This Week In School: The Student Strikes Back!

After the crapfest that was last Week (I think we can all agree that it was pretty shitty), This Week In School was by contrast considerably better I thought. Well...maybe three quarters of it, I didn't really like Monday:


Maths: I'll start with Maths this time because it was probably the big success story this Week. We all by now know my apparent gift to fail nearly every Maths Test that comes my way, and I thought that Tuesdays Test would be no different. I was very defeatist going into it and to be honest I didn't really revise for it the previous night either. 'I'm going to fail it anyway so why bother?' was my mentality in a nutshell, and yes I know, that was rather immature of me. So I was surely going to fail, right? N.O.P.E. Do you want to know what I scored on that Test? 9,5/10. YES THAT'S RIGHT, NINE POINT F*CKING FIVE OUT OF TEN! I don't think I've ever had a Maths Test this perfect before! So what's the lesson to learn here then? I perform better when I think I'm going to fail? It's better to just NOT revise for any future Maths Tests? Nah, just kidding, I'm not THAT immature am I? AM I???? It's even more awesome considering my previous 'perfect score' subject History has just recently fallen off it's perch. Wait, so for the time being, Maths (apart from English of course) is now my Top subject? My last Result in Maths was a 16,25/18 as well so these Results will definitely boost my average for this Trimestre then! Oh yeah and speaking of averages, want to know how much I've scored in Maths this Trimester (it ended on Monday)? 14,32/20, which is *CHECKING LAST YEARS RESULTS* my highest score yet in this subject. YAY! So in short, I started out terrible and gradually got better as it went along.      


Science: We finally concluded our chapter this Week on the laws of weight, matter and gravity. I won't bore you with the specifics, but just know that It's been another easy few lessons. And as per usual, I completely kicked the crap out of that Test on Friday. Unfortunately I haven't got the Result back yet though, so I'm not 100% certain about how much I succeeded but rest assured, I'm VERY confident. Meanwhile the Teacher was very helpful in giving the Class their averages for the 1rst Trimester. I got a most most respectful 16,5/20, which is *CHECKING LAST YEARS RESULTS AGAIN* better than my previous 'Best' effort from last year by 0,30pts.       


Sport: Wasn't very happy about Sport this Week, mainly because the Teacher pulled a 'surprise' written Test on us. Yes, for the first time EVER I've had a surprise Sports Test. What's worse is how unprepared I was, I mean it asked us questions like 'name ten muscles in your body' and 'Write the definition of a warm-up'. What the hell? How am I supposed to know the names of all the muscles...IN FRENCH? I probably couldn't name any in English let alone French! Wait, does 'tongue' count? I completely failed this Test, and if the Teacher could have only told us beforehand I would have been far better prepared. Talk about being stabbed in the back, it was like he wanted us to all fail pulling a stunt like that! The rest of the Week was focused on Basketball, and I'm happy to report that I did alright in that (I'm tall you see), but it did get really tiring very quickly, I didn't get one chance to just stop and take a breather throughout the entire lesson. Heck by the end I'm not even sure what held me up I was so knackered out! 


English: We did a small Test on Climate change this Week, it was easy as usual. We then did a fun exercise on voice dubbing: We were shown an extract from the film 'The Day After Tomorrow' and had to create dialogue for the characters talking in the scene (the voices were muted). The three minute clip was about three Tornado's devastating Los Angeles, and like all of Roland Emmerich's movies pretty much showcased one hundred billion million dollars of special effects budget being wasted every second. It was definitely an entertaining lesson and I'm looking forward to duplicating the scene next Tuesday (for another Test). 


Technology: I found Technology to be alright this Week, we were basically just finishing off the work from last Week. I was disappointed by my average for this Trimester though: a meagre 13,20/20 which compared to last Year is a drop by a full three points. Oh well, you can't win them all I suppose.  


