On October 20 2012 18:44 Recognizable wrote:
I’m in my final, 6th, year of high school, which means I have to take exams. I’m a Dutch student attending a high school for attending a university. The way the exams are structured in my country is that you have exams which are given to you by your school. These are the so called ‘’School exams’’. These differ from high school to high school because they are made by your own teachers. They cover all the material you have learnt the past 2/3 years. For most of my classes I will have about 2 school exams in which the material you have will to learn for that particular exam will be half of all the stuff you have learnt the past 2/3 years. In all, the school exams constitute 50 percent of your final grade.

This is completely unrelated but my mind is completely fucked right now. The word school seems so freaking weird in English. It means the exact same thing in Dutch and is written exactly the same as well. My brain can’t handle it, in an English sentence it seems as if it doesn’t belong there.

Anyway, the other exams we have to learn are the ‘’central exams’’. These are national exams, everyone gets the same exam and these are given at the exact same time. They cover everything you have learnt for the past 3 years and also constitute 50 percent of your final grade.

The central exams I will be taking in about 6/8 months or so, and in about two weeks I will get my first school exams. The subjects which I have to study for the coming weeks are: Physics, Chemistry, Latin and ‘’Nature life and technology’’ I will have my Physics and Latin exams the Wednesday in two weeks, my NLT exam that Friday in two weeks time and Chemistry on a Tuesday in 3 weeks. This coming week and a half I will be mostly focusing in Latin and Physics because NLT isn’t much work and for Chemistry I have already studied some and I have more time to study for Chemistry. Latin and Physics are the hardest classes in my opinion. I was never great at Latin and Physics seems to be hard for everyone.

Physics is the most important for me because I’d like to study it. In my mind the coming exams are a great way of testing me to assure myself I am capable of doing such a study. I have never felt incredibly smart, and I am just not sure if I could study Physics. Obviously I need to be motivated, but for Physics I am definitely motivated and if I can’t get a good grade here I just don’t know if I should study it.

I am planning to learn in the same way as I always do. Ask myself why stuff works and then make practice questions. Well, for physics anyway. For latin I will be mostly just cramming the material because there is not much to be understood. I will be translating, trying to understand what I just translated, we are translating Seneca by the way, and trying to find ‘’figure of speeches?’’ - I am not sure if this is the right translation – I will also try to update my vocabulary and my grammar, because both are really, really bad. For Physics the next coming 9 days I’d like to do a chapter a day which would work out perfectly because I have to study 9 chapters. The topics range from electricity to classical mechanics and fucking magnets. I just hope I have enough time/motivation to do all of this. Wish me luck

You're what I would consider: definitely smart and driven enough to make it. It's this nature of questioning (which most people take for granted) things like semantics that makes you stand out from the group. This is one of the fundementals for being a great scientist, which is what you already possess. This allows you to build creative solutions for existing problems. Regurgitation in education is fairly easy, creativity is true intelligence.

solidbebe

Netherlands4921 Posts

October 20 2012 11:25 GMT

Good luck man! Youre doing a pretty busy profile (?) with both physics/chemistry etc and latin.

Recognizable

Netherlands1552 Posts

October 20 2012 12:09 GMT

Yeah, N&T/N&G with History, Latin and I have NLT as an extra class instead of the modules(?)(it's really easy tho). I kind of regret History, I'd rather have Economics. For people who aren't familiar with the way high school works in Dutchland:

When you finish your primary(?) education which starts at the age of 4 and ends at the age of 12. You are tested and evaluated by your teacher what level of high school education is appropriate for you, however you are generally pretty free in your choice and there are multiple ways in which you can do the other types of high school education. Mainly there are 3 different types: VMBO, HAVO and VWO. I don't really know how to compare it to the USA because it seems wildly different but each type prepares your for a different level of secondary education. Again, it's entirely possible to change the level of your secondary education.

After 3 years into your high school education you have to make a choice between classes. The first 3 years everything is the same for everyone for that level of high school education. There are four different kinds of ''profiles'' you can choose. These are:

Culture and Society
Economics and Society
Nature and Health
Nature and Technology(Engineering?)

Other than this choice you also have 2 classes in which you are entirely free to choose whatever you want. The names for these profiles already give a good image on what to expect. The difference between C&S and E&S I believe is only the class Economics and the difference between N&H and N&T is Biology and a different type of Math. Therefore it's entirely possible to have 2 out of 4 profiles. I am currently doing N&H and N&T, because one of my 2 choices for a free class was Biology, the other was History. I also have latin because next to VMBO/HAVO/VWO you also have gymnasium. The only difference between Gymnasium and VWO is that instead of a language like German/French I have Latin. Anyway, these are my classes: History, Latin, Physics, ''Math B'', Chemistry, NLT, Biology, Dutch, English. I wrote ''Math B'' because there are 4 different types of math: A, B, C, and D. A and C is more statistics, B is more calculus and algebra. Idk about D. Anyway, I should go back to physics. I am really dreading having to start learning for latin. It's incredibly boring. Any language to me is. I enjoy learning on how to express myself but the process of learning is just dull in my opinion. Learning 100+ words and sentences is just plain boring. The same way I regret chosing History. I just memorize and forget. I I am lucky that because of videogames my English is good but otherwise I'd suck at this aswell.

solidbebe

Netherlands4921 Posts

October 20 2012 12:44 GMT

Math D ( these names really suck in english) is a merging between A and B, and is also more difficult in its 'A' subjects. Usually only math enthusiasts take math D. I agree with you history sucks, its boring like pretty much every other high school subject lol. Im kinda surprised you have latin (instead of german/french?) definitely not something Id ever take :-p

Recognizable

Netherlands1552 Posts

October 20 2012 13:12 GMT

Mostly because of my parents. At the age of 12 I just couldn't care less and my parent's thought it'd nice. When I had to choose between latin/german/french I just figured I dislike all of them, might aswell do Latin. I suck at latin, last year I barely had a (rounded off) 6/10. The translations are kinda logical, but only after you have a great vocabulary and knowledge of grammar. It's not that I can't do it. It just bores the fuck out of me. It has for the last 6 years and I don't think I have ever done my homework for Latin. French and German was the same. So it really didn't matter. History is kinda in the same boat, but I have an amazing teacher who manages to motivate me. All my other subjects I am motivated for and/or are really easy so I don't have to be(Dutch and English) but Latin isn't easy