Yep, after a Nine Week hiatus School is back! And sadly it marks another milestone in my life: my last Year in this College. Oh it's been a good four Years, full of Homework, stressed fueled Tests and early morning starts. But in ten months time it'll all be over, and I'm having trouble deciding if that's to be seen as a positive or a negative...Oh never mind! June 2012 is still ages away, I suppose. Not to mention the fact that we could all be dead by then, Apocalypse an' all. Let's just start with the first Week shall we? A Week that's always difficult in the School calender:
Okay, so we start with Tuesday, my first day in 3eme B. Initial reaction? Well as far as first days go, it went along smoothly all things considered. First thing I'm relieved about is my Class, as they have seemed to have put all the young offenders from last year in one Class and all the relatively stable people in another (I count myself lucky to be one of these). So far the new Class has been spotless, not one Teacher has had to tell anyone off for chucking an egg at the wall yet! Secondly, my new timetable is good at diversifying lessons alot more (with the exception of one day but I'll get into that later):
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Monday: Tuesday: Wednesday:
S.V.T English French
German Music French (2 hours)
Sport Technology Maths
Sport (2 hours) Maths Vie de Class/ Maths (2h)
Lunch Lunch
Maths History
History German
D.P.3 French
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Thursday: Friday:
English French
Science Technology
Art History/S.V.T
D.P.3 D.P.3
Lunch Lunch
Maths/French English
History Science
German Sport
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The new batch of Teachers aren't as bad as I thought they would be (at least as human beings go), but that doesn't particularly mean that I like any of them because they're going to make my life hell for the next Year. The first three hours of the first day are the same with any Year in this School: Boring as Hell! Literally, it's all rules and regulations, along with more rules! We're in our fourth year in this College now, we know the rules off by heart now! Why do we have to spend THREE HOURS going through them all? I mean sure finding out about the new Timetable and Teachers is kinda interesting but most of it is just the School basically saying: 'You better be f*cking perfect and follow the rules!' B-O-R-I-N-G. Besides, I think we're all smart enough to know what's allowed and what isn't by now. And the rules have gotten waaay more strict, you can't even pick up a pencil without asking the Teacher if you can preform such an action. Mme Philippe is back I see.
My new 'head' Teacher is Mme Le Merlus, who couldn't be more of a Teacher if she tried. Oh, and she's also our Maths Teacher, great. She's got this strict-ness down to a tea, completely emotionless and not to mention brutal efficiency in her work. She HAS to be a Robot in disguise, or something. Maths was next on our timetable after the three hours of boring regulations, so we had four hours (the entire morning) with ONE Teacher, which got a bit tiring. As of yet, Maths is just a revision on last year by going back to the basics. Which is handy, because I can't remember a thing about Maths from last Year, it's like it's all been vacuum cleaned out of my head during the Summer Holidays. It's like starting Maths for the first time again, and I found it frustrating to find out that things I would have once found easy are now deemed 'hard'. I'm sure it will all come back to me in due time of course (hopefully), but for now it's pretty much: HEAD. BLOWN.
After lunch was History, which in my mind was a total breath of fresh air. The new Teacher is very much the excessive Homework giver and she sure as hell did her best to make us scared about the Brevet (it was literally like: 'Welcome to 3eme children, now your life is going to END') but I found her much more interesting and involved when trying to sell us her subject. So yeah she made History seen interesting again. This Year in History is pretty much going to be about everything we've done before with the new addition of the First and Second World Wars (not to mention the 'Cold' War era) so that should be quite nice to work on. The mid-1900s is quite juicy, history-wise. Next up was German, and boy was it easy: The Class has completely taken advantage of this new Teacher, who hasn't got one strict bone in her. In fact she talks so calmly that with all the chaos that was surrounding her you wondered how she never raised her voice. As Teacher's go she was quite nice. The Class was doing everything to agite her though, like throwing bits of paper, refusing to work, saying that everything was hard ect: they took advantage of the two and a half month absent Teacher from last Year, using this as an excuse by claiming that they didn't even know ONE sentence in German because she was never around to teach us ANYTHING, which was a big fat lie. I mean the other Teacher was away for half the year but at least she taught me something that is still stuck inside my head, unlike most of the other subjects from last year where I've kind of forgotten about them completely. The entire lesson was just easy-peasy, because the Class played dumb and the Teacher was spending ten minutes on saying the word 'Hello' in German!