Geography: Now remember how last Week I went on this rage fuelled rant about how if I had only just eradicated a few paragraphs of text from my essay I would have probably received a perfect score? Well I'm prepared to eat those words right now because when the Teacher asked us to re-do that question properly (seen as no one got it right) I STILL scored a 5/10, even though I basically did just that (plus a few tweaks here and there). What's even worse is that I've now got ANOTHER mediocre score added to the list, which doesn't bode well for my average this Trimester at all...let's just forget those last two Tests happened... 


D.V.3: Not a lot done this Week, apart from a few photo's I took of the guy we're interviewing for the diaporama on 'Media Technicians'. It was passable.  


German: The Test's we had this Week was somewhat of a mixed bag, and I mean a REALLY mixed bag. I received a 18/20 on the oral Test and a awful 7/20 for the written Test. I thought the written Test was quite hard at the time, but once the Teacher explained it all a few days later I think I may have been sleepwalking that morning because it was one of those cases where if you got one of the questions right, you were likely to get ALL of them right because they basically just had the same verbal formula repeated over AND over again.  


Art: Last Week I was having trouble deciding which shaped box I was going to draw to put my weird alien designs into. This Week? I thought that it would be best to just do three different designs and then pick which one I preferred afterwards. When I finally get my Artwork back I'll make sure to scan them into one of next Blogs but for now you'll just have to picture in your head a red snake alien thing trapped inside a square, a green octopus alien stuck inside a rectangular coffin and a...thing caught inside a triangle! 


French: I somehow managed to break even yet again with that last Test, scoring a just-made-it 10,5/20. Which is still impressive for me, it's just a shame that these recent mediocre Tests have brought my Overall score for this Trimester down to a 12,01/20. I tell you what though if it wasn't for all those countless knowledge Tests (I got a final consolidated figure of 34,5/35 in the end) at the beginning of the year this score would be a lot worse! Here's hoping I can keep up these 'You're doing okay' scores, because at this stage getting one point more in your average could really turn the tides. The Redaction Test on Wednesday didn't go well at all, you had a write a short story on a really stupid thing you did in your childhood (fictional or otherwise). At first I thought to write about that whole 'Mr Hidderly's Cats' fiasco but having decided that it was probably a bit to wordy for my capabilities (how do you say: 'I completely traumatised his cats by pouring shampoo all over them' in French?) so I created a story about me gluing my brother's bedroom door shut while he was asleep. Again if this Test was in English I reckon I could have really excelled in it. Don't believe me? Here it is then, the unedited, full version in English:  


'When I was young, I used to play A LOT of pranks on my twin brother: I can remember rather clearly the time when I poured that mucky water into his shoes, or when I poured that freezing cold water into his bathtub. I can even remember the day when I poured shampoo all over him, or marked the bedroom wall and signed it (rather unconvincingly too may I add) in his name. But out of all these stupid pranks I played on him, I think there's one that really does take the biscuit, in fact it was so stupidly brilliant that it caused me to be grounded for months afterwards. What was it you asked? What inexplicable deed could have possibly warranted such a punishment? Well one night when I was feeling extra prankish I decided to steal Dad's extra-sticky super glue and drench my brother's bedroom door-frame with it! So the following morning my brother awoke to find that he couldn't budge the door open even after he had turned the handle properly. His response? Screamed like a baby he did *CHUCKLES* Oh I was nasty back then! So after several attempts from both Dad and Mum to open the door it soon became clear that Dad's glue had done it's job a bit too well. A few hours later the cops arrived (we really couldn't get him out!), and they had to bash the door in with a battering ram! My brother had, by this time, resorted to almost peeing himself out of fear of being trapped in there forever of course. The poor guy was sure he wouldn't see daylight again! Once the whole fiasco was over I myself was trapped in my own bedroom, but this time by more conventional methods: a key. Can't say the few months afterwards were much enjoyable either...'  


