my first week at school in USA
Hello everyone,
This is Chen Shi, as some of you might have heard there's a lot to talk about in the 1st week of school in USA and a lot of people are asking me the same questions at different times and i sort of mentioned one thing to one person and another for the other. I can not really keep track of what I was saying to all of you guys so I decided to write a diary for CAS although I dont dare to show this to any of the student/teacher here in US...but still i can send this around to my favorable (former) classmates.
Place where I live:
It's an 18 floor high building located in downtown where everything gets so expensive and it is right next to Lake Michigan. I am living in the 17th floor…well kinda high but not very high compare to the buildings surronding us… This made me feel quite small.
My school:
I am going to an IB school here and the school is called Lincoln Park High School (sounded so americanish huh??:P), it is ranked the 1st in the entired Illinois state/the 31st in the entire country.(sounds like braging myself)
The school is nice and huge, bigger than our school and not built in a very logical order in any case. (you see as long as you go to US everything becomes very complicated) The school is split into 2 parts one old building the other new. Now here's a discription from the teacher of how to find the correct classroom:"If the last 2 digits of the room No. exceeds 50, it’s in the freshman building otherwise it’s in the old one." Does anyone get this? Well at least it took me 2 day to digest this thoroughly. Also this school has a couple of thousand students cant remember the exact value but in IB1 there are 121 people (including me)!
Subjects:
The honorable IB coordinator suggested that I should get 2 diplomas (one IB diploma and one US high school diploma). However this requires some extra work and I have to have some change with the course I am taking in Sweden. Here's when my real suffering began. Since this school doesn't offer students Physics HL I have to drop to SL :( and work on it as an extra (7th) subject and this subject doesn’t start until the beginning of IB2...damn, besides I have to take Eng A1 HL for the fact that taking Eng B would lend me a credit for nothing. But even if I did take Eng A1 I still have to take a Tofel test (an English test) when applying for an university...(what the hell?)(however I am taking both Chinese and Eng A1 at the same time and the advantage of this is that I can be a bilingual student..hah not quite but still) In addition our NRD(none regular diploma) does not seem to work properly here which means that It is compulsory to take a group 3 subject:( either hisrory or psychology...umm since I havent been taking history for years I guess I would go for psychology which starts at the beginning of IB2 ....ahhh well up to this point I can still survive I think…. Moreover the IB coordinator wants me to, in order to obtain an US diploma, take US history (well does anyone wanta know anything about US history apart from americans??) and I have to take a few tests(e.g. AP ACT SAT etc.) that does not have anything to do with IB(for the AP test if I pass then I don’t have to do them when I go to university here in US)(and for the ACT and SAT tests they are compulsory)..apart from all of that I have to take some PE or/and join some club of some sort...*shrug* ahhh screw this, max 1year and a few months of suffering, I can make this.
Also one thing that strikes me the most is that this school only allow students to study one natural science only (never 2 or 3) I am kinda lucky that I still have both Chem and Bio HL….The reason why they don’t allow people to take more than 1 science subject is that letting students do so would distract students’ concentration and therefore not getting as good score as they could have. (sheer nonsense)
So my 7subjects are: EngA1HL, Math HL, ChemHL, BioHL, ChineseA1SL (self taught), PsychologySL, PhysicsSL (7th subject).
schedule:
The school starts at 7.45am and ends at about 3.30pm
My schedule looks like this:
1st period: 7.45-8.31 EngA1 HL
2nd period: 8.36-9.22 Guidance (like a study period)
3rd period: 9.26-10.12 EngA1 HL
Division: 10.16-10.28
4th period: 10.32-11.18 Math HL
5th period: 11.22-12.08 Bio HL
6th period: 12.12-12.58 Lunch
7th period: 1.02-1.48 Chem HL
8th period: 1.52-2.38 Math HL
9th period: 2.42-3.28 Tok/Extended Essay
As you all can see People call each lesson a "period" about 46min (they only give you 4min between each period...what could u do in 4 min apart from going to the next classroom? wha? go to the toilet? I don't even know where toilet is....)(a quote from one of my classmate:"you cant even go to your locker")
The 2nd period is a lesson where you could just sit there and do nothing while nobody would care about it….what a waste of time! But then one can always do some homework there!