After German was French, in which we straight up received our first Test. Yes, that's right: a Test on OUR FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL! WTF?!! A TEST! AND WHY DOES IT SAY BREVET AT THE TOP!!! OH MY GOD DOES THIS MEAN I'VE JUMPED AHEAD IN TIME BY TEN MONTHS?!! OH GOD HELP ME!!!!
Now don't worry, turns out it was an extract from the real Brevet Test (a text comprehension Test), that doesn't count in our overall score for this Trimestre and would give the Teacher an indication of where we were skill wise so when it comes to the actual Test we'd know what to expect, which isn't such a bad idea I suppose. Unfortunately, nobody told us this so we thought we were getting a proper Test on our first day that we would surely fail on miserably. Which was a bit nasty, because I came home from School on Tuesday thinking I had already failed a major Test on my first day! Thank's alot for that, Mme Thomas.
Wednesday was sufferable, but I can imagine it (as a School day) getting really boring in the future. Want to know why? Because its two hours of French back to back, and every other Week, two hours of Maths back to back as well! That's TWO hours of Maths and French that take up an entire morning! SHOOT ME NOW!!!!! Okay seen as it is a new year and it's been a while since our last French lesson, it wasn't that boring but my god is it going to get dull later on! I can barely stand awake as it is with these lessons, do I really have to endure a whole morning full of them EVERY Week?! Wednesday is like the timetable from HELL! Anyway Maths was pretty the same as Monday, basic revision yadda yadda yadda, and French started with a dictation (yes, that's right, ANOTHER Test in French on my second day! What the hell is the school playing at?) and us studying (of all things) how to read a Test properly. Yep, we're deconstructing you're average Test. One of the main things I've learnt from this lesson is that in a text comprehension (where you have to answer questions about a short story you've read or an extract from some book or something), it's best to read the questions BEFORE you read the text because the questions can help you on understanding the story better. So when one of the questions ask 'What are the prisoners in the concentration camp feeling?' (and yes, that WAS a question they asked me in the Test on Monday, pretty depressing subject for a Test isn't it? ) it does give you a pretty good indication of where the story is set. It's a shame that even with the questions offering hints as to what the Story is about, I still couldn't understand a word of that blasted text! And neither could anyone else, because according to the Teacher the Test we did on Monday had horrifying results, with only three people in the year getting a score higher than 7,5/15. I suppose that's what you get for giving us a hard Test and completely freaking us out on the FIRST day, eh?
So all things considered, Wednesday wasn't TOO bad and the new French Teacher (although technically my old one from 6eme B) could have been a LOT worse.
Thursday was okay Overall. English was interesting, because Mme Rouxel (our head from last year + my old Teacher from 6eme) has shaked things up a bit by putting the entire Class into groups and the group that does the best (i.e participates...good students ect) gets the most points. So everyone is all of a sudden scrambling like dogs to say something, ANYTHING in English so they can get 20/20 every Week! It worked brilliantly, I must say. It's basically encouraging everyone to participate, and if they don't or mess around in Class then they get punished and get points knocked off their Test. Science next, and we've only just started studying metals. Not alot to comment about, just your routine Science lesson. Art was one hour of the Teacher scaring us about the Brevet, mainly on the Histoire Des Arts subject were you have to pick a painting or a piece of music or maybe even do a biography on someone from a list and then do a presentation on said subject in front of all the Teachers (yippe) that lasts about 15 minutes and they ask you questions afterwards. That's 15 mins of talking pure French remember, and you can't slip up. First of all, how am I going to do this? I can barely say a full sentence in French let alone 15 mins! HOW AM I GOING TO DO THIS???!!! And the way the Art Teacher is phrasing it you'd think it would be tomorrow let alone in ten months time! They're clearly trying to scare us into getting our act together now. We're barely a Week in and ALREADY they're cramming the Brevet down our throats like scare
-mongerers! The last lesson of the morning was D.P.3 or Future study's which is centered on what you'll be doing after this College. For the first lesson we made a list of all the places you can go to after this place (i.e Lycees, MFR's, CFA's, Lycee Pro ect...) and we were each split into groups and had to pick the topic of our choosing and research it (everyone wanted to do MFA for some reason).