Music: In Music this Week we had to research songs that relate to Histoire Des Arts in the School library. We all had to choose one so by the end I chose 'Le Chant Des Partisans', a song originating from 1943 about the French resistance. It was an interesting lesson, mainly because I find the subject of the French Resistance rather interesting. Here's the song I eventually picked: 

S.V.T: One lesson in S.V.T this Week, so it wasn't anything to talk about. The short little re-catch Test went alright: 6/10 which is to be frank all I could hope for. Our next chapter is on our bodies immune system and how we can protect ourselves from infection, so let's hope it doesn't bring back that awful Test bug...


So that's pretty much it for this Week! Let's hope I continue to improve next Week, it is the start of a new Trimester after all, so I really must start off strong. In all honesty though, I think thing's will turn out fine in the end, last Week was probably the 'odd' one out - Tim.  

The Week In School: I Feel Like Sh*t

Yeah, I didn't really like This Week In School? Why? Well most of the Tests I did were duds, and for the most everything felt a bit to routine, uninspired and boring. I suppose this is just one of those Weeks eh?


Art: Our next task is this: imagine an alien/monster/human trapped inside the confined space of a box, and draw it like the alien/thing is trapped right in front of you. Bit of a weird topic isn't it? I suppose it fits in with this Years theme of 'Define space in art' but it just feels like a random topic that was quite literally pulled out of the Teacher's ass. So I started experimenting with the different shapes that a box could have: for example I imagined this fat alien blob trapped inside a circular box or an octopus confined to a small rectangular box that caused it to pack it limbs into every square inch of space. I haven't yet decided what I'm going to go with so you'll just have to wait until next Week to find out which idea I'll pick.    


Geography: We were mainly just correcting the work we did last Week while the Teacher was away, apparently if you live in Los Angeles you have a 50% chance of either being run over by tornados, swamped by floods or ravaged by Earthquakes. Sounds like a safe place to live in then... Monday was the History Test on the USSR, and at the time I thought it went superbly well (as usual), heck I even finished early this time which was a plus. The last question asked me to write a argumentative paragraph on how Joseph Stalin turned the USSR into a totalitarian regime and I pretty much wrote a full on essay! I did one 'introductory' paragraph on how the USSR was founded (with Lenin and his Bolsheviks), one on what Stalin did when he rose to power (concentration camps, propaganda, everything being owned by the government ect...), ANOTHER paragraph on the result of his actions (USSR became the 3rd highest industry powerhouse in the world) and a final paragraph on how all this meant it was a totalitarian regime. Why did I do all of this just for one question? Well for one it was worth half of the points in the entire Test, and secondly I wanted to show off how much I'd invested on this subject.
So what happened the following Thursday? I got my Result back, and was quite frankly livid. After all my hard work, WHAT DID I GET!?? A 14/20! CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? Well I couldn't! So the Test was on twenty points: ten for the augmentative paragraph, ten for the other questions. I got 9/10 on the questions (as per usual) and a measly 5/10 on that bloody paragraph that I was so cocky about! Teacher's comments? 'You should make better use of your knowledge and better analyse the subject because half of it is irrelevant.'  So in short, all that effort I put into the other paragraphs wasn't at all needed: I just needed to do one paragraph on what Stalin did with the USSR and a little sentence at the end to conclude why it was a totalitarian regime. So she deducted points simply because most of it wasn't necessary? We corrected it in Class and minor the odd spelling error here and there if I had just taken out the Introductory paragraph and the one about the effects of Stalin's power on the USSR then I would have got almost FULL marks! Still at least I'm continuing to be Top Of The Class, my score was still the highest in the Year because apparently everyone else failed miserably at it. The average for my Class was 8,54/20 so from a purely statistical standpoint everyone was horrible across the board, with only me and a few other people getting more than half the points. Again I'm livid that I failed this Test, or at least by my standards anyway. The Teacher just deducted those points because, if anything, I went ABOVE of what was expected of me and did a whole lot more than just a 'little' paragraph of text. I just want to scream right now, that's two Tests in a row now where the bloody argumentative paragraph has seriously hindered my score. It's like I'm working just a hard as last year and yet I'm not getting these PERFECT Results anymore! GRRR SO FAUSTRATING!!!!!    


