It's been a long day for me. Between 1 and 4 pm, my mentor would call me with the results of my Central Examination. The big question: were my results good enough to graduate?
The answer: YES!
So, after the age-old Dutch tradition, it was time to raise the flag! We don't have a flagpole, so I just duct-taped the flag and my backpack to an old broom and taped that to the windowsill.

 After nine months of hard work, I did it: I graduated high school :)

As I told in the guest post for Teenage Blogger Central, the Dutch seniors pull pranks on the rest of the school on their very last day before Central Examinations start. This day is traditionally called 'Kolderdag'. Kolderdag was forbidden at my school because some idiots flooded the school hall. The school hall didn't like that and the floor boards decided to act like a sponge and eventually turned into a swamp. So no more Kolderdag pranks at Krimpenerwaard College...
Until a brave group of vwo-students did the unexpected: they asked permission for a prank and got it! So last Thursday night, my classmates and I made sure the school would never forget us and our pranks.

I was photobombed XD

'Harmless' pranks

If everything goes according to plan, I'll get my diploma on June 26th. A four hour ceremony will take place on that day in the school hall. I had no idea how this could possibly take four whole hours, but now I know. Part of the tradition, part that I never knew of, is that the mentors of the graduates tell a little something about their graduates.
My mentor is a good guy, but when he handed out the sheets with questions to base his speeches on, he should have known he was making a mistake. S.D. and I did mine together, which always means ridiculousness. My mentor surely wasn't expecting this to happen.

Name: Envy Fisher

Study: German at Hogeschool Rotterdam (decided to switch from English to German at the very last moment)

What are your positive features?

• sense of humor!!! (says S.D.)
• smart
• great memory for pointless stuff, like the number of days left till the next Marvel movie (see 'things I'll remember')

What are your negative features?

Today I went to my final Latin class. For six years I've studied a language that no one speaks, a language that is annoyingly complex and freakishly weird (what language needs seven different verbs that all mean 'to kill'?! Or a word for elegant feet?!).
I am going to miss those classes. I've always liked Latin, saw it as a puzzle I had to solve. There were times when I was less than amused by a certain poem I had to translate.  But when I look back on the last six years, Latin was definitely my favorite subject. I'm also quite good at it. When most people hear that, they ask me stuff like: 'How do you say 'I want to be a flying pig when I grow up' in Latin?'. I always give them the same answer: 'No idea.'

Some actual information
The focus of my Latin classes was on translating, speaking Latin was never part of the curriculum. Why? Because it's way to hard. Romans like to throw all their words into a blender, blend them, take a quick look to see if their sentence-smoothies are confusing enough already and when they are, blend them some more just to make sure. No worries though, they've got a complex system of cases to make sense of their nonsense: the subject is in the nominativus, the genitivus is used for property and ownership stuff (excuse my lack of Englishness today), the indirect object is in the dativus and the object in the accusativus. Everything else is in the ablativus. To make it more confusing: every noun has another way of changing when it's in another case and prepositions and verbs can have influence on the case, but not always.
What's more? Oh right, almost forgot about that: Romans hate subjects, so they presume you know who or what is the subject when you see the end of the finite verb. So amas means 'you love', but amat means 'he loves'. And then, because the Romans have fifty thousend different tenses in present, past and future, verbs can change even more. So amavit means 'he loved', but then amabit means 'he will love'. Good thing the Romans didn't have computers; a typo would have been a downright disaster.

And you're still asking me if I can speak Latin? Okay, okay, I speak a little Latin. Four sentences to be exact. And they aren't exactly helpful either...

'Habeo famem'
Habeo: to have, first person, present tense, 'I have' 
Famem: accusativus of the word fames, meaining 'hunger'
In correct English: I am hungry

If you ever find yourself in the streets of Ancient Rome, hungry after a really good gladiator fight but without a clue of where to get yourself some food, you could tell people you're hungry by saying 'habeo famem'.
Warning: though there were some nice lads who called themselves emperors and handed out bread to the hungry and the poor, there were also some assholes who got to be emperors. Be careful when you say 'habeo famem'; it might get you some food, it might get you killed by annoyed emperors and no matter who the actual emperor is at that moment, there's always a chance of getting killed by other Romans who just don't like your hungry ass.

'Mortuusne es?'
Mortuus: 'dead'
Ne: shows us we're dealing with a question, otherwise totally useless
Es: to be, second person, present tense, 'you are'
In correct English: Are you dead?

Apparently, this is what they ask the pope when the poor guy dies in his sleep, chokes on his food, gets attacked by the stubborn pigeons of Rome or whatever. If the pope dies, someone, probably a cardinal (I wasn't paying attention when this was told), picks him up or shakes the old guy a little or dangles him from one of the balconies of the Vatican and asks: 'Mortuusne es?'
If the pope responds, he's obviously not dead. If the pope doesn't respond, he is dead and the people of the Vatican can be proud of themselves for asking a dead person in Latin if he was dead.

