contrast

I'd like to tell you about a contrast in school-life i noticed today. I think using colours would make a good metaphorical sort of thing.

There are two sides to it.

On the one hand you have the gray grading system. I learned about that today with my deskmate in the (should i be using this article?) english lesson when we got our tests back. What results we both had is irrelevant at the moment, what matters is that we had been mislead about the grading system.
The trouble is as follows.
On the first day of school, all teachers introduced (i hear they had been instructed to make very sure we knew everything) the new grading system to us. The fact that this very system changes every year is another matter (and perhaps worth a post on it's own) completely. They said (do note that my facts may be a bit off, i'm using this to make a point here) that the margins for marks had been lowered. Thus that when last year you could get a three (the first "positive" grade) by having 50+% of the test right, then this year it got lowered by 5% to 45. The same happened with the lowest margin for a four wich moved from 70 to 60 percent or something thereabouts.
Seeing this as pretty much the only good and beneficial (to us) change among the lot, we were glad.

So comes the first test and we take it. As always, people expect and get different results varying amidst the class. Who scored how much is not important. My deskmate and i started comparing our results to the official system and it came out that the margins for different marks were different than what we had been introduced to only a week ago. Our teacher explained to us that in every school, the "subject council" can always change the margins for a given subject taught in a given school. I assume the council can oly raise them for if they could also be lowered, there'd be no point to a state regulation at all if it wasn't to be adhered to anyway.
What strikes me as odd is why we got introduced to the state regulation but nobody told us that our ("elite" - the teachers keep reminding us that) school has different (more difficult) margins.
What is "nice" about the estonian education system is that it's actually one big gray crack in the law system and every school and teacher can do what they please. Combine that with stupid administration from the govermnemt that makes the official rules (wich are almost never strictly abided by anyway) change every year and you get a silly gray mess where everyone adapts the rules to fit their style, standards, ethics and level of lazyness.
I admire our teachers who can make Estonia's education system one of the strongest in Europe (if not the entire world) with this level of chaos hanging about.

So this was the gray part.

The contrast, what i'd describe as "colourful" (even though it can be quite unnerving at times) is my deskmates. I have only one "literal" deskmate but i consider the two girls in front of me and the two behind me my deskmates as well because you can't but communicate with them a lot during a lesson. Sometimes it is good, sometimes bad. Today, it was mostly... Well, i'd be using the wrong word if i said "bad", but i can say it wasn't good.
Maybe you can imagine what a male person must go through when sitting boxed in between 5 teenaged girls 8 hours a day. Sometimes, today being one of them, it makes one think about things. If only think so you can hear your own voice inside your head to block out whatever the girls happen to be talking about. I suppose my writing this is not entirely (or at all) their "fault". Maybe i had a bad day.
What i can say for sure is that it began when somebody started talking about some sort of nipple cream or lotion in the middle of maths. And it got worse.
Sometimes i wonder if i will make it out of school as the person i am now. I consider myself sane for now, but that might change soon if i don't get strong.
Eight hours of "zutsti, you got stung" and "guess what i'm writing on your back" can be too much at times.

Support me. Tell me about crankshafts, about carburators and turbocharged engines. Show me car pictures. Anything to get my mind back in track to keep my body producing male hormones and not think i'm a woman.

Yet, this whole piece of writing is nothing compared to what some other people are going through. So small that i actually feel a bit ashamed to have written it in the style i have. But for the lot of you that will remain ignorant of what's going on (and you will), i hope that sheds some light on to what's going on at school.