French: For the holidays I had to read this book the Teacher gave us called 'Un Secret' by this guy called Phillippe Grimbert, apparently it's supposed to be a really good read but basically I was 80 pages in, couldn't understand a damned word of it and just put it down. Which was a shame really, because judging from the film alone it seems like a really deep tragedy set in the era of World War 2. Yes that's right, for once in this subject we actually did something interesting and we've started watching the film adaptation of it, because one of our new objectives for this Chapter is to distinguish the differences between the film adaptation and the book. Shame she couldn't have showed us Harry Potter instead but oh well...Well more on the film next Week, and the less said on that awful Test I was subjected to on Thursday the better *SHUDDERS* Not looking forward to the Result on that one!


Sport: It was mainly Ping-Pong this Week, with a bit of Football thrown in for good measure. I still sucked balls at Ping-Pong, and to make it worse this was the Week where we were all evaluated on our performance so I don't stand one chance in hell of getting a good score! I lost nearly every match I was in, it was just a horrible way to spend an hour. Still I'm just glad that this marks the end of Ping-Pong, at least now I can go in on Friday afternoon knowing that I may NOT be the worst in the entire class. And I was just as bad in Football as well, couldn't score or save a goal for my life! *SIGHS* I'm not doing very well this Week am I?


Maths: I liked Maths a lot this Week actually, the work was easy, no mistakes were made and it all bodes well for the Test on Tuesday. Except we should all know by now that when the Test does arrive I'll be terrible in it no matter what, even despite all my previous efforts in Class (I'll probably make a few silly mistakes again), so in a way I kinda feel crap about this subject as well!


English: Got a 10/10 in one Test, so it wasn't all horrible results this Week then. It's a shame that I don't see getting full marks in an English Test as an achievement then, heck by now it's practically mandatory. The rest of the lesson was a debate on the difference between living in the country and living in the city. Pretty mundane stuff, all in all, but least it was nice break from the other lessons.


Music: The Test went well, but I'm not sure if I screwed up on one question or not (may have answered it incorrectly) so we'll have to wait and see. The rest of the lesson was on music being utilised for advertising, so we were subjected to more publicity. Not bad, but not good either. 


Technology: Remember that time when I f*cked up a month ago in front of the whole Class because I was so unprepared? Well I finally learned this Week that my Team (well mainly me because I was responsible for 95% of the work) scored a poor 2/5 on that project, which just adds to my increasingly sombre mood this Week. We now have to plan all the steps/stages it'll take to get from the idea of our project to it's conception (budget, getting the necessary materials ect...) and make sure to put them all in the right idea. Technology was alight I suppose.


D.V.3: Nothing much to comment about really this Week other than the fact that we did the interview with our school technician M. Chapel and it went rather smoothly if I do say so myself. We planned it so I was the one who wrote down the answers and my co-worker was asking the questions. Obviously I couldn't write everything down and ideally we could have done with a camera to film it with but I think I did a good job overall in jotting down the important words. Now we're not journalists so our questions weren't exactly 'think outside of the box' good, but we did come up with a few idea's that really made the guy consider his reply for a moment. Amongst the general questions of 'How long have you been in this line of work' we rather cheekily put in the addition of 'Do you like this job? What for you is the hardest part about being a technician? Would you recommend someone on this line of work?' His reply skirted away a bit on that first question so I was sure to repeat the whole 'So DO you like this job?' after he was done! Think I was being a bit to insistent there? I don't really care, it'll look good in the resume we'll do and we get an honest opinion about this type of job. He basically said that you do get a bit sick of computer screens after a while and it's grating to think that with every new system comes a stream of new problems to tackle (he mentioned Vista in particular as being a pain in terms of actually getting the thing to work) but OVERALL he doesn't HATE his job, he said that 'adaptation to the constant change of technology' was a required skill though that needs a lot of patience! So that's the main 'scoop', as they say, I'll maybe divulge a bit more about the interview next Week (as then we should be putting it into our Diaporama and I'll be able to explain it in detail).