'Jupiter in templo sedet'
Jupiter: Roman version of Zeus
in templo: in the temple (yeah, sometimes it's as easy as that)
sedet: to sit, thrid person, present tense, 'sits'
In correct English: Jupiter sits in the temple.

The most useless sentence I've ever learned is also the one I'll never forget. It was the first sentence I ever translated. Jupiter sits in the temple. Good for Jupiter. Now can we get on to the more interesting things? Nope, first we have to translate five more sentences telling me that Jupiter sits next to Juno and he has a scepter... Halfway through my first Latin class, I was bored to death with Jupiter. Six years later, I still am.

'Cucurbitam describe!'
Cucurbitam: accusativus of cucurbita, meaning 'pumpkin'
Describe: imperative of describere, meaning 'to draw'
In correct English: Draw a pumpkin!

The silliest sentence I translated must be this one. Draw a pumpkin!
There's a story behind it, though. Once upon a time in Ancient Rome, there was an emperor who had his head up his ass and thought he was the greatest architect of all times. He forgot about the truly great architect Apollodorus, who had been the most important architect in Roman Europe when Trajanus was emperor. So the empreror, Hadrian (yes, the guy from the wall), showed Apollodorus his blueprints, which weren't actual blueprints back then, but as I said, my English isn't at it's best today.
Apollodorus took a look and wasn't impressed. Not at all. Apollodorus was insulted by the arrogance of Hadrian and said to the emperor: 'You know nothing about architecture! Cucurbitam describe! Draw a pumpkin!'
BURN! Nah, not really, because Hadrian felt threatened by Apollodorus and had him killed. And then they lived happily ever after. Except Apollodorus of course.

Can you curse in Latin, Envy?
No. Just no. I can command people to draw a pumpkin. I can tell them I'm hungry. I can ask them if they're dead. I can even tell you in which temple Jupiter likes to sit on his ass and argues with his wife and be proud of his scepter (that sounded wrong, but I didn't mean it that way. Honestly, I didn't. Maybe I read too much Catullus poems). But that's it. I'm sorry, but that 's it.

Vale!
Your blogger Invidia Piscator
Muahaha, see what I did there? That's right, I said goodbye in Latin and translated my own name to Latin. So maybe I can curse in Latin. You'll never know ;)

It's that time of my senior year again: exam week! It's fun for all, except the seniors...
After dedicating half of my break to school, I didn't want to go back. I felt like I wasn't prepared for it, mostly because this week would start with Dutch, the subject I had almost failed last time...
Every time I looked at the clock this morning, I thought: nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Sadly, that was the most intelligent thought I had today.

Replace scantron by dictionary and you know how I felt

Last time I went into exam week, I had nightmares. First up was History and I kept dreaming about 1473. I still have no idea what happened in 1473.
This time I slept well. No nightmares. Only waking up with my head in the clouds - clouds of fear.
Dutch is one of my better subjects, so I shouldn't be worrying about it. But last time I scored only 5.7 out of 10 points. Yes, that is bad and when you're name is Envy, it's a down right disaster. Today I had the chance of getting that grade up by writing. This exam is all about blurting out as much facts on a piece of paper as you can. It's got nothing to do with the kind of writing I like.
I decided to take the pen E. gave me for my birthday. Thought it would bring me luck. Until I realized I had no clue where I'd left it. My thoughts went from 'nope, nope, nope, nope, nope' to 'where's my pen, where's my pen, where's my freaking pen?!'
After running up and down the stairs twice, I remembered where I'd left it. By that time my mother thought I'd finally gone fully crazy and wanted to get me on medication...

Before the exam started, I was talking to L. and V. about the upcoming exams. Turned out I wasn't the only one who was scared out of her mind. You should have seen my at this point, holding on to my favorite pen as if the world was going to end if I let go of it. Then I checked my phone and found out I had a message from E. that came in with a six day slight delay. Not only did that message make my day, it also felt like a sign: everything was going to be fine.

At 8.30 the big moment was finally there. I could go into the gymnasium and save my grade. Instead, I went nope-nope-nope-ing again when I saw my assignment. 'Write a piece based on information you got through interviews'.  I looked at my drafts. I had nothing about interviews. Luckily I had the option to choose between two assignments. The second one was a whole lot easier. Now, seven hours later, I feel like I aced that assignment!

My day wasn't over just yet. We still had to go through another one of those vague Social Studies tests.
All my friends where in the library, studying their brains out. I was sitting inbetween M. and Roos, still going 'nope, nope, nope, nope, nope'.
I heard everyone talk about integration an segregation and the Islam and Christianity. I only said: 'Nope, I'm not going to study until the last second. No point in that, nope.'
13.30 and our test began.
14.10 and I left. Once again, I felt like I aced it.

So yeah, I was stressed. But for once, I had faith in myself (yes, that's a first). Maybe I should always go 'nope' when I have to go through exam week. Going into exam week without expectations makes coming out without dying or killing your last three brain cells a whole lot easier.

