guh, why does Maths confuse us constantly with its precise words all the time? I had the Science Test in the afternoon which went perfect apart from a confusion on whether a focal length was the distance between the object and the lense, or the distance between the object and the screen? FOUR questions asked this, and I got everything right apart from those two CRUCIAL words: Object-Lense. *SIGH* So close yet so far... The Science lesson after that was fine, we're now starting a chapter on electricity and mesuring the intensity of an electric curcuit. English was just us fooling around playing the 'Who is It?' game where you pose the Teacher questions to find out the answer. It took the Teacher five minutes to explain that posing the question 'Who is It?' is banned because that would undermine the whole point of the activity!  

So Last Week wasn't so bad, but I did stumble quite a bit on the Tests. Unlucky?