As I was in America, I got so any questions about my school and Finnish school system. Well, I wanna show you what my school is like.
My school is something we call a secondary school in Finland. I could say it's a high school, but the thing is, it's nothing like American high school. I mean the whole system is so different.
My school is called TYK. It's an arts-oriented school, which means my school offers so much more than just the regular classes.
Every secondary school in Finland lasts for three years (classes 10-12). After that, we can graduate. In order to graduate, students have to take the matriculation examination in their senior year. Well, yeah, it's too complicated to explain. But I can tell people study months for those tests.
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| This picture was taken in my freshman year when we had a dress up day. |
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| My returnée friend Iida |
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| Returnée squad |
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| My best friends in school |
Currently I'm redoing my junior year (yay!!). I like my school more than I did in my freshman year. I don't know many people there, though, since I now have classes with students that are a year younger than me. But there's about 20 returneés (students who went on exchange last year) and I have made friends with them:)
So...what's my regular school day like?
I usually wake up at 6:15 and then ride the bus at 7:30. My school is in another town, 9 miles away and it takes about 35 minutes to ride the bus. And yeah, we unfortunately don't have school buses. We use public transportation.
My school starts at 8:05. Every day I have different classes. In this semester I'm taking two Physics classes, Math, Dancing, Photographing and Swedish.
One semester lasts for 6 weeks and then I change my schedule. Every semester ends with an exam week.
This week was my first week with this new schedule. I hate taking 2 physics classes and I really don't like physics. But in order to apply for the college of Medicine I have to take Physics.
I'm gonna use my Friday schedule as an example of my regular school day.
School starts at 8:05 and first I have Physics. The classes last for 75 minutes. In Physics, we talk about velocity, acceleration, gravitation and all that "fun" stuff.
My second hour is (unfortunately) Physics, too. This class is easier though. We just cover Physics as a science. It's pretty easy. And the teacher is my favorite one!! I feel super old in this class, because most of the students are two years younger than me.
My third hour is dancing. It's an elective class. We are mostly dancing jazz, which is easy to me because I have danced jazz for two years.
After the dancing class I have lunch. My lunch hour lasts only for half an hour. In Finland, we get free school food. It's actually pretty good:)
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| This day we had chili con vege for lunch |
My fourth hour is Photographing. It's an elective class, too. And once again, most of the students are two years younger than me so I'm feeling super old.
My last hour is Math. In this class we talk about statistics. It's pretty easy and I like Math:)
My school days ends at 3:15p.m. I get home about an hour later because I have to ride the bus. And I still have all the homework to do. Depending on the classes I'm taking it takes up to two hours to do all my homework.
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If you have questions, don't hesitate to ask! There's a comment box right below this post.
Love,
Anette