My exam week is almost over. One more on Monday (German Literature) and then I'm done.
Exam week was nothing like I had imagined it.
Stressful? A little.
Scary? Only on day 1.
Frustrating? Totally.
After this week my brain feels like it's been stir fried or made into a pudding. You know I love reading, but over the last couple of days the only thing I seemed capable of was playing Lego Batman on my battered, old vintage Nintendo DS.
I know I actually should be revising for my German Literature exam, but my pudding-brain says NO every time I look at the book. So instead I'm going all out on everything that went wrong in my exam week - so far.

History
I already posted about my first exam, about the correctHuguenots. I thought things couldn't get more stupid than this. Later on, I found out it could. Keep reading, my friend, and you'll discover that Dutch exams can be so... moronic (hint: it's mostly English exams that are stupid).

Math
If you've read this blog for a while, you know that I suck at Math. And even though E. had tutored me, I felt very incapable. At first I just sat there thinking about everything except Math.
When I finally started working, I discovered that I knew how to answer the first question, a small miracle.
But then I became hungry. We're allowed to have some food with us, so I had this brownie on my table yelling: 'Eat me, eat me! I know you want to!'
And my belly was like: 'You know he's right. Eat him.'
So the brownie, which was in a wrapper, had to be unwrapped, otherwise it would be distracting me during the rest of the exam (which was a full three hours). But as soon as I touched the wrapper it started crackling and making noises as if it were being killed. I swear to God, every sound seems loud in a quiet gymnasium, and this sounded as if World War Three had begun by bombing my school...
So I gave up on the brownie. And on the Math (until the last five minutes ofcourse, when I suddenly knew all the answers).

English
Now this was an exam I was actually looking forward to. It was a literature exam, for which we had to read George Orwell's 1984 (on which I'm going to do a post later on, because I wasn't allowed to have an opinion on it at school, so I'll do that here) and some short stories.
Our teacher had told us that themes and symbols would be an important part of the exam, so my friends and I spent two hours analyzing the stories. I even enjoyed it.
I was well prepared and when I sat down at my table, I thought: I'm gonna ace this test.
And then the test came.
Question 1: Goldstein is the ............. of Big Brother
Question 2: Mrs. Parsons is Winston's ..............
On the dots we had to fill in 'enemy' and 'neighbor'. This made me so frustrated. The whole exam was on a level of such utter stupidity that even in 8th grade I would've passed it.
But then there was the second part (the first part was all about 1984) which had questions such as: 'Jeb's mom did something. What did she do and why did this shock the MC?' When I looked up what Jeb's mom did (I only knew what she symbolized, not what she did), I found out that she actually did three different things, and all of these shocked the main character.
Oh, and last but not least, my favorite question on the exam:
Leo asks Toni if she's got the pink slip with her. Is the pink slip:

• A) A piece of underwear
• B) A parking ticket
• C) The title-deed of the car

Well, seeing that these people are trying to sell their car, I think the correct answer must be A, a piece of Toni's underwear.

Biology
One word: disaster.
The sleeves of my hoodie got caught on a splinter that stuck out of the ancient wooden tables and the exam itself looked more like chemistry (I class I dropped way back in 9th grade because I didn't understand it and I always set everything on fire).
Moving on.

Latin
This exam was the highlight of my week. Well, not the exam itself, but what happened between Biology and Latin (these two were on the same day, but with four full hours of nothingness inbetween them). I went home with M. and we were going to revise for this exam. We ended up playing with her cat and watching Top Gear.
When we had to go back to school for our exam, we encountered a little problem... You see, my school is located in my hometown, which is separated from M.'s hometown by a river. There's one way to get to the other side: This bridge

Bridge! Why u no stay closed?!

And then, just as we wanted to cross the bridge, it opened. For a cargo ship. And we couldn't get to the other side anymore...

Exam week changes you. I had already seen it happen to my friends when the had exams last year. But when E. started about flipping and tripping and shaking I thought it was slightly exaggerated. I'd be fine. It wouldn't be that bad.

It's one of those weird Dutch traditions: when high school students graduate, they raise the flag (and their old school bag) in their yard. Or in my case: tack or staple it to the wooden section of the front of our house since we don't have a flag pole. I'll worry about that later. Senior year has only just started. I'm going to have a great time. That, or die underneath an avalanche of study books.

The first week passed without any major difficulties. There's a new freshman who's got the locker above me. I'm glad she's a quick learner: whenever she sees me coming she steps aside so we can use our lockers at the same time. The last guy who had that locker needed the last five years to learn this.

I'm already looking forward to graduation. Since one of the librarians wisjed me luck and said: 'We're going for that flag!' it's become my ultimate goal for this year. I want to achieve so much. My mom thinks it's a bit too much.
I'm going to do a 'pre-college college course' in Enlgish literature. I'm going to tutor freshmen. I'm going to run a 5k race in less than 25 minutes (not school related, but one of my big goals for this year). And ofcourse I'm going to graduate.

I haven't felt