Student Voice

“Not a Normal Year

The year-long pandemic, with its endless and ever-changing restrictions has taken its toll on children as well as adults. We asked three of our students, one from each of the ‘end of division years’ to reflect on their own Covid-19 experience.

A YEAR OF DISCOVERY

To be honest, the way things took a drastic turn in the course of last year didn’t affect me as badly as it did others. I don’t precisely know how I perceived it at the moment but, from where I am now, I reckon it was neither good nor bad, neither traumatic nor idle. Having that said, I do not wish to have to go through it again. Watching motivation videos didn’t help towards the end, as the sun and nice weather were too tempting not to leave school aside and go outside, even if it was just to stay in your backyard. This was, of course, not my experience in a nutshell: it was also a good time to reflect on myself. The “whole thing,” as I am incapable of naming whatever last year was, helped me discover how I function and my limits. School almost seemed like trying to run on a string during lockdown – I was scared of falling and not being able to climb back up. Anxiety. I hadn’t experienced it yet until that day. I don’t necessarily know what I was worried or nervous about. I just think the whole situation was stirring up feelings and ideas I had unconsciously made abstraction of to concentrate on my rather busy life and stay on track. I’d like to think of myself as a pretty balanced person, but this anxiety attack enabled me to discover my limits, which I gladly welcome, because I believe that to be the better version of yourself you need to accept what you are and who you are. You need to accept the irrational thoughts that float in your mind and acknowledge your insecurities to make them your strengths. In terms of milestones or events I am missing, I don’t necessarily give a great importance to that, as I genuinely don’t know what I am missing this year in comparison to the Amsterdam trip in Cinquième, which honestly, is legendary. For example, we are currently in January and towards this time there used to be the Snow Ball Dance for the Troisièmes, which seems like a fun event, but not knowing too much about it I do not think I am affected as much as I could have

been.

I don’t make a list of all the things I am missing, but try to see what life has to offer. I wake up everyday not hoping for a better day but wishing for a good day. I sometimes think of how life would be if everything was back to normal again but what is “normal” anymore?

Clementine Djomby, Troisième

THE CHEESE TOUCH

What do the ‘cheese touch’, an Egyptian mummy, and dirty laundry have in common? Covid-19! The ‘cheese touch’ is from Diary of a Wimpy Kid, where a student accidentally touches a piece of moldy cheese. Now everyone that touches him or her is contaminated and catches the ‘cheese touch.’ Except that’s just a story, but with Covid-19, it’s for real. Just the idea that a microscopic thing like a virus can kill hundreds of thousands of people is depressing. And even if I don’t get sick from the coronavirus, I can still contaminate others. Since the beginning of the epidemic, I’ve barely been able to hug my sweet, gentle and lonely great-grandmother. Mémé is 88 years old, she lives by herself in the countryside, and never goes out of her house. I hate thinking of her being alone, and I miss playing board games with her. But I couldn’t possibly give her the cheese touch!

A good way to protect your family is to take a Covid-19 test. Before flying to the US for the holidays, I resented the nurse sticking a

STEALING VICTORY BY LAUGHING AT DEFEAT

What’s it like being a Terminale in a global pandemic? A friend of mine described it as being locked in an “unfaltering rhythm of exhaustion,” and I think that that would be the general consensus of almost anyone you’d ask at this time. In the past, we’ve been able to counterbalance the intensity of academic pressure with moments of release -- breaks from cycles of fatigue and mundane routine, whether that’s hanging out with friends, playing sports, partying, or just getting out to do things you enjoy.

But there’s no release valve; it feels like we’re expected to constantly function at maximum capacity without any time to recover, like running a marathon at a sprinting pace. Missing out on some milestones, spending our last year of high school either at the Lycée or in our rooms seems incredibly anticlimactic and has caused a common feeling of something missing; there’s an emptiness about this year.

And yet I’ve found that there is actually a lot of good to be gleaned from this experience. What I’ve found refuge in the most, though, is redirecting some of my frustration and unspent energy into positive outlets such as attacking an ambitious reading list. At the Lycée in general and especially in Terminale, there is always a better, more productive way to spend one’s time than reading for fun. I should be making fiches de revision! Or getting ahead on my work. What about that exam that’s coming up? Maybe I’d be better off annotating books that I actually have to study...but to be honest I could care less.

If this year has been an example of anything, it’s the crazed, hyper-anxious, competitive nature of most students here, and how this system tends to bring out the worst of panic and insecurity in us during times of stress. It’s like watching little gerbils frantically roll around inside their exercise balls, working themselves up almost to the point of getting a heart attack if you look at them wrong. I mean, all people talk about is how much work they have, how they have to study for whatever presentation they have that day, how stressed out they are, how they cry when they get home. There’s more to life than this, isn’t there? The last time I cried I was listening to music, not getting a test back. Being in a highpressure environment is no excuse, in my opinion, to drive yourself to the brink of insanity.

