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| Matthis showing off the advent calendars. He was very excited about the prospect of getting chocolate each night for 24 days. |
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| The recreation room's decorated christmas tree. You can also see the popular and well-used coffee/hot chocolate dispenser. |
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| Another rec room decoration |
Another week of school completed, and officially my first trimester of French School finished. Grades were supposed to be submitted Thursday but one teacher was late so we won’t get our overall grade until later. The grading system is so weird for me. Basically, every graded assignment you do is graded out of 20 points. And then, it is entered into you grade with a coefficient in front, based on how important it is. A homework assignment would be a coefficient 1, a in-class test maybe coefficient 2, and a 3-hour DS coefficient 3. Then all of your grades within the one subject are added together(after each assignment is multiplied by its coefficient) and divided to get your average for that subject.
Example: You get a 17 on your first homework, a 15 on your second homework, a 12 on the in-class test, a 16 on your first 3 hour DS and a 13 on your second 3 hour DS. We will say your DS’s are coefficient 3, the one hour in-class test a coefficient 2, and your homeworks each coefficient 1. SO, to calculate your average in this class, we have the equation :
[(1)17+(1)15+(2)12+(3)16+(3)13]/10=14.3 for your average.
But, that isn’t all. If you have a bad grade in one class, it will mess with your overall grade. And likewise, a good grade in one class could make up for a bad one in another class. In addition to your average out of 20 in each class, you have an average out of 20 overall, which is super important. There is even an official class ranking based on the overall average, and people are really concerned about their placement on that list. And, there are coefficients involved in the calculating of your overall average, too. Because I am in the class of 1ère S, math, SVT, and Physics are more important that the other subjects. Math is a coefficient 7, so it is really really important. I think SVT and Physics are either coefficient 5 or 6, French is 4 and history is 3, I think. But, don’t quote me on the coefficients, since I’m not sure. The concept is just to show that the grading takes into account our choice to be in S, rather than L or ES, where French and English might be more important but they don’t take much science. So yeah, the first trimester is over and everyone is looking to the next trimester. Our new DS schedule was posted and most of my classmates are not too happy. Our history DS’s are 4 hours this time, and there are 2 of them. And we have 2 4 hour French DS’s, plus two practice baccalauréats, called the “Bac Blanc.” So, for the French kids, the pressure is mounting and the bac in July suddenly doesn’t look so far away. For me, the change from the first to the second trimester doesn’t really affect me except for the fact that I officially passed the classes I passed and even if I fail the next few assignments or something, those grades are solidified and I can say that in my first trimester in French high school, I passed Math, Physics, SVT, English(no surprise there), Sport, and......History! Yep, overall, not too shabby, I would say. I’m definitely proudest of having passed history, since it was the hardest except French to understand and my teacher didn’t cut me any slack. Luckily, we studied a lot of stuff I had already done briefly back home(like the great depression) so it was more of a matter of the French than the actual history.
Another kind of weird thing concerning grades I have noticed here is that everyone knows everyone else’s grades. When the teachers read the final grade at the end of the trimester, they asked if anyone didn’t want to hear their grade, and then they just read down the whole list of everyone’s grades. Often times, if you ask, “Oh, what did so and so get on the math DS?” the person next to you will probably be able to tell you. As soon as assignments and tests are passed back, everyone is craning their necks to see what everyone around them got, and if someone across the room asks, “Hey, what did so and so get?” their neighbor will often shout their grade across the class. There’s no posting of grades by ID number here, and their is no privacy when it comes to grades. I don’t know that it is necessarily better to have the right to keep your grades private, but it is weird for me to go from that system to this system where it is common knowledge what everyone got on the test.
While I’m on the subject of school, there are some other things i’d like to mention. They do something really incredible, fantastic, unthinkable here...they actually link the subjects!!!! You are expected to know to use the things you learned for writing your French essay to write your history essay and your SVT essay. But even more than that, there are correlations between the subjects. In my DNL class(history in English) we study the same thing that we study in history-geography but we are a few wars behind at the moment. In Physics, we started with light and how we perceive colors as humans. A few month later, what are we doing in SVT? Studying the eye and how the pigments inside the cones of the eye absorb certain colors of light, and we are expected to remember what we learned in physics and be able to apply it to the SVT. I’ve found that there is a lot more thinking here, instead of just regurgitating the things we memorized. But, there is still the word for word memorizing of definitions, so it’s not perfect.
