Studies, jobs, etc.

[Norman Bates]

[sp4cetiger]

A job... at least until my funding runs out (September).

[Dingerbell]

I'm in my final year of school studying Maths, Physics and History.

[HazeyTwilight]

As you can probably see from my age, I am currently a Fourth Year student in school. I haven't taken up studying subjects just yet, but I've got my eye on Art, Musicianship and maybe History or Home Economics.
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[RockyRaccoon]

[drakonium]

So from what I've seen, you choose subjects to study? Three, apparently? It doesn't work like that at all in France.

Here we have primary school and shit, and after that, what we call "collège" (which is the thing right before our equivalent of high school (the "lycée") and has nothing to do with your college). Then, at the end of it, there is an easy as fuck exam, and we have to choose to either do professional studies (I don't know anything about them, they just are considered "bad" here; not my own opinion, just the general one), or to continue general ones and enter the "lycée". Then, after one year, we have three possibilities : S (science, maths, etc; the most pretigious one), ES (economics, etc; the "basic" one) and L (literature, etc; the one where are supposed to go bad students, and actual literature passionates). That's all, though, once we have chosen that, we don't have much options on anything, and the lcasses stay really varied : I did S, and still had history, French, English, Spanish, philosophy, etc, and many L students still do maths, and ES students still have biology. Then, two years later, there's the "baccalauréat", which is pretty easy (the hard thing being to have a "mention" like "good", "very good", etc).

That's when things get completely random, though, and where people actually choose what they want to do : university, ingeneering school, medicine, whatever. I'll just talk about my personal experience, which is, from what I've heard, one of the French specialities.

I do what we call here a "classe préparatoire", or preparatory class. The principle is that it's a two or three year cursus, which leads to a contest, where you compete with all French students to have the best results and go to the best schools. There are three kinds of these : literary, economic, and scientific (I do the latter). The most interesting thing about them is their reputation. These studies are known, at least here, to be the hardest ones (along with the ones to become doctor, congrats Cellar ). For the two or three years your are doing them, you have about 30 hours of classes a week, in a standard teacher-students format (no big screen in a huge room containing 3000 people, I mean), with a huge emphasis on the speciality you chose (maths, philosophy, etc). I currently have about 10 hours of maths and 10 hours of physics a week, for example, and only two of French and two of English. So basically, you are supposed to work non-stop for two years, with a possible third one if you fail the contests. Most of the classes are spent writing of your sheets what is on the board, at a pretty high speed, without you understanding much, and then trying to apply it to usually hard as fuck exercises. Then come the contests (in May), which are a kind of month-long exam, with about 6 hours of tests a day, everyday. The aim of the studies is literally to drive you nuts; to allow you no rest, so you're tired and want to give up. The tests are unfinishable, you usually get shit grades, there are far too many things to get in far too few time, etc.

What we learn is also completely theorical. There's barely anything practical (a few experiences in physics, that's all), and although I liked maths in high school and early prépa, many of us don't give a shit anymore about what we learn. I, for one, hate what I'm doing. It's uninteresting, always the same yet always different so you never manage to successfully do an exercise. But they are the most prestigious studies, so obviously it's what's better for me... Pfft. Anyway, once you manage to get decent results at the written contests (or, at least, better results than others; it's a contest, not an exam), you are accepted to pass the oral contest. And then, if you've done OK at the oral contest, you can get into a school (ingeneering, for me). There is pretty much no other way to get into the highest ranked schools of the country, whether they are economic, scientific, etc. So yeah, that's the "prépa".

Hope you didn't see it as a "oh poor me I'm working sooo harder than you" kind of thing, I'm just presenting you things as they were presented to me. A lot of it is exagerated. Teachers actually care about you, help you, and everyone is in the same shit, so people are cool, and I've made a lot of very good friends. It's not that terrible. Just fucking boring and tiring. About me, though, I've done OK on the first year, ridiculously shat myself last year, and now I'm in third year, waiting for the contests to come with not much hope, while still doing nothing and typing this long shit on BEA instead of trying to understand things.

[Dingerbell]

In England, you have primary school, secondary school and then sixth form/college.

Primary school is pretty self-explanatory, its just six years of learning for little kids.

Then comes secondary school. From Year 7 to Year 9 (Grades 6 to 8, I think in America) there's a national syllabus of stuff everyone covers. For Year 10 and Year 11 is GCSE, where there are still compulsory subjects- such as Maths, English Language and Literature, Science- and the rest is free choice. Most people take either ten or eleven, but there is an opportunity, at some schools at least, to do more. At our school, Maths, English (literature and language), Science (done as a double award, where you do two exams of each Physics, Chemistry and Biology, leading to two awards- Science and Additional Science; some schools do a triple award, where there are three of each exam), Religious Studies and a language (I did German) were compulsory, but I also did IT, History and Geography as additional subjects. After GCSE's you aren't legally obliged to carry on with school, and so can leave school after this- so finishing at 16.

However, a lot of people go ahead onto Sixth Form/College where you study A-Levels. A-Levels are split up into AS Level and A2 Level- with AS Level being the first year, and A being the second year. For this, most people take four subjects for AS and three for A2. I took five subjects for AS- Maths, Physics, History, Chemistry and Critical Thinking- and am now doing Maths, Physics and History. I only dropped Critical Thinking because my school does not teach it at A2. Most people drop a subject for A2, but you can carry on doing all the subjects you were doing at AS, if you want.

Much simpler than what there is in France, then.

[revolver94]

I'm a math major and biology minor at the College of William & Mary. My classes all pertain to one of those or music. I'm going to take all of the classes for a music minor and see if I can do that instead. We'll see. I'm so close to that minor.

Beyond that, I basically just hang out with people. I have my radio show, but that's like... not a time commitment. Go out on weekends, blah blah blah. Pretty normal life.

Although I just started going to counseling! Which I'm digging.
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My top songs of the 2010s
and
Spotify link

Last.fm

[Jasonconfused]

I'm in my third year of university as a history major. I'm super interested in people, societies, power structures, and things like that. I'm really excited I'm taking a couple of really interesting anthropology courses next quarter.
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[Precedent]

I'm a Junior in High School

Looking towards College!