Tuesday, 5 July 2011

This Week In School: The Final Week (of 4eme)


So its finally come to this, the end of 4eme A 2011. While this School Year had its many ups and downs (mainly boring downs) I am still sad to have come to the end of what has been a really good ten months for me, especially Results-wise. Alas, the next time I make another one of these This Week In School Blog Posts (if I do decide to continue writing them, cos' they take the best part of three hours to write each Week!) it will be after the two month long Summer Holidays when I'll be confronting my last Year in this establishment (something which I'm DREADING by the way) and starting 3eme. Lets just hope the next two months don't go quickly then...

Monday was quite calm for the most part. German was more of us messing around on the computer, but apparently we were supposed to have been doing a ten-line essay on something we liked or whatever. I again had to endure the excessive ramblings of ‘that Pokemon guy’, and I swear to god that by the end of that lesson I knew all 648 Pokemon off by heart. Still at least the Teacher was trying to make the last Week fun because I’ve got a pretty boring Week on my hands all things considered. Technology was next, and it was more Model house building. And by ’House’ I mean a wonky looking black cube thing with a red chimney attached to it. It was looking less like a house and more like a weird Sci-Fi object. And it was largely boring, because again I had nothing to do.  The most I contributed to it was gluing the chimney on, and I still couldn’t do that right. Art was next, and we had to finish our propaganda posters. I finished mine in the first five minutes and just waited around for the remaining fifty minutes tapping my fingers. Seriously, was there any point whatsoever in going in this morning? The final lesson of Art was pretty shoddy I’d say. Maths was the final lesson on that dull morning and the Teacher decided that seen as though we’re heading into 3eme, it would be good if we went in having already obtained some basic knowledge about the topics we‘ll be looking at as well as doing a bit of a recap on everything so far, to see if we’ve actually retained some Maths knowledge this Year and it hasn’t just been dumped somewhere after all the Tests have been and gone, like me. Yes, like I’ve explained before I’m not at all good with memory. Sure I revise for hours on end to pass a Test and get a great score, but once the Test has come and gone it all just disappears over the course of a few Weeks due to the more recent Tests clogging up my head. Its all probably up there in the dark recesses of my mind but I can’t bloody find it. This is why I sucked at this Maths lesson, I had to be reintroduced to everything again and start from scratch. Much to my dismay of course that at the end of the lesson the Teacher announced that there would be a Test the following day that would count as part of 3eme’s Result. Oh gosh, I haven’t even started 3eme and already I’m being tested! The afternoon started with French, and things got even worse for me. If you haven’t read my last Blog you should know that I’m basically going to perform a fairly large excerpt from an old play in front of the Class, AND I’m the one that was given the role of a woman to play in my team! Well its become even more embarrassing because one of my Team-members pulled a sickie (what a coincidence) and I now had to play TWO characters back-to-back! So in this act of 'Les Caprices De Marianne’ I have to play Marianne, a stuck-up rich bitch who is married, and Coelio, who is inconceivably smitten with her and wants her to marry him dearly. So in effect I had to play both lovers (the MAIN characters), in olde French, in front of the Class for twenty minutes. By the end my tongue was twisted terribly as I’m not at all used to speaking this much French (or as I call it: That ROTTEN barbarian language)  and half the time I seemed to be reading utter nonsense. So how did it go you ask? Well I think I did alright, nobody laughed or anything. Heck I got no feedback at all. So I must have done alright then, PHEW. After French was Geography and we looked at the Geology of France and how its population has developed over the period of time…YADDA YADDA…BORING!…END OF LESSON.  And after Geography came the best lesson of the day; FLE. Here I did interactive lessons on the board (they project a website onto the whiteboard and you can interact with it using this cool digital pen) about the pronunciation of certain words. It was very fun indeed, and not at all because I got to use some shiny new Technology. Where the school had the budjet for this I don’t know, the T.V in my Classroom is from the 80s for crying out loud! Why can’t we use more of this in lessons? Anyway I was quite shocked at how particular some of the pronunciations were, you really had to be dead on for quite a few of them. So all in all, (apart from FLE) Monday was pretty boring then. Lets thank the god that I don’t have to perform Opera in front of the Class every day though! 