More about school, this time about Physics lab. We actually did a chem lab this week, where we made a funky blue precipitate in a blue liquid. And then we filtered it, and ended up with a clear liquid. Well, my group ended up with a clear liquid, but everyone else still had some blue color in their liquid, so...who knows?
This is a minor thing that I already knew before coming, but I thought it might be an interesting fact for those of you who haven’t studied much(or any) french. Quote marks look like this << .... words....>> instead of “ ....words.....” And, even the “he said” is inside the << .>> It’s not super exciting, but it’s still cool, I think.
In history class right now, we are studying the Vietnam war. Today, we read a speech by General de Gaulle that was all about critiquing the United States’ interference in Vietnam and how France was thinking the US would lose. In the USA, either we
don’t get to the Vietnam war, or we just skip lightly and quickly right over it. It’s kind of like the way that here, we just kind of slid over the French losing WWII and being saved by the Americans and British. I guess no countries really like to dwell on their defeats in war, but it was definitely weird to hear all about how the french knew all along that their US were going to lose in Vietnam and that they had no role to play there.
It is completely Christmas mode here, now that it is December. Everyone talks about their advent calendar at school: what kind they have, how big it is, what treat they got the day before, what their favorite is, whether they eat the candy at night or in the morning...and it goes on and on. So, to keep you all updated on my french advent calendar, I get little chocolates in cute forms each day, and I open it at night. For December 1st, I got a little train, and I haven’t yet opened today’s. The foyer(the rec room) at my school is very decorated now, complete with a christmas tree with tinsel and a little “birth of Jesus” scene. Strings of lights have been hung in the courtyard. Besides the advent calendar, for me, Christmas season here means a few things. It means waiting for my packages of Xmas gifts from home to arrive(gifts to give away, of course, not gifts for me.) And, it means asking my family for favorite sugar cookie recipes and planning when I’m going to make Christmas cookies for my host family and friends. And, it means counting down the days until vacation.
The morning of December 1st, it was 10 degrees celcius(50 degrees farenheight) outside. Apparently, last year, there was snow everywhere on December 1st and it was in the negatives. Everyone here keeps asking me if I know snow, and I say yes, but that we don’t get it in Sacramento. And then they ask, “So, you don’t have snow at Christmas?”
So, that’s it for now. 2 weeks until vacation. Pizza and Koh Lanta tonight, and I have to pay attention since I missed last week’s exciting episode. So, I hope everyone has a nice week and I’ll be writing again soon.
Example: You get a 17 on your first homework, a 15 on your second homework, a 12 on the in-class test, a 16 on your first 3 hour DS and a 13 on your second 3 hour DS. We will say your DS’s are coefficient 3, the one hour in-class test a coefficient 2, and your homeworks each coefficient 1. SO, to calculate your average in this class, we have the equation :
[(1)17+(1)15+(2)12+(3)16+(3)13]/10=14.3 for your average.
But, that isn’t all. If you have a bad grade in one class, it will mess with your overall grade. And likewise, a good grade in one class could make up for a bad one in another class. In addition to your average out of 20 in each class, you have an average out of 20 overall, which is super important. There is even an official class ranking based on the overall average, and people are really concerned about their placement on that list. And, there are coefficients involved in the calculating of your overall average, too. Because I am in the class of 1ère S, math, SVT, and Physics are more important that the other subjects. Math is a coefficient 7, so it is really really important. I think SVT and Physics are either coefficient 5 or 6, French is 4 and history is 3, I think. But, don’t quote me on the coefficients, since I’m not sure. The concept is just to show that the grading takes into account our choice to be in S, rather than L or ES, where French and English might be more important but they don’t take much science. So yeah, the first trimester is over and everyone is looking to the next trimester. Our new DS schedule was posted and most of my classmates are not too happy. Our history DS’s are 4 hours this time, and there are 2 of them. And we have 2 4 hour French DS’s, plus two practice baccalauréats, called the “Bac Blanc.” So, for the French kids, the pressure is mounting and the bac in July suddenly doesn’t look so far away. For me, the change from the first to the second trimester doesn’t really affect me except for the fact that I officially passed the classes I passed and even if I fail the next few assignments or something, those grades are solidified and I can say that in my first trimester in French high school, I passed Math, Physics, SVT, English(no surprise there), Sport, and......History! Yep, overall, not too shabby, I would say. I’m definitely proudest of having passed history, since it was the hardest except French to understand and my teacher didn’t cut me any slack. Luckily, we studied a lot of stuff I had already done briefly back home(like the great depression) so it was more of a matter of the French than the actual history.