A quote from John Steinbeck’s East of Eden that I find pretty striking seems fitting now more than ever. It’s about the proud, driven father of the family, Samuel Hamilton, succumbing to illness:

Samuel looked up at Tom with clear eyes and said, ‘I’ll have to get up,’ tried it and sat weakly back, chuckling - the sound he made when any force in the world defeated him. He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

Even if the world around us is crumbling--which it is, somewhat-I think there’s an active choice to be made between allowing defeat to take hold of you and doing something about it, whether it’s something tangible or even just a shift in attitude. So I’ve been trying to let the sane part of me take the reins for a while; reading, working out, listening to and making music, focusing on the things that I’m passionate about, and it makes the interminable string of days more bearable.

Jana McGovern, Terminale

strange plastic swab up my nose. It made me feel like an Egyptian mummy having its brain picked! The worst part is I had to do the test twice, but that’s a story for another time. Even if it was unpleasant, it was worth it, because it allowed me to visit my family for the holidays and spend Christmas with our American grandparents for the first time ever (we usually go for summer vacation). Even though we confined ourselves the whole time to be safe, it felt great to be with family and experience a real American Christmas with snow. Now I’ve explained the ‘cheese touch’ and the Egyptian mummy. But what about the dirty laundry? Well, despite all the negative aspects of the pandemic, this year has taught me a few lessons too: autonomy, resilience, and even learning the word resilience! I became rather resilient because I had to deal with fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. And I gained independence because with my parents working from home, it would seem like I would get more help. But in fact, they are busier than ever, so I learned to do a lot by myself, like organizing my work or doing my own laundry!

All in all, my 5th grade year was not that bad, because now, I feel prepared for the future. Hard situations like quarantine, canceled plans, or massive changes will be easier to handle. So, moving up to Sixième should be a piece of cheese… I mean cake!

Ian Cannon, Grade 5 (pictured with twin sister, Eléonore)

A Fresh Take on Admissions

Often, when I’m speaking with prospective families, of Français Spéciale, another seismic shift occurred in this I find myself intrigued by the link that exists between the area during the confinement as our FS colleagues accepted, world headlines and our small office here in St. Germain: most of them for the first time ever, to interview candidates Fukushima, Brexit, Cap-21, a new President (either side of online. As our former FS families can attest, acceptance to the pond!) have all had a ripple effects on our applications the FS program has always been contingent upon an on-site over the years. Last winter, the news coming from China assessment, regardless of how far away a family lives, so this about a new, deadly virus seemed very isolated and far away. was a welcome change that we expect should carry over into Yet, it did impact our testing as early as January, when we the future. had to cancel on-site testing for several prospective families flying in from China. Naively, we presumed that these would be isolated incidents! By early March, the events in Asia were suddenly on our doorstep and we hurriedly began to make contingency plans for testing. To be clear, we did not have a single online test available from Pre-K to Sixième so the task before us was monumental. The biggest hurdle was for maternelle. How in the world do you adapt a 45-minute in-person test for three and four year-olds to a virtual medium? How can they truly interact on a small screen? Beccy Haugen, our Lower School Principal, singlehandedly took on the task of converting our assessments, often creating support materials from scratch because of copyright concerns in an online setting. Training was done rapidly and as soon as one

The other thing assessment was validated, the teachers seemed to that stands out already be waiting for the next one to be uploaded. in my mind from I’m still not sure when Beccy slept! Overall, seven an admissions online tests were created and 134 individual tests perspective is the were administered online across 15 different time sheer volume of zones in less than four weeks. All of this was done Beyond the frenetic pace and the uncertain news that families who have while our Lower School teachers were still covering has affected all of us this past year, what also stands out in my mind from an admissions perspective is the sheer been uprooted by their regular classes via Zoom. volume of families who have been uprooted by the pandemic. We received requests for immediate entry straight through the pandemic. For Middle School and Upper School, we were October and the number of inquiries has never been so high. There has even been an uptick in inquiries and applications fortunate to have completed from families within the Ile de France region, as many are written exams for all of our local candidates and many of moving out of Paris to the suburbs, presumably to find more our overseas applicants before the lockdown. In almost all living space. These trends all appear to be continuing in the cases, final decisions were made based upon a candidate’s 2021-2022 admissions season. file. Some interviews were conducted online for a shortlist of Français Spéciale (FS) candidates at these levels. Speaking Lisa Stephens, Director of Admissions