'tis the season

...for maturita.

yes, here in the czech republic, spring is not only the time when the dirty black snow has finally melted and the trees being showing green again, but students hit the books. hard. the gymnasium (college-prep high school) next door to me is an 8-year school and i am close to several of the 8th-year students. this week was their maturita.

maturita is one of the smattering of latin-based words found in czech. two guesses what it derives from. in german it's called the abitur, if you cared to know. the maturita is a set of 4 15-minute oral exams. yes, oral. and before you start with the 'psshaw, no problem' line, allow me to explain further. the students are required to speak on czech literature and either english or german (most at this school choose english) and then choose two more subjects. common ones are: yet another language, math, history, geography, chemistry, biology. more random are: social sciences, computer programming. for each subject they are to be prepared to answer one of 30 questions that they will choose by picking a number out of a bag. seriously. they receive the questions beforehand and study from them.

'questions provided beforehand=easy as pie' you say? let's do the math. 120 possible questions and you have to be prepared to talk (at least once in a foreign language) for 15 minutes (including answering questions from your teachers, which may or may not help you) on each of them or risk failing. add to this the pressure mounted by your teachers, who tell you over and over again throughout the year that this is a really big deal and you HAVE to study hard, compounded by knowing that you might not get into university if you get a failing grade, not to mention the shame to yourself and your family of the dreaded 5 (no A-F here in favor of the more clinical 1-5).

and so, students begin studying for their maturita in the fall, and really get serious after christmas, and the cramming reaches fever pitch around easter. the kids are given the week before the exams off as 'holy week' and many don't show up the week before that, either. the students i know and love told me that for the last 9 or so days they hadn't showered, they've barely slept, and rarely eaten. i think lukas is the big exception to that rule. more on him later. daria tells me she subsisted on chocolate.

yesterday i ventured into school for the afternoon segment, as a support to vera. the first thing i saw when i rounded the corner was vera, excited to see me and reaching out for a hug. the second was a very red-eyed classmate of hers who was clearly somewhere in the middle of a cry. she had received a 5 and was not doing well with it. i listened sympathetically as she talked with vera and then, when vera left, i smiled at her, squeezed her arm and said, 'keep breathing.' this earned me a smile and she sighed and said she was going home to sleep. can't blame her.

i think the 5 scared the crap out of vera, though. she was extremely nervous. english was her first subject.

oh, have i mentioned possible topics? no? here are a few:
english: australia; british education system; washington d.c., and points of interest; early american history (vera asked me at one point if the first continental congress was in 1774. i laughed and said i have NO idea)
geography: the universe
history: ancient egypt, mesopotamia; czech history from WWII
it goes on. basically pretty broad but rather random. creates a need to study useless facts so that they can be parroted back on demand and promptly forgotten.

let me make a long story short (too late). even though vera panicked before each exam (english, history, czech lit., social science) she got good topics and answered them very well (in so many ways it's all about the luck of the draw). 4 hours after she started she was informed she got 4 1s. i'm so proud of her. and i was honored to be there as her support and for her to tell me i was exactly the person she needed there with her. doesn't often get better than that.

this morning i went back to support eliska and daria. both of them had studied long and hard and they were both surprisingly relaxed. they had the same subjects: english, czech lit., biology and chemistry. neither of them was sure what their grades would be. daria got all 1s and eliska got 1s and a single 2. the students are told their grades alone in the room with the teachers. daria came zooming around the corner out of the room yelling 'samy,' meaning only 1s. very exciting.

this afternoon iva and lukas went in. iva is late for everything and her maturita was no exception. she didn't miss anything but she cut it closer than anyone else would have. she brought a heavy backpack full of books and her older sister weighed down with more of the same. before each subject she spent her 30 minutes of downtime cramming for the next. she dragged me into her study room before english to get warmed up. lukas, on the other hand, was the picture of relaxation. he had shown up the day before and we chatted while vera talked about czech literature. he said he knew that he knew all he could know and so he was going to play volleyball. he told me today he slept well last night and was so bored this morning he just sat watching tv until it was time to come to school. lukas (english, math, czech lit., programming--he's been working at a multinational company most of the year as a computer whiz) got all 1s as well. iva (czech lit., enlish, history, geography) got 2 1s and 2 2s. she immediately took off to find her geography teacher to ask why.

i am so proud of all of them for the work they put into it and for the poise with which they went through the ordeal. each one of them said it was somewhat easier than they imagined and that they can't believe it's over. all they have been pressing for for so long finally done with. all that's left is a short ceremony on friday morning. they are now free. well, free until they have to take college entrance exams, which begin in about 2 weeks. tomorrow we head to their classmate's cottage for a night of celebration.