This Week In School: The Drug Addict And The Five Tests

My has this Week been tough: I've had endless Tests, almost passed out in Sport, encountered several embarrassments in Class and amongst other things a guy who became a drug addict at the age of 12 came in and claimed how his belief in Jesus Christ had saved him from 'The depths of Hell'. To be honest I'm just grateful that it's all over:


Civic Education: Now that we've finished our big chapter on World War I the Teacher has started us on Civic Education, a subject which mainly focuses on politics, symbolism, and the history of law. This Week we've looked at the History of all five French Republics and studied the many famous icons that symbolise this country's ideals (like Charles De Gaulle). It was very much centred on the French Revolution as well, and how the mighty French citizens beat down the walls of Louis XVI BLAH BLAH BLAH France is great BLAH BLAH BLAH. The Teacher should have just played the French national anthem at the end, that would have made it the icing on the cake as far as blatant 'country honouring' lessons go. Next was the BIIIIG History Test on World War I and despite having dedicated a good chunk of my spare time on Wednesday evening to it, I think overall the Test went a bit lukewarm. There was barely enough time to finish it all if I'm honest, my hand was just on autopilot mode the whole time trying to answer three questions at once (no kidding). Even after I rushed through it the bell rang JUST AS I WAS APPLYING THE FINISHING TOUCHES TO THE LAST QUESTION. Now that's what I call close! So yeah as far as the Test goes I have no idea whatsoever, lets hope I pull a good score out of the hat?  


D.V.3: Same stuff as last Week, although I am pretty chuffed with how snazzy my diaporama looks, all professional' like ye know? And as far as actual research goes, I do know a bit more about what will happen if I decide to go down this 'Teaching' route. Apparently you study for a few years (well duh), get an absolute Master in whatever field you want to specialise in, and they pretty much just let you freelance for a year before you're finally evaluated as a proper Teacher by an inspector who closely guards your work. 


French: Still studying autobiographies, albeit with a more boring take this time as we study a guy called Jean Jacques Rousseau (couldn't have made a more French name if they tried) and his autobiography 'The Confessions'. Here's an extract of his so called 'famous' work here, very similar to the one we studied in Class except for it being in English and not in French of course:

'I HAVE begun on a work which is without precedent, whose
accomplishment will have no imitator. I propose to set before my
fellow-mortals a man in all the truth of nature; and this man shall be
myself.
I have studied mankind and know my heart; I am not made like any one
I have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if
not better, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature has acted
rightly or wrongly in destroying the mold in which she cast me, can
only be decided after I have been read.
I will present myself, whenever the last trumpet shall sound, before
the Sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim,
"Thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal
freedom and veracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I
have concealed no crimes, added no virtues; and if I have sometimes
introduced superfluous ornament, it was merely to occupy a void
occasioned by defect of memory: I may have supposed that certain,
which I only knew to be probable, but have never asserted as truth,
a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, I have declared myself;
sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous, and
sublime; even as Thou hast read my inmost soul: Power Eternal!
assemble round Thy throne an innumerable throng of my
fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at
my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his
turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his
heart, and if he dare, aver, I was better than that man."
I was born at Geneva, in 1712, son of Isaac Rousseau and Susannah
Bernard, citizens. My father's share of a moderate competency, which
was divided among fifteen children, being very trivial, his business
of a watchmaker (in which he had the reputation of great ingenuity)
was his only dependence. My mother's circumstances were more affluent;
she was daughter of a Mons. Bernard, minister, and possessed a
considerable share of modesty and beauty; indeed, my father found some
difficulty in obtaining her hand.'

Yeah, imagine trying to comprehend that in French. Even in English it's barely understandable. Basically he was this arrogant bastard who wanted to prove all his haters wrong by creating a Book about his life. Here's a photo of the guy here:

              
Next we had to write a short paragraph about when we were first born, how did our parents name us ect... So with much agony I constructed an essay about how my Parents named me after their Dog 'Timothy', which to this day I still have no idea whether it was meant to be a reference to Indiana Jones or just a lack of originality on their part. We also had two mini-Tests on Thursday and Friday, one was on the history autobiography's and the other was on the Situation d'Enonciation which I can't for the life of me describe what the heck that means in English. 


Sport: I HATED Sport this Week. Endurance has officially become a nightmare, every Monday morning I have to painstakingly run round the football field for a few minutes, rest a bit and then do it all over again repeatedly til' you're either dehydrated or close to passing out. It really is 'Endurance' in every god damned sense of the word! Honestly I was THIS close to passing out, after ten minutes of running/fast jogging it feels like you've been hit with a hammer, your throat is sore because you've breathing out of your mouth for so long and you feel so bloody ill that you want to vomit but you can't because your heart is about to burst out of your chest and your head is just going to explode...in short it's hell on Earth. I just don't know what the School is thinking putting us through something like this! To be honest I'd rather take a bullet than go through the pain that is Endurance. Meanwhile Ping-Pong fails to capture any excitement in me whatsoever, and it still is the most rubbish sport on the Planet as far as I'n concerned. 


Maths: Not a lot of meat to Maths this Week, the Test went really, really, REALLY well in my opinion which probably just means I failed horribly (you come to expect these things after a certain time). In the meantime we're just doing revisions on stuff we did in 4eme like how -3 - (-2) = -1.