German: We mainly studied an E-mail this Week, about a teenager named Leon writing to his friend Hannah in Hamburg about what he did during the Summer Holidays. It was boring, as usual, and this time even the Class said it out loud! One girl in my Class actually had the balls this time to challenge the Teacher, saying that learning German was useless as she'll never need it in her life ect... You can imagine the murmurs of agreement the Class cried afterwards! My personal opinion aside, it was pretty funny to watch, by the end it was like a full fledged revolution, a few of them even refused to work and the Teacher was just like 'Okay, if you don't want to work that's fine, though don't complain when the Test is to hard.' WHAAAAT? You can't just let them sit there and do nothing surely? Have a backbone for once, you're too nice! Give them all words for crying out loud! They're only acting like this because YOU let them act like this! Anyway I just sat at the back of the Class and kept quiet for the entire duration, bored out of my mind.


S.V.T: Well the Test that I've been dreading for quite some time now has finally arrived, and guess what? I FAILED BIIIIG TIME! And so did the rest of my year unfortunately. In fact the Teacher cannot recall a time in her career where a Class of 3eme has failed THIS HARD on a Test! I think the highest score was a 11/20 and the lowest got to a 1/20 (there were quite a few of these). It was quite literally SOUL DRAINING to see the Teacher hand me a Test that had a 4,5/20 on it. S-O-U-L D-R-A-I-N-I-N-G! Euh, I'll never live this down, that Test is quite frankly a disgrace to humanity, an indescribable travesty that will never be purged from my soul. I beg for Redemption, and yet all I see is dispair! This is a monumental failure! A blot on the whole of history, an avalanche of evil! A herculean monster! I could go on if you want but I think you get the idea by now...     


So that Test pretty much summed up this Week in a nutshell: pretty shitty. Let's hope next Week picks up or my average is going to go down by quite a few points come the end of the Trimestre. Can't say I'm in the best of moods either, I really feel like crap after that whole Sport fiasco.       

This Week In School: Histoire Des Arts

Well I might as well start talking about Histoire Des Arts this Week, seen as The Art Teacher devoted an entire lesson this Week to it. If you don't know what this is, Histoire Des Arts is an exam that you take as part of the Brevet later on in the Year. It consists of writing an essay (around 2000 words) about any art form (you can choose a topic or select one from a list) from the 19th Century and then presenting them to two teachers (at least one history teacher has to be there) for about 10-15 minutes and then answer any questions that they ask. This year the theme is 'Art, State, Power', so it has to be a piece of Art centered around politics and all that. It's probably the most terrifying thing about the Brevet in my opinion and I'll explain why soon. First let me just go through the usual recap of the past Week:

French: I'm starting off on a bit of a down note this time as my dictation this past Tuesday didn't go all that well. In fact it scored rather miserably, a meagre 2,5/10. It isn't that bad, (I've had far worse certainty) it's only the second Test thus far to hit the negative zone this Trimestre and for me that's very, very good considering my previous efforts. Without a doubt my score for French in the first report will be the best one I've ever had in this subject, but Results like these just make you feel awful at the end of the day. My Redaction got a 8/15 though, which was slightly better than average but again, still WAY better than some of my previous efforts. This Week in French we primarily looked at a lot of grammar (as usual) and studied a lot of boring texts (as usual). One of the texts we looked at was rather funny though, it came from a French writer's autobiography and detailed how he was awful at school when a new French Teacher came along and taught him how to read and write...apparently 'saving' his life in the process. I looked at my French Teacher and just thought 'Good luck trying!'

Geography: The Teacher was off for most of this Week, but she did give us some work on geography while she was away. Apparently we've finished looking at Stalin and are now setting our eyes upon the U.S of A, which will be a fascinating topic I'm sure. Although I don't despise Geography it can get a bit tedious at times, I mean do I really have to learn ALL of the bloody rivers, mountains and cities?