Tuesday was alright, although we didn’t really learn anything. The Maths Test didn’t happen (so we can officially say that the Technology Test a few Weeks back WAS the final Test of the Year), the Teacher asked a handful of Maths related questions and when they all got pitiful Results she got fed up and halted it altogether. Honestly if I’m going to spend two hours on revising for this SH*T I better be tested on it in the morning because that’s TWO hours of time that I could have spent doing NOTHING! Grrrr, she’s making us learn stuff for no reason! THAT’S UNCALLED FOR! Anyway seen as we failed on the evaluation the Teacher made us revert to doing more exercises again…YAY. It is the end of the Year you know, it would be really nice if we could do something different for once instead of just drawing the same 3D geometrical cylinders repeatedly! History was up next and we again looked at the geographical landscape of France. Although this time it was mainly how the population  spreaded out into the different areas. For example Paris wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for early settlers setting up camp next to a nice stream/river, which was perfect for resources and later because you could bring in boats and start an economy. French started with me watching the other members of the Class performing their extracts from the play (and by performing I mean dull and lifeless). It seemed to be the average French lesson until M. Carre starting posing us questions on the play…You’d think that giving a simple synopsis on the extract wouldn’t be hard but none of the Class could give an answer, which was probably because nobody understood the damn thing (me included). In fact, the whole thing went pretty much like this (with some added humour of course): 

‘So after that *COUGHS* heartbreaking performance by Jasmine and Emilie, can any of you describe the plot in a few words?’

*SILENCE FROM THE CLASS*

‘Okay…Alan can you tell me what went on in this act?’

‘No miss.’

‘Alexandre?’

‘Nope.’

‘Right, how about Rozanne (she‘s normally the one to give the right answer)?’

‘Sorry miss.’

‘Fine well we’ll move on and come back to that later. How about the characters? Mathieu, describe to me the character of Octave please.’  

‘Haven’t got a clue.’

‘None? We’ll try Tim then.’

*I SHRUG*

‘Okay, well surely someone here can give me something about this extract!?’

*STUDENT RAISES HAND*

‘Yes, what is it Kevin?’

‘Well…erm…It’s a play, yeah?’

‘Oh for crying out loud! Did you people even bother listening to what they were saying? Oh yeah silly me it’s the Holidays now and expecting the LEAST amount of participation on your part is ludicrous! Well I’ll tell you what we’re doing now, if none of you will participate we’ll just have to do grammar exercises for the rest of the two hours!’

*CLASS IN UPROAR, PEOPLE CLAIMING NOTHING IS FAIR AND THAT THEY’D RATHER DIE THAN DO ANOTHER GRAMMAR EXERCISE*

‘Please miss! It’s not our fault that we don’t understand!’

‘Well of course you’re not going to understand! You didn’t even bother looking at the actors!’

‘Please miss…’

‘SILENCE! Now turn to page 203 in your Books for Exercises 512, 513, 514, 515, 516, 517, 518 and 519!’

*LOUD GRUMBLE FROM THE CLASS*

Yep, we had to do grammar exercises for the rest of the hour. Although it’s true that half the Class was spending their time fiddling around with things while the *AHEM* performance was happening I actually tried to listen to the dialogue and didn’t understand a word of it! So it was largely unfair in my opinion. In the second hour the Teacher had calmed down though and had nicely put on a film for us to watch. The film was, in my mind, terrible of course but anything was better than doing grammar. It was set in the time of the Musketeers (no sword fighting involved though, even when the title character is one!) and was based off a famous play or whatever. Anyway the first forty minutes of the thing (we never got to see the end) was boring drivel, and was based on a long nosed musketeer (so big that one of the characters IN the movie made a joke about it) falling in love with an ugly princess. Obviously this Teacher doesn’t appreciate GOOD films, because not ONE of the films that she’s presented to us this year have been good! The Afternoon commenced with English, were again nothing happened and we just fooled around on the computer for an hour printing out our dream House idea’s. German was next and we…did nothing…for another hour. Yep, the new Teacher just sat around and let us talk with each other while he shuffled a few papers. And then came Extra Maths were we did…surprise surprise… NOTHING! Yep you guessed it,  ZILCH. I spent all that time playing this cheap logic game called Kidiban that I found on a Maths website, which had surprisingly not a lot to do with Maths. You are basically this pixelated guy who has to move crates into the right spot again and again…actually you’ll find that its pretty addicting. I managed to get to Level 15 and then nearly killed myself with frustration because the damn thing seemed impossible!  So that was Tuesday, a day which barely counted as a School day at all because half the time we was on the computers! 