Science: It was okay this Week apart from ONE embarrassing moment that I'll get into in a minute. The good news is that the Test that I did on Thursday (that I spent two hours revising on the previous night) earned me a 17,5/20 which I think may just be the best score of the Class by a 0,5 lead! Now onto Fridays lesson, where in order to do an experiment (is water a conductor of electricity?) we had to bring in our Science coats. But apart from me and FOUR other people most of the Class didn't come with one, much to the chagrin of the Teacher who then proceeded to give them all words (to signed by both their parents and the Head). So that meant that only the four of us could do the experiment and the rest of the Class would just have to sit there watching us. The problem came when the Science Teacher asked us to put on our Science coats...and because I was was wearing a jumper at the time I obviously had to take the jumper off...which I did...and then proceeded to take my shirt underneath the jumper off as well...which then exposed my entire upper body (armpits up and all) to the Class in all it's flabby form! You think THAT was the embarrassing part don't you? No, the embarrassing part came when the shirt was plastered to my head and shoulders after I had managed to untangle the jumper effectively making me a blind, flailing flabby stomach to the Class that couldn't pull his tight shirt down from his face even if his life depended on it. I rested in this state of complete and utter humiliation for 45 seconds, much to the bemusement of my Class and even the Teacher. Thanks life! 


English: We did exercises based around the rock-band 'Muse' last Week and also learnt how to read messages from a Forum message-board. It was all pretty simple, but my Team has changed and now I'm in a group with a bunch of thick-heads...oh well. The Test on Friday, to the surprise of nobody, was of course super easy. Expect another 20/20 coming your way.  


The Drug Addict: Thanks to this guy coming in to give us a lecture, we lost out on two hours of Maths on Wednesday morning! YAY! Now let's all listen to a story of drugs, alcohol, abuse, sex and (finally) redemption! So basically this dude (I can't remember his name for the life of me) lived in a very rough area of Paris, and despite the fact that his parents were never poor and didn't abuse him AT ALL, turned to a life of drugs and alcohol at the mere age of 12. Why? Apparently he thought that nobody in his life liked him and because people kept bullying him (saying he was a nobody or something) he quickly turned into a 'nobody'. Oh yeah and he kept meeting up with coke heads on a street near to where he lived, that probably factored in to his early addiction too. So after several years of drugs and alcohol he was finally put into prison where he seriously wanted to commit suicide at one point. Now if you're like me and you're probably wondering why this guy had taken up two hours of the schools timetable just so he could recount the misery that was his life, here's the answer: turns out that while he was in prison he heard one of the in-mates muttering a prayer and apparently that 'converted' him. What followed was half an' hour of this guy explaining how religion completely changed his life, how he 'welcomed Jesus into his heart' and all that sickly religious bullcrap. So anyway he now has a wife and two children and all seems fine, 'all thanks to Jesus' he claimed. Now of course I think we can all thank his belief for getting him out of that hell, but he was a bit to pro-religious for me. The guy seemed to be truly genuine with his emotions as well, but the bit at the end when he asked us if anyone would like to buy his Book was just a tad false if you ask me!     


German: I got 8/10 in the Test this Week, and to honest the only reason I didn't get 10/10 was because I kept confusing S's with Z's in the written language. So the number twenty may be pronounced 'swanzig' but it's written 'zwanzig'! The same thing in France with their i's sounding like e's. Apart from the Test we went downstairs to the library and did some research on the country which was a nice way of passing the hour.   


Art: I had to rush a lot this Week in order to finish my work in time. I had to a) create a 3-D space, b) represent it in two different angles, c) it has to in colour, or at least one of them, d) say why I drew this, and give a few sketches on how my idea panned out and e) has to be symmetrical, with all lines converging on one point. Did I do it? Well I did a), b), half of d) and e) just fine. Here's hoping that when the Result comes round it's very good.    


Technology: I'm not very pleased with my performance in Technology this Week. So we've been researching this 'Cahier De Charges' thing (which even after researching it I'm not quite sure what it is) and one member of each team had to stand up in front of the Class and give a speech about what they found ect... The problem with my group is that they basically fooled around for a few hours without really finding anything while I was doing all the work, and all the time I was secretly crapping my pants knowing that I was probably going to be the one that stood up in front on the Class trying to explain something in my own words (and its a lot harder to explain things when using a limited vocabulary) that I didn't really understand in the first place. I then got even more scared looking at what the other teams had done, which seemed to be VASTLY different from what we were doing. Yeeks! And of course I had to be the one to stand up in front on the Class, because I was the only one to actually find anything substantial, so even though I understood completely nothing, I was still the best guy for the job! Anyway long story short, I walked up in front of the Class, mumbled some sh*t that barely resembled any language let alone French, and scurried back to my group as fast as I could. Somehow I managed to scrape a 2,5/5 and much to the amusement of my Team mates turned out to have the lowest score out of the people who presented themselves. Yeah, well guess what dumbo's? Next time you're doing all the work and YOU'RE GOING TO BE THE ONE TO GIVE A SPEECH TO THE CLASS! Oh what am I kidding, I'll probably do most of the work next time, do the best I possibly can (and hopefully understand it as well) and probably present myself to this torture all over again. And yes, this all happened just because I didn't have the confidence to say 'No' to them.   


Music: Well now that Mme Jouet has finally got a replacement, what do I think? The new Teacher (man, tall, geeky looking, mid-20's, pretends he's talking to a brick wall and not a Classroom full of kids ) is an improvement I suppose. He was rather shocked to find that the previous Teacher never actually played a live musical instrument, and then proceeded to get his electric guitar out and start a sing-along with the Class. Then he decided to give us more 'modern' music and played us several tracks off a Daft Punk album. I suppose he's rather the opposite of Mme Jouet, who got significantly less 'nice' as the years went on. I've only had one lesson with him so far though, my opinion of him could change very quickly. 


So that's pretty much it for this Week, hope you enjoyed my endless ramblings! Hopefully next Week won't be quite as cringe-worthy... Oh god, I'll never trust a Science coat agiain.