Maths: Maths was for the most part fine this Week, and I was happily surprised with my Results. I scored a 14/20 in the Test that I moaned about a few Weeks back and a 16,25/18 in an old Homework Test, so neither of them were the catastrophe that I predicted then! Very good indeed, but considering the okay-to-bad Results at the start of this Trimestre I'm not looking forward to the final score. So on Tuesday we went to the Technology class and spent an hour fiddling with this Maths program called Geogebra were I was trying to create these parallel intersecting triangles (geometry stuff) and really failed (NOTE TO SELF: ME NO GOOD AT MATHS ON 'COMPUTOR). The rest of the time it was pretty easy but on Thursday I was having a few problems with the Thales' theorem but I think I've worked it all out now (put this one down to more boredom on my part, I could have been concentrating more).

Science: I was bang on the money last Week, the last Test scored me a 15,5/20. The lesson this Week was mainly devoted to magnetism (how it works ect...) and we did a nice little experiment with a metal ball being attracted to a steel pole and vice versa. Not much to comment about other than 'meh' really.

English: We're still on global warming! We had to write a paragraph about the effects of global warming and as usual I finished it in seconds and just waited for the rest of the Class to catch up. The spare time I had all to myself was generally spent scribbling things onto a piece of paper, looking at my watch or fiddling with my pen ect... What can I say? English is my speciality. Oh yeah and my Team this time scored another 20/20, which was good considering the fact that I rarely had to help them this time.

Sport: Last Week of Endurance, YAY! For the Test we had to run/fast jog through thirteen minutes without stopping. Of course I had the usual urge to throw up and pass out half way through but I kept my 'A-Game' as they say. Well okay I slowed down a fair bit in the final minutes but I'm sure the Teacher won't penalize me a lot for it. And considering my previous performances, I think I've done okay. All I have left to say is 'GOODBYE ENDURANCE, I SURE AS HELL WON'T MISS YOU!'

Technology: We had to do exactly the same thing as before, just with a bit more complexity really. So on a scale from one to ten this ranked very high on the OH GOD I'M BORED!-o-meter. There's only so much interest generated by this idea of putting panels around the lake informing people on the tree's/local wildlife. Does it really have to take up the whole year? Why can't we design something cool/inventive for once? My Team also got a 4/5 for our previous work, so that's always good. Who know's maybe I can salvage my score a bit before the end of the first Trimestre? Probably not, it finishes in a few Weeks.

D.V.P: Remember when I chose the 'Media Consult' job from the 'techie' industry list Week? Well turns out our school actually HAS a media consult on it's staff (albeit one that's rarely seen by us mere mortals) and the Teacher thinks it would be great if we could interview him next Week for our diaporama. Ugh, more work to do. Still it does freshen things up a bit after this never-ending formula of 'Look something up, do a Diaporama on it'. And for crying out loud the guy with me has an APPALLING taste in colour, he just want's to paint everything in different shades of green!

German: We looked at a bit of grammar this Week and as usual we lingered over one sentence in German for about half-an-hour. Then it got a bit difficult, as we went from studying a sentence to a full on paragraph. Learning curve anyone? And when the Teacher does explain what it means her voice is overshadowed by the Class' constant antics: it's more disruptive than ever, the Teacher is just another voice amongst the sea of conservations going on at any one time. One kid even got sent to the Headmistress' office, but she came back the following day with exactly the same attitude as the day before! Wow, now if Mme Philippe can't sort you out then you MUST be the human version of Bart Simpson! Another girl chucked a plastic glue tube at someone, which missed and dented a window! Animals, the lot of them. What's even more shocking is the fact that they're generally not like this in the other lessons, but the Teacher's lack of authority basically gives them free reign to do whatever the hell they want. So in short the subject is boring/hard and the Class is extremely annoying to watch. But we have only had one Test so far though, so that's a positive right? *LOOKS AT CALENDAR* Oh boy we've got a big one coming up...

