School days

Christopher was supposed to post the results of his exams to the blog himself while I was in Berlin, but he obviously didn't. In case anyone hasn't heard the bad news yet, he failed both exams, so he has to repeat the sixth year. He unexpectedly ended up having to do Spanish the first day, and he came home crushed that he failed, but he sat down and wrote a well argued letter to the minister of education to explain why he thinks this is a bad system. Then he managed to motivate himself to go ahead with French the next day, thinking he might do quite well, since he had nothing to lose and was therefore under no pressure. That didn't work either.

Now Christopher is in the same year with Paddy, but in the parallel class, so they only have PE together. No competition there – they are both equally unathletic, just in different ways.

On the whole, however, it is probably not such a bad thing for Christopher to repeat a year of school. When I think about it, it was really only in the last few months of school that he started becoming noticeably stronger, so catching up with his class as far as he did was already a significant achievement. In fact, he really missed most of the first semester, because in between being sick, he had no end of trouble concentrating and remembering things. Now he has a chance to fill in all those gaps under less pressure. He says he wants to work on getting good grades now, instead of just getting by, so that he can apply to a famous acting school when he graduates. I think that sounds like a reasonable goal.

So many of his friends go to different schools or are already working, so that won't change for him, and he still spends a lot of time with his closest friend from his old class. Even though he won't get any credit for it, he wants to go on working with his friend on the project they have been developing together for higher level drama, which I think also sounds like a good idea.

Although Paddy was dreading going back to school, he has been thoroughly enjoying it now. His math teacher, one of his favorite teachers, is now his physics teacher, and his new math teacher is apparently no less entertaining. He has even already read the book he was supposed to read for German (I just hope he wasn't supposed to have finished it last week) and was willing and able to discuss it with me at least briefly.

At about 6:15 am on the very first morning of the first day of school, Christopher cheerfully announced that the best thing about ordinary school days is how we all have breakfast together in the morning. Of course, that put an immediate and emphatic end to any fleeting fantasies I might have had about the boys being old enough to just get their own breakfast now. I have to agree with him, though. It not only facilitates the organization of daily life when we all have breakfast together, it really is nice too – just very, very early.