Scuola!

School here is really different from school in Québec. The biggest difference for me would have to be having 6 days of school per week! Here, they don’t know what it means T.G.I.F. They sing the song that Katy Perry did, but they have no idea of the meaning of it.    ahaha

So school starts at 8am and finishes between noon and 2pm. I’m really lucky because I finish at 1pm Monday to Thursday and at noon Fridays and Saturdays.

I don’t how your high school worked, but at mine I could choose from so many options and in my last year. Here by choosing your school, you choose you classes. So every school has the same basic classes. Then there is Classical, Scientific, Musical, Psychology, Cooking, Art... So depending of the school you choose, you get different classes. I have the ‘’joy’’ of being in a Scientific school. This means I have more classes of math, physics and chemistry. So I always end up doing Sudoku, reading a book or just being on internet with my phone.

Here, the people with whom you start your first year of ‘’liceo’’ (which would be our high school) are the same people you finish with. That means, if you have a school trip of two classes of the same grade, you won’t mix with the other group, because you just don’t know them even if you have been at the same school for 5 years.

Now let’s talk of exams. Here they do oral tests and written exams. Basically, for oral tests, depending on the subject, you go sit in front of the teacher and answer her questions or talk about a subject that the teacher wants. For math and science classes, you go to the black board, the teacher gives you a problem and you work on it. It is a little bit stressful, because everybody is watching your ‘’each and every’’ move. Written exams are really similar to the ones we normal do, the only difference, they do two per year per subject. At the level I am at school here (superior school, grade 4), they don’t write text in their mother tongue where you normally try to have the less mistakes possible.

It’s funny how I always hated how school works in Québec, because it is different from English Canada and USA and because we end up doing one more year before going to university. But now that I’ve seen how school works in Italy, I’m in love with my school system. Italians always tell me: Yeah, but we arrive at home between 1h30 and 2h30 pm. It’s real that it’s fun not having school in the after-noon, but having in on Saturdays and waking up really early because school starts early isn’t that of an advantage.