Another kind of weird thing concerning grades I have noticed here is that everyone knows everyone else’s grades. When the teachers read the final grade at the end of the trimester, they asked if anyone didn’t want to hear their grade, and then they just read down the whole list of everyone’s grades. Often times, if you ask, “Oh, what did so and so get on the math DS?” the person next to you will probably be able to tell you. As soon as assignments and tests are passed back, everyone is craning their necks to see what everyone around them got, and if someone across the room asks, “Hey, what did so and so get?” their neighbor will often shout their grade across the class. There’s no posting of grades by ID number here, and their is no privacy when it comes to grades. I don’t know that it is necessarily better to have the right to keep your grades private, but it is weird for me to go from that system to this system where it is common knowledge what everyone got on the test.
While I’m on the subject of school, there are some other things i’d like to mention. They do something really incredible, fantastic, unthinkable here...they actually link the subjects!!!! You are expected to know to use the things you learned for writing your French essay to write your history essay and your SVT essay. But even more than that, there are correlations between the subjects. In my DNL class(history in English) we study the same thing that we study in history-geography but we are a few wars behind at the moment. In Physics, we started with light and how we perceive colors as humans. A few month later, what are we doing in SVT? Studying the eye and how the pigments inside the cones of the eye absorb certain colors of light, and we are expected to remember what we learned in physics and be able to apply it to the SVT. I’ve found that there is a lot more thinking here, instead of just regurgitating the things we memorized. But, there is still the word for word memorizing of definitions, so it’s not perfect.
More about school, this time about Physics lab. We actually did a chem lab this week, where we made a funky blue precipitate in a blue liquid. And then we filtered it, and ended up with a clear liquid. Well, my group ended up with a clear liquid, but everyone else still had some blue color in their liquid, so...who knows?
This is a minor thing that I already knew before coming, but I thought it might be an interesting fact for those of you who haven’t studied much(or any) french. Quote marks look like this << .... words....>> instead of “ ....words.....” And, even the “he said” is inside the << .>> It’s not super exciting, but it’s still cool, I think.
In history class right now, we are studying the Vietnam war. Today, we read a speech by General de Gaulle that was all about critiquing the United States’ interference in Vietnam and how France was thinking the US would lose. In the USA, either we
don’t get to the Vietnam war, or we just skip lightly and quickly right over it. It’s kind of like the way that here, we just kind of slid over the French losing WWII and being saved by the Americans and British. I guess no countries really like to dwell on their defeats in war, but it was definitely weird to hear all about how the french knew all along that their US were going to lose in Vietnam and that they had no role to play there.
It is completely Christmas mode here, now that it is December. Everyone talks about their advent calendar at school: what kind they have, how big it is, what treat they got the day before, what their favorite is, whether they eat the candy at night or in the morning...and it goes on and on. So, to keep you all updated on my french advent calendar, I get little chocolates in cute forms each day, and I open it at night. For December 1st, I got a little train, and I haven’t yet opened today’s. The foyer(the rec room) at my school is very decorated now, complete with a christmas tree with tinsel and a little “birth of Jesus” scene. Strings of lights have been hung in the courtyard. Besides the advent calendar, for me, Christmas season here means a few things. It means waiting for my packages of Xmas gifts from home to arrive(gifts to give away, of course, not gifts for me.) And, it means asking my family for favorite sugar cookie recipes and planning when I’m going to make Christmas cookies for my host family and friends. And, it means counting down the days until vacation.
The morning of December 1st, it was 10 degrees celcius(50 degrees farenheight) outside. Apparently, last year, there was snow everywhere on December 1st and it was in the negatives. Everyone here keeps asking me if I know snow, and I say yes, but that we don’t get it in Sacramento. And then they ask, “So, you don’t have snow at Christmas?”
So, that’s it for now. 2 weeks until vacation. Pizza and Koh Lanta tonight, and I have to pay attention since I missed last week’s exciting episode. So, I hope everyone has a nice week and I’ll be writing again soon.
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