S.V.T: Good news: Test has been rescheduled to next Week. Bad news: I've got even more to learn and understand, great! Really Bad news: What happened to the time when S.V.T was easy? I FEEL LIKE MY HEAD IS GOING TO EXPLODE HERE! IT'S OFFICIALLY MORE COMPLICATED THAN FRENCH AND MATHS ARGHHH!!! On a lighter note, it wasn't that bad this time around and I at least STARTED to get my head round this DNA/genes/Chromosome fuelled complexity. Well okay it isn't nuclear physics or anything, but the use these 'Scientifically complex sounding' words is very difficult to get your head around. I'm going to go into this Test having learnt everything but understanding little, so let's hope it'll just be a slew of 'What is the Definition of...', 'What is a...' or the classic 'Describe this...' questions or I'M DONE FOR!

Music: Unfortunately Mme Jouet is back and all the more boring for it. She wasn't very happy that we haven't had any Tests so far either. We're now looking at adverts and how music can change the feeling someone can have about the product. We've also gone back to writing endless amounts of text which just serve as filler for the eventual Test. *SIGH* Goodbye interesting lesson...

Art: I've finally got to Histoire Des Arts have I? Well the Art Teacher gave us a crash course on how to describe and 'emote yourself' onto a painting. This is so we're all prepared for Histoire Des Arts, and describing 'Art' his hardly my forte. I don't even know what to pick, it can be anything from Charlie Chaplin to World War 2 songs to even the Louvre pyramid. Apparently I have to pick something before Christmas and as of yet I'm stumped on what to choose. Here's the list given to me so far:

I'm also bricking it. First Week of January I've got Les Epreuves Communes (just like last year), then I have the two Weeks of bloody internship coming up (how am I going to get through that? What job to a pick to be an Apprentice on?), I've got two more Brevet Blancs AND the actual Brevet with Histoire Des Arts packed in there as well. So basically from Christmas onwards I'm going to be a blubbering wreck of nerves. Why does living in the Stone Ages feel so appealing now? It's Histoire Des Arts that troubles me the most, because I have to speak to a group of Teachers for 15 mins and become a master know-it-all on a piece of 20th century art. Oh yes and did I mention it's in French? HOW AM I GOING TO DO THIS?!!! *CRIES OUT IN PANIC* It's okay Tim, everythings going to be juuuust fine.... 

So that's This Week done then. Pretty boring really, mixed in with a few moments of severe depression but hey that's how life rolls. Til' next Week then...

This Week In School: The Days That Shouldn't Have Been

UPDATE: Yes I'm still a Week behind with this one, I've been a bit lazy recently, still shaking off those leftover after-effects from the Holidays. 


I know what you're thinking, strange title eh? Well I've named it 'The Days That Shouldn't Have Been' because quite simply put, these school days should have never, ever existed (Well that and the fact that I couldn't think of a title to name this one). So here was me thinking we'd have two full Weeks of pure bliss to just revel in our laziness when low and behold I look at my School calendar and it turns out I have to go back on a bloody Thursday! *GRUMBLES* Why couldn't they have just waited til' Monday? That's how it normally is! So I begrudgingly waddled into School last Thursday feeling cheated of two extra days I COULD have spent in Bed.  Anyway, now that I've got that boring explanation off my chest, here is a brief summation of what went on:


French: GOOD NEWS! My comprehension Test that I did before Halloween didn't turn out to be a complete disaster! Somehow I scraped a 7,5/15, which is only half the points but still infinitely better than my previous efforts. Yeah I know it isn't THAT great is it but for me I'm just glad I didn't get a 2/15 like I normally do in these Tests. The Teachers comments at the top of the paper was: 'The work was done seriously, and you have learnt considerably since last time, despite many grammatical errors'  While the Test went better than usual, the three hours we had to endure in this subject was your average French lesson structure: Write for an hour, do a few exercises, then a bit more writing, then a lot of Homework ect... Boring yes, but I'm just happy I got a better Result.  


English: Still keeping with our current topic on climate change, this Week we listened to a radio interview on a fictitious journalist from The Guardian called Paul Brown. He's been their environment correspondent since 1990, and was saying how global warming could have a dramatic effect on our climat (2 billion people without water, New York and London being flooded, desertification...). Basically he made it seem like the events in the movie 'The Day After Tomorrow' are about to happen! Well it wasn't that boring this time I suppose, global warming was an interesting topic to work on.    

