Subject: High-school Courses
Author:
Posted on: 2012-06-28 21:51:00 UTC
Well, I've just finished school – in fact, I had my last final today. Now, the system here in Israel works this way: You have to take some mandatory subjects (other words: English, Math, PE, History, Bible AKA Reading Comprehension, Literature AKA Mostly Horrible Poetry, Civics, and Grammar), as well as at least two optionals.
English and Math you get to choose the level – three points is the easiest, five the hardest. I took five English (though it's still, like all other levels, three finals and a project, which I wrote on JS Bach) and four Math.
My optionals were Cinema – three points theoretical, which is pretty fun (if the movie is good) and laughably easy (100s with no preparation at all, ho!), and two points practical, which is really hard (especially if, like me, you've an incompetent editor and a lazy cameraman. Oh, and irresponsible actors) but fun and satisfying; and Philosophy, which is really fun, but hard – I think the philosophy tests were the hardest I had ever. Sad thing is, I wrote eight pages for each of the last two tests (the semi-final and the final) and probably I was the most laconic person in the classroom.
Also, instead of doing a test in Grammar, I decided to do a project in Linguistics (it ended being Discourse Analysis, which is slotted between Linguistics and Sociology, but eh). It was supposed to be large, but not university-large, highschool-large. It ballooned to the 25-page area (with the appendices, it is a whopping 61 pages) and is large enough (and has enough material, original research etc), AFAIK (and so my mom tells me), to be a BA project. It's in its closing stages; I've just some small fixes to make. Hopefully I'll make it to the deadline (it's a long story, but the project's belatedness can be chalked down to three major factors: the Ministry of Education's bureaucracy – other words, the Grammar department head taking weeks to read a page-and-a-half-long research proposal, communication problems between my advisor and me and her accursed perfectionism).
PS: I live in Israel. Here is a link to a Wikipedia article that gives some background info.