School
Organisation of the timetable
The finnish education system
In high school, students are allowed to pick the classes they want, based on a code system in our school :
Then they choose courses as they like, each course corresponding to one number in the timetable.
Finnish students therefore have a lighter schedule than our french one.
Their exams take place during key weeks in the year, not as in France where we have a continuous evaluation in every class.
Students here have less pressure as well as less homework and less school time. It is a different way of thinking: you do not have to do high science or litterature studies to achieve success.
My schedule
I chose to have french courses (code 3 and 7) as well as math high level (in their IB section, class in english, code 2) and music (code 6)!
What about the classes?
It was really funny to be able to do music in class since we stopped in middle school in france (furthermore they do not teach it the same way).
The french teacher was really good and sympathic, me and the other french student had the occasion to learn a bit of finnish too.
Finally the math class was quite the same as in france but in english (but the way of teaching is awful I do not recommend to go in IB math class).
The school itself
The school is an old brick building with a huge hall in the middle for students to wait when they have skips.
It has 3 floors and a basement where is located the music room and dressings rooms for the gymnasium.
The music room is well equipped (piano, guitars, mixing table, drums, microphones...). In fact the entire school is really modern: they have a big 4k TV screen in each room (bigger than the one I have home), adjustable desks and other stuff. The room are well isolated from cold and sound.
To me, one classroom in this school is more valuable than all the ones from my school.
To be short the school was really comfortable I enjoyed spending time in the hall or studying (they have free WiFi, table tennis, table football and a hidden grand piano).
The last week was an exam week so I could not go to school anymore. It gave me the opportunity do do all my french homework as well as this website.
Relations with people
Finnish people are known as being shy and not centered in relationships. I didn't really see that during my experience. Of course the language barrier at school did something but there were still nice to me and sometimes people came towards me to play table tennis or table football.
In another hand I had the opportunity to talk with students from the International section. I learnt that this school has so many exchange student! I met awesome people from Austria, Colombia and Australia. All these people spoke english therefore it was convenient for me.
Main hall and floors
Elio