Hey anyone who is reading this.

So while most of you have been back to school a while ago, and got back to the good ol' schedule, I'll be starting my next semester Thursday the 17th of January.

See here in Quebec, the school system I'm currently in is called "cegep" or "collegial" in french. I've mentionned it a number of times in the bbs.

I'll try explaining it.

See, in order to prepare ourselves for university, the governement deciced around the '70s to shorten high school by one year, but creating a new school system. This two-year long new program would have as a purpose to prepare the students to make the big jump between the " I'll send you to detention if you don't do your homework" attitute of high school to the "if you want to study, study. If you don't, don't" attitude of University teachers. They took some universities classes and made them prerequisive (sp?) that you have to take in cegep. Therefore, you have to specialize in a program from the get go.

As you'll see from my schedule below, I chose the health science program, which lets me go in about any program, but it's orientated toward biology and chemistry. Perfect to go for medecine. Now all I need are the grades.

As a result, we are free to not do our homework, not go to class. However, it is a praticulary stressing part of our life as students because admissions at University is based off your results in everyone of your classes.

The tool universites use to admit or reject students is called "Cote R". Think of it as the equivalent of the GPA or the result of your SAT test. Except that it tales into account not only your grade, but how you measure up in comparasion with your classmates. In other words, for example, a student whose grades in math is 70% and his or her class average is 60% will probably have a better "cote R" than another students whose grade is 75% and his class average is 80%. It also takes into account how the different grades in the class is spread.

Anyway, point is, you have no idea if you are doing good or not because you can't rely on your grades.

My best way to encourage myself when studies are hard is :
"If other people before me managed to do it, why not me?"

[EDIT : I had put up my schedule but the resolution was aweful so sorry guys]

Comments?
Thanks for reading!