The division is just like a time when the mentor checks your attendance. Still nothing to do there
Locker: Oh well since this school have lots of people, I guess the school thought that it would be easier and cheaper to make the students share locker….and currently I don’t have one! Therefore I have to carry all the thick books around everyday, just imagine this “Chen Shi is carrying 4phy books everyday….
ID: every students in this school are suppose to have and carry around their school ID card everyday, cuz the security would be asking for ur ID if u don’t have it on ur neck. If u don’t which is what happened to me once ( u know in sweden nobody carry any ID apart from the lunch part)
Then they would send u to the main office and make u buy one of the temp IDs…..the school really wanta make money…*sigh*
Tests: Oh speaking of tests, I just had a test before the Easter break and one strange thing I noticed is that neither the test paper nor the results are allowed to be taken home. The reason for this is that the test is going to be used for a couple of years and this might sounds completely weird I know…
Lessons:
1EngA1HL: Period 1 and 3(both EngA1HL) are doing exactly the same thing twice, just for me to catch up with whatever books they were reading….they are currently reading: Beloved by Toni Morrison.
2Guidance: well nothing special here, only relaxing…..relaxing…relaxing…*echoes*
division: you go there to prove that you are actually here at school.
4MathHL: Well at this stage people here are studying something called AP calculus, in math HL. Well there’s a thick book of about 700 pages only about calculus with half of them I havent done. *Sigh* This isnt something very funny….Have to study now!
5BioHL: Oh well this lesson I like! But wait…it seems that they’ve done everything we’ve done plus “Photosynthesis and Respiration”. Well they’ve done something extra again! By the way there’s this bio test the day before we had the Easter break and it’s on genetics—guess what I say a few questions we had on our test when I was still in Bogarskolan! Hah, I am so happy!:P
6Lunch: Screw the lunch…This is what I call the trash, pure junk food (it’s like the things u can find in Burger king but with a much lower quality) and besides all of this you have to pay for it. The school food is much worse than that back in our school. Can not believe this.
Oh there’s this interesting thing about this school: people here (only those I know) play “Uno” cards…(anyone heard of that??) I answered no when they asked me if I know how to play. They said with astonishment:” you don’t know how to play Uno cards? teach him!…well your in IB so you should know this!” Haha seems that there’s a new tradition here!:D but I like this!
7ChemHL: haha here they are doing something I have done!!!! The halogens lab!:P Their labs are a bit behind tihi…good for me! But on the other hand, they’ve done Kinetics plus everything we have done! So weird….
8MathHL: well still doing the freaking AP calc thing…..The test is in less than a month on 3rd of May…
9Tok: well they’ve done almost everything this year so there would be no Tok study further on so people are doing random stuff each day either study period or extended essay stuff. However I heard that they are having a test on every single thing they’ve learnt! That’s freaky…
By the way this school had already handed in their research question in Extended just before we had Easter so it seems that we have been lagging behind somehow. To the contrary this is not what I heard from Kim, he told me that we are actually ahead of the schedule and we’ve done all the courses that’s supposed to be done next year or something. Gahhhh…
On the other hand they have no sign of doing/done anything related to group 4 project and the Tok presentation this is good for me!:D
So my conclusion: “everything completely different, even the IB is a mixture of everything”
Now you really have a deep understanding of what my school is like....