Wednesday was dull, but we was only in for the morning so it was bearable. Sport took a sudden turn for the worse and we ended up doing Badmington instead of Frisbee. I was extremely quick to add Badmington to my list of evil Sports: 

-Endurance
-Football
-Ping-Pong
-Badmington
-Basketball
-Anything that involves some kind of skill basically. 

Yeah, I sucked at Badmington. Although that was mainly because the ceiling in the Gym wasn't tall enough and the shuttle cock was hitting the god damned ceiling every single time I hit the bloody thing. CURSE YOU CEILING! Technology was next and we glued on the motor that would power the heating and the automised door. Didn't have time to do anything else but that I'm afraid and unfortunately the model house remains uncompleted due to it being the last lesson an' all. Shame, we might have to continue that gastly thing next Year! History was more of the same, and seen as it was the last lesson in the subject we kinda rushed through the end a bit. It didn't really matter anyway, I couldn't give a damn about whether France's population is declining or not. Permenance was one hour of me looking at a ticking clock because guess what? THERE'S NO HOMEWORK TO DO, YAY!!!!!!! 

Thursday was lesson free. It either involved Sports, going on the Computer or watching films. It was the final lesson of Maths (thank god) and as a treat the Teacher decided to let us do whatever we wanted on the Computer. It wasn't like doing more exercises would contribute to things anyway, by the time the Hols are up I will have most likely forgotten everything that went on in 4eme. Sport was half alright and then half terrible. We played Baseball for the first hour, which believe it or not can be quite good at times if it wasn't for a few of my Classmates blatently cheating before everyones eye's and yet still going unoticed for some reason. Thankfully this time was mostly cheating free although that still didn't get my Team anywhere. Remember that little kid that I talked about in some of my early Blog Posts last year? He's so good at Sport that just having him on your Team is quite literally the turning point that will make you the Overall winner. The guy's so good, he NEVER fails to do a home run E.V.E.R. Now that's what I call a pro, and he isn't even half my size! Obviously us tall dudes are set back by our long and stringy legs, not to mention poor hand-to-eye coordination! Anyway that guy was on the other Team and we were already destined to lose, plain and simple. The 2nd hour was more Badmington, and I still sucked ass so not alot to really comment about here. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the little kid took on all THREE of the best players in the Class (AND the Teacher as well, may I add) and still won! That guy should be in the olympics or something. S.V.T was next, and we watched a documentary on condoms. Or at least we tried to watch a Documentary on sex preservatives, because for most of the lesson we were waiting around while the Teacher was searching for the T.V remote. Even when she found it it needed batteries put in, and that wasted another ten minutes while she looked for two duracel AA's! Talk about a lack of effiency. The Afternoon was mostly hogwash. The German Teacher had set us up a few exercises on the Internet to do and Extra Maths was a few Sudoku puzzles. Music was us cleaning up the Classroom and doing a music quiz where she would play songs from movies and we had to guess which movie it came from. Of course I knew most of the answers, but I didn't know any of the movie names in French so I just sat there waiting for my Class to figure out that it was the themetune to E.T or something. Overall it was a fun final lesson from Mme Jouet. Thursday was by and large a yawning fest, and mostly just a pointless waste of a School day. Half the lessons were just time-wasters.

