High school is hard.

This week of observing was enlightening and educative and all of those things that I’m supposed to say. However, my main take away is that I would not relive high school for any sum of money or genie wish imaginable. As I sat through 6 hours of classes and watched teachers instill the fear of god in their students by reminding them about this test and that presentation and success and etc., I wondered how I did that nearly every day for four years. Even I had to make a concerted effort to seem professional and not doodle/zone out toward the end of the day, and I’m (sort of) an adult. Six hours is just... too many. No one should be expected to pay attention to anything for six hours. Also, I’m a huge wimp because these kids sometimes have class from 8:00am-6:00pm and I was only there from 9:00am-4:00pm.

Anyway, the classes I sat in on were overall interesting, but not at all what I expected. For instance, that biology class I mentioned was actually about geology. I mean.... potayto, potahto? I don’t know much about science, but I guess that isn’t too far off. Of course, then the American economics course covered the British rule in India and Ghandi. Something was certainly lost in translation there. In any case, this particular class was taught in English and the teacher was hilarious. Before we went in the classroom, she requested that I introduce myself in English; I asked if she just wanted a quick summary of what I studied and why I’m here. She misunderstood, responding with: “oh sure you can tell them to shut up, stand up, sit down; whatever you want!”

One of my favorite classes I observed was a post-baccalaureate philosophy course with older, VERY advanced students. The teacher couldn’t show up due to car issues so I just helped them practice their English for an hour. Some of them were basically fluent, and they helped me understand the French education system slightly better.

From my understanding, this is a chart of how general (so, not including professional and technical) high school works:

Grade name	Description	Amount they care about school
Deuxième	First year students (15-16ish)	Spend about ~0-5% of their time caring and ~95-100% trying to look awesome in front of their classmates. Can’t really blame them; high schoolers are generally merciless.
Première	Second year students	Exponentially more engaged for whatever reason.
Terminale	This is the last year of high school. At this point the kids have chosen a certain track. In a general school they can choose science, literature, or... economics? Something like that. Maybe they choose their track before this. I don’t really know. But I do know it is the last year.	Well, considering they are consistently reminded that the baccalaureate is darkly looming in their future and if they don’t succeed they will be inevitably, for lack of a better term, screwed, this is where the panic really sets in. ALL of the cares.
Post-Baccalaureate	I had a hard time getting this one.  It’s usually two years long, but can be more depending on if you succeed or not, and happens after you take the bac,.. but it’s totally optional. From what I gathered, this is for the super smart kids who want to go to the really good universities, or “grands écoles.” I think each good university—not sure how they determine level of “good”—has their own exam. Two years of brutal, weekendless, post-bac schooling supposedly prepares them for these tests. I don’t get this. They prepare all of high school for the bac specifically so they can go to college. But then, even if they do super well, they are only able to go to a mediocre school if they don’t then take ANOTHER school-specific exam that is allegedly impossible to pass without going back to high school for two years?	Far too much. Imagine me in college times a million.
Unknown	I would not be surprised if there was something beyond even post-bac that I have yet to learn about. Maybe post-bac but with an added ninja component.	Would commit any number of murders to go to the university of their choice (presumably through their new, surprisingly useful, ninja competencies).

Anyway, the French method of teaching is obviously extremely varied but there are two across the board consistencies: an unending mentioning of the baccalaureate and an almost sadistic embracement of public criticism/shaming.

If everything goes to plan, today I will be making my actual work schedule. It’ll be nice to have a solid idea of what my weeks will look like from here on out and I’m excited to have a bit more stability.

Other than school things, we’ve continued to enjoy hanging out with the other assistants and doing our normal Carson-Rachel thing. Yesterday I tried to make soy sauce because it’s obscenely expensive here. It seemed to turn out... less than well... but I’m hoping that has to do more with the fact that I tried it when boiling hot than with the actual taste. That’s about it though. Sorry for another post without pictures—we’ll try to be better about it so that my endless rambling actually has some payoff.