Thank you for your patience to come this far of my diary, this shows that you have a good endurance
P.S. please do not show this to any of the american either in USA now or planning to go back to USA later on....(this means that showing this CAS diary to any of the americans in Sweden who is not planning to go back is permitted)
This is Chen Shi, as some of you might have heard there's a lot to talk about in the 1st week of school in USA and a lot of people are asking me the same questions at different times and i sort of mentioned one thing to one person and another for the other. I can not really keep track of what I was saying to all of you guys so I decided to write a diary for CAS although I dont dare to show this to any of the student/teacher here in US...but still i can send this around to my favorable (former) classmates.
Place where I live:
It's an 18 floor high building located in downtown where everything gets so expensive and it is right next to Lake Michigan. I am living in the 17th floor…well kinda high but not very high compare to the buildings surronding us… This made me feel quite small.
My school:
I am going to an IB school here and the school is called Lincoln Park High School (sounded so americanish huh??:P), it is ranked the 1st in the entired Illinois state/the 31st in the entire country.(sounds like braging myself)
The school is nice and huge, bigger than our school and not built in a very logical order in any case. (you see as long as you go to US everything becomes very complicated) The school is split into 2 parts one old building the other new. Now here's a discription from the teacher of how to find the correct classroom:"If the last 2 digits of the room No. exceeds 50, it’s in the freshman building otherwise it’s in the old one." Does anyone get this? Well at least it took me 2 day to digest this thoroughly. Also this school has a couple of thousand students cant remember the exact value but in IB1 there are 121 people (including me)!
Subjects:
The honorable IB coordinator suggested that I should get 2 diplomas (one IB diploma and one US high school diploma). However this requires some extra work and I have to have some change with the course I am taking in Sweden. Here's when my real suffering began. Since this school doesn't offer students Physics HL I have to drop to SL :( and work on it as an extra (7th) subject and this subject doesn’t start until the beginning of IB2...damn, besides I have to take Eng A1 HL for the fact that taking Eng B would lend me a credit for nothing. But even if I did take Eng A1 I still have to take a Tofel test (an English test) when applying for an university...(what the hell?)(however I am taking both Chinese and Eng A1 at the same time and the advantage of this is that I can be a bilingual student..hah not quite but still) In addition our NRD(none regular diploma) does not seem to work properly here which means that It is compulsory to take a group 3 subject:( either hisrory or psychology...umm since I havent been taking history for years I guess I would go for psychology which starts at the beginning of IB2 ....ahhh well up to this point I can still survive I think…. Moreover the IB coordinator wants me to, in order to obtain an US diploma, take US history (well does anyone wanta know anything about US history apart from americans??) and I have to take a few tests(e.g. AP ACT SAT etc.) that does not have anything to do with IB(for the AP test if I pass then I don’t have to do them when I go to university here in US)(and for the ACT and SAT tests they are compulsory)..apart from all of that I have to take some PE or/and join some club of some sort...*shrug* ahhh screw this, max 1year and a few months of suffering, I can make this.
Also one thing that strikes me the most is that this school only allow students to study one natural science only (never 2 or 3) I am kinda lucky that I still have both Chem and Bio HL….The reason why they don’t allow people to take more than 1 science subject is that letting students do so would distract students’ concentration and therefore not getting as good score as they could have. (sheer nonsense)
So my 7subjects are: EngA1HL, Math HL, ChemHL, BioHL, ChineseA1SL (self taught), PsychologySL, PhysicsSL (7th subject).
schedule:
The school starts at 7.45am and ends at about 3.30pm
My schedule looks like this:
1st period: 7.45-8.31 EngA1 HL
2nd period: 8.36-9.22 Guidance (like a study period)
3rd period: 9.26-10.12 EngA1 HL
Division: 10.16-10.28
4th period: 10.32-11.18 Math HL
5th period: 11.22-12.08 Bio HL
6th period: 12.12-12.58 Lunch
7th period: 1.02-1.48 Chem HL
8th period: 1.52-2.38 Math HL
9th period: 2.42-3.28 Tok/Extended Essay
As you all can see People call each lesson a "period" about 46min (they only give you 4min between each period...what could u do in 4 min apart from going to the next classroom? wha? go to the toilet? I don't even know where toilet is....)(a quote from one of my classmate:"you cant even go to your locker")
The 2nd period is a lesson where you could just sit there and do nothing while nobody would care about it….what a waste of time! But then one can always do some homework there!