Friday was even boring-er , and it was the last day of scheduled lessons. Extra Extra Maths was more Kidiban, and I managed to get to Level 22 before falling asleep. The two hours that followed was us doing whatever we wanted, and M. Radenac opened up the Sports Gym so we could play Badmington, Ping-Pong and Football. I mostly just played a bit of Badmington and Football, and we tidied up the Class at the end. It was rather sad seeing all the chairs and tables stacked up in the empty Classroom that I've spent a few Years in. Alas, 3eme will finally see me graduate to the Second floor of the College, and hopefully the Classrooms up there won't be splattered with egg yolk! S.V.T was us watching another doc on Nuclear physics, which was more of a Science subject than an S.V.T thing really. At least I had the luxury of watching a boring video, half of the Class had to write lines for the entire lesson because they were late by 5 mins! The Afternoon was even more tiresome. One hour of Permanence, one hour of Science (we did a few more experiments, nothing major) and one of hour of English where we were again let outdoors to do whatever we wanted. It was like a bloody party Friday, no point in coming at all. 

...But things got worse on Monday, the final day of School. Monday's sole existance in our school calendar was to torture students and free them of their sins! REPENT! REPENT!  

So, two Sundays ago had been one of the hottest days in France for six Years. What does the School do the following day? Organise a five hour trek (in total) to St. Marc, a small and old chapel in the middle of nowhere just so we can repent for all our sins and have a nice picnic in the blistering heat (I hate Christian symbolism, we're kids, not murderers)! Why, why, why does the School like to punish us like this?! You'd think they're trying to kill us! But before we embarked on this treacherous quest of no return we had two final lessons to endure: German and Science. German was quite a surprise because our 'old' German Teacher Mme Etore appeared and not M. Villemar as we've been accustumed too for these past months. And another old face was there to great us on Monday morning as well: Mme Phillipe, the old head mistress. *GASP* She seemed fine, not at all bewilded and gerfunkuled by cancer as people have said she was. No wonder we went on this 5 hour trek, Mme Phillipe is back in charge...
Anyway Mme Etore set us up a game of German 'Who Is It?' and we just played around for an hour. Science was very much the same, we just watched a Doc on how the speed of light was invented. Just filler lessons really, because they had two hours left to fill I suppose. Now for that evil walk itself. The way there was fine, as it was raining (and believe me, after Sundays heat it was a complete miracle) but my legs still ached a bit when we finally got there. So once all 160 of us were huddled round St Marc we were all then split into Teams of ten and forced to do a few Christian related puzzles that were hidden in these suspicious envelopes for some reason...And when I say puzzles, I mean retardedly easy. When your jigsaw (the completed version being Jesus Christ on the cross saying 'Remember me, I payed for your sins!' in what can only be described as religious font) only involves five pieces you're not doing it right. So after all these weird puzzles we were finally allowed to eat our picnic lunches. After Lunch was even worse, we were again split into numbered groups and forced to do silly activities like 'Who can throw the ball furthest' or 'Who can run the fastest' to compete with each other. Why the School thought this was 'fun' I don't know, perhaps hopping on one foot while holding a football with sticks around an obstacle course is 'fun' for some but not for me. So after all those pointless activities we finally started our long and ardous trek back home. Now not only was it blistering hot and quite frankly insane for anyone to attempt this trek, still the school insisted that we perform this suicidal march. Nutters the lot of them! That god-damn heat wave nearly drove me to the brink of death, and by the end I was nearly suicidal. Those last ten minutes were some of the hardest ten minutes of my life man. But despite the intense heat, the five mile trek, the aching of my legs AND my sore back that had to carry my god damned lunch bag both THERE and BACK I finally managed to pass through the School gates at 4.40pm, just when the bell rang and the Year of 4eme A was over. I won man, I WON! And now I can finally sit back and relax for two months and a Week. *PHEW!* 


THE END!

So that was my final day of 4eme, and in no exageration whatsoever it sure was one of the hardest days of my life (aside from that bloody cross-country race course, but that was only half a day really so it doesn't count!). Seriously, is my College trying to kill me or what? 
This is Tim signing off for one last time while enjoying the endless comfort of his Bed! 

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