Rome tomorrow!

Tomorrow is the day what everyone has been waiting for!

Everyone who will be coming to Rome is (most likely) packing their luggage and tomorrow at 05.00 everyone is supposed to haul their asses to Oulu airport for check-in and if everything goes as it should, we will arrive in Italy at 10.15.

When we'll arrive in Italy, everyone will most likely have a heatstroke since at the moment the temperature is about 278.15 K here in Finland and in Italy it will most likely be much warmer. Spring is in my opinion the worst season because snow is melting which makes every place wet and muddy :(  and bright sunlight is raping everyone's eyes but luckily this trip let's us escape from Finland's spring for one week.

Looking forward to seeing everyone!

- Jasse

Finnish exam week and matriculation exams for dummies, short course.

Dozens of books, hundreds of pages, billions of notes to be read. That's what exam week and matriculation exams are all about! Yesterday our exam week started with socialstudies exam and today we had a math test. -.-  Thank god it's Friday and the weekend is about to start. And how are we going to spend it? By reading for the exams, of course! 

Our school year is divided to five different periods, each one with different subjects. At the end of every period we have an exam week and the schedule depends on which courses you have selected for the period. For the exam you have to read the whole course book (every subject has its own, ofc) + the notes you have made and the material teacher has given to you. Every course has its own code letter on the course plate and the codes are from A to G. For example our exam schedule is like this:

31.3.2011 - 8.4.2011
A. socialstudies  ---> exam A on Thursday
B. maths  --->  exam B on Friday
C. swedish ---> exam C on Monday
D. geography ---> exam D on Tuesday
E. philosophy ---> exam E on Wednesday
F. english ---> exam F on Thursday
G. finnish ---> exam G on Friday

On Monday, the 11th of April, the new period starts.

On the third year (usually) we have the most hardest and exhausting exams ever, the matriculation exams.

To graduate you need to take 4 subjects on matriculation level. Finnish is the only obligated subject, then two theorethical subjects (you can choose from: socialstudies, history, religion, chemistry, physics, health education, psychology, philosophy, biology and geography). The fourth subject can be either a language (A-,B, or C-level) or A-level or B-level math. At least on of the subjects has to be taken on A-level (A= advanced).

Before you can take a matriculation exam, you have to complete all mandatory courses from the subject you have chosen. For each matriculation exam you have to study every course book, all notes and other materials from that subject, for example, on A-level English we have six mandatory courses, and also it is recommended to take some extra courses as well, because the questions on the exam can also be about the stuff on specialisation courses. The matriculation exams are held on autumn and spring.

  

Here you can see this springs A-level English matriculation exam (written part)

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Hopefully you got somekind of idea about finnish exam weeks and the matriculation exams! Now, back to studying! ;)

Best wishes, Jonna and Niko

ps. see you in Rome!