The division is just like a time when the mentor checks your attendance. Still nothing to do there
Locker: Oh well since this school have lots of people, I guess the school thought that it would be easier and cheaper to make the students share locker….and currently I don’t have one! Therefore I have to carry all the thick books around everyday, just imagine this “Chen Shi is carrying 4phy books everyday….
ID: every students in this school are suppose to have and carry around their school ID card everyday, cuz the security would be asking for ur ID if u don’t have it on ur neck. If u don’t which is what happened to me once ( u know in sweden nobody carry any ID apart from the lunch part)
Then they would send u to the main office and make u buy one of the temp IDs…..the school really wanta make money…*sigh*
Tests: Oh speaking of tests, I just had a test before the Easter break and one strange thing I noticed is that neither the test paper nor the results are allowed to be taken home. The reason for this is that the test is going to be used for a couple of years and this might sounds completely weird I know…
Lessons:
1EngA1HL: Period 1 and 3(both EngA1HL) are doing exactly the same thing twice, just for me to catch up with whatever books they were reading….they are currently reading: Beloved by Toni Morrison.
2Guidance: well nothing special here, only relaxing…..relaxing…relaxing…*echoes*
division: you go there to prove that you are actually here at school.
4MathHL: Well at this stage people here are studying something called AP calculus, in math HL. Well there’s a thick book of about 700 pages only about calculus with half of them I havent done. *Sigh* This isnt something very funny….Have to study now!
5BioHL: Oh well this lesson I like! But wait…it seems that they’ve done everything we’ve done plus “Photosynthesis and Respiration”. Well they’ve done something extra again! By the way there’s this bio test the day before we had the Easter break and it’s on genetics—guess what I say a few questions we had on our test when I was still in Bogarskolan! Hah, I am so happy!:P
6Lunch: Screw the lunch…This is what I call the trash, pure junk food (it’s like the things u can find in Burger king but with a much lower quality) and besides all of this you have to pay for it. The school food is much worse than that back in our school. Can not believe this.
Oh there’s this interesting thing about this school: people here (only those I know) play “Uno” cards…(anyone heard of that??) I answered no when they asked me if I know how to play. They said with astonishment:” you don’t know how to play Uno cards? teach him!…well your in IB so you should know this!” Haha seems that there’s a new tradition here!:D but I like this!
7ChemHL: haha here they are doing something I have done!!!! The halogens lab!:P Their labs are a bit behind tihi…good for me! But on the other hand, they’ve done Kinetics plus everything we have done! So weird….
8MathHL: well still doing the freaking AP calc thing…..The test is in less than a month on 3rd of May…
9Tok: well they’ve done almost everything this year so there would be no Tok study further on so people are doing random stuff each day either study period or extended essay stuff. However I heard that they are having a test on every single thing they’ve learnt! That’s freaky…
By the way this school had already handed in their research question in Extended just before we had Easter so it seems that we have been lagging behind somehow. To the contrary this is not what I heard from Kim, he told me that we are actually ahead of the schedule and we’ve done all the courses that’s supposed to be done next year or something. Gahhhh…
On the other hand they have no sign of doing/done anything related to group 4 project and the Tok presentation this is good for me!:D
So my conclusion: “everything completely different, even the IB is a mixture of everything”
Now you really have a deep understanding of what my school is like....
Thank you for your patience to come this far of my diary, this shows that you have a good endurance
P.S. please do not show this to any of the american either in USA now or planning to go back to USA later on....(this means that showing this CAS diary to any of the americans in Sweden who is not planning to go back is permitted)
posted by Chennerd at
3:58 PM
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