French started the afternoon (oh great French AGAIN?) and it went pretty poorly all things considered. First thing the Teacher did was give us our Tests from Monday (a big fat 2,5/15!) and then spent the rest of the hour ridiculing us about how easy the entire thing was. Thanks for making me feel miserable, Teach. Now don't get me wrong, it was easy...if you UNDERSTOOD the Text! But seen as I'm not as well developed in French reading comprehension than I am in English I didn't really get the jist of it. And as far as the questions go, I knew what to write but didn't have all the 'correct' French words in my head to formulate them, if that makes any kind of sense. In these Tests you have to place your words correctly, be detailed in your replys and to the point. My lack of French grammer and wording skills just may well be the death of me when it comes to the Brevet. But if that's MY excuse, then how come the rest of the Class failed so miserably as well? I guess that's a mystery that will never be answered, but knocking it out on the first day DOES NOT HELP! History next, and it was a big talk about the empires of the early 1900s and how they slowly ceased to exist by the end of it. We also spent a brief while discussing terrorism and Al-Qaeda, which was all very interesting. Thursday finished with German, and the Class was just as obnoxious and rude towards the new Teacher as they were on Tuesday if not more so. Not once did the Teacher raise her voice again, which is pretty impressive considering. If that was me then I'd have chucked them all out of the window, they were THAT annoying! The Class was basically having enormous fun at the Teacher (and lesson's) expense!
Friday was good, and I can't say I was bored once during it. French was the only real weak link, because a) the subject was boring and b) I got 1,5/6 in Wednesday's dictation (which mercifully doesn't count but my two lives are up now). Technology was cool, we basically just spent the entire lesson chilling out and being sorted into groups while deciding which 'project' we should do for this year (we're doing ONE big project instead of lots of little projects now). Nothings being set in stone yet so we'll have to wait until next Week to see which project we'll tackle. S.V.T was meh, we started comparing Human physiology to other animals and what separates 'us' from 'them'. Interesting to some, but I got bored half way through. D.P.3 was me and my group starting research on our topic and I don't know what the heck it ('MFR') means! But I suppose that's probably why we're researching it...English after lunch was good, the new group dynamic again offers an interesting competitive streak to the lessons. The table with the English guy on (me) is bound to win though, and can hardly be classed as a 'fair game' really. I haven't helped them too much though, and I'm confident that my Team is the best. In Science we had to come up with theories on how we could test these brass statue things to see whether or not they were 100% bronze, it was kinda interesting but I think we could be doing better things, like studying Atoms or something? That's always cool.
The Week ended with Sport, and M. Radenac (of charmingly strict fame) made us do the bane of my life: Ping-Pong...AGAIN! *SIGH* It's been three years now, and I'm NOWHERE close to improving on this shitty sport. If I have to do Ping-Pong in the Brevet then I'm F*CKED, plain and simple!
So that was the end of Week 1, and it was okay I suppose. The Teacher's are doing their utmost to put the fear of god in us, making the Brevet seem like an insurmountable mountain to climb, which I'm pretty sure won't be as bad as all the hype about it (Les Epreuves Communes made me wet my pants with stress but that turned out quite easy in the end). Besides, the Brevet is still months away, so I haven't got anything to worry about...yet. Til' next Week then.
All sounds good to me - work your arse off kid :-)
ReplyDeleteIf you put as much time and effort into your education as you do writing these blogs you shouldn't have any problems!
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