S.V.T: It did get a bit complicated this time. The Teacher was explaining all the different ways a boy or a girl could be made using genetics or something? I'm not really sure! It's all about cell division and scientific jargon basically. It's not that I don't understand it, it's just difficult to get your head around it you know? Well I'm most definitely NOT looking forward to the Test now. *PRAYS TO GOD*


German: *SNOOOORE* That is all.


History: ALL HAIL STALIN! This Week was fun, we're looking at Russia's history in the 20's. So far we've done the rivalry between Stalin and Trotski (just before Lenin's death), the communist propaganda during Stalin's reign and the oppressive control he had over his country. All interesting stuff there, but what about my last Test? Well the Test from a few Weeks back scored a 15,5/20, which is slightly disappointing but it was still the highest Result in the Class so I don't feel that bad about it. Why haven't I scored another perfect Result? It was all down the ticking clock, I had to finish the Test before time ran out and as a result rushed through the last paragraph. I mean better to rush it and get a few points than to not do it and get none right? Remember I barely finished the Test in time, so it was the right decision to make. I scored 6/10 on the paragraph, and 9,5/10 on the actual questions, so hands down that's what my shortcoming was. I can't help but think that with an extra five minutes I could have really nailed this one, but oh well. I'm still Top Of The Class (by far, 2nd Result down from me was an 11/20) and 15,5/20 is nothing to be frowned at.  


Technology: To be honest I was expecting really bad things for that dodgy Test last time, but somehow I managed a 22/30 (or in terms a bit more relatable to you guys, a 14,7/20). The Teacher notes: 'You understand what you're doing, but you're not formulating it well enough' So it was exactly the same problem that I prescribed in my last post then. I must admit that Technology isn't shaping up to be the best of things this year, I've only had a 2,5/5 (which was beyond my control) and a 22/30 so far, which is crap considering my previous efforts from last year: First Trimestre 17/20, Second 17/20 and Third 18/20. So I'm still doing well in the subject but statistically it's saying that I've declined since 4eme. The problem is that in order to match my previous year's results I need to get a PERFECT score pretty much every time the Test clock dings, and that's really hard to do now considering the final year has 'amped' things up considerately. I'm under an insane amount of pressure this time, and human error practically dictates that I have to trip up at SOME POINT OR ANOTHER. Either way just know that I'm doing my best here, okay?  


Art: Finally got to see my last artwork back, which scored a 16/20: 


 


Got some of the door's angles wrong, but other than that I think I did well. 


D.V.3: I had to do a page on a job from the 'Techie' industry, so I chose media consult from a long list of boring sounding job names. Pretty boring, and my computer busted half way through so I had to work with another guy who makes everything look ugly presentation-wise. By the way if you're not already aware by now, I take presentation very seriously when it comes to doing diaporama's or other menial tasks over the Internet, and I think I do a better job of handling these sort of things on my own than with another group of people. Especially when you have a time limit to finish this thing and we're both arguing over what colour/font we want the bloody text to be in! 


Science: The Test was first thing in the morning on my first day back from the Holidays, so I haven't got extremely high hopes for it okay? In hindsight I think I might have muddled a few questions up, which can't be good for me considering that I get near flawless Results in Science, but we'll see I guess. I think I might get a 15/20 or something like that, heaven forbid if it's a 14/20! WORST SCIENCE RESULT EVAR!! OR IS IT??? TUNE IN NEXT WEEK TO FIND OUT! In other news the Teacher used a 3D program to show us all the different planets in the solar system, which was fun but a bit disconcerting nonetheless, I mean we're in 3eme and we're only NOW starting to learn all the names of the different planet's?  


So that was those 'extra two days' I was moaning about. Test-wise it was a bit disappointing, but I'll be better next time (hopefully). Lesson-wise it was just your average boring School Week, so no change there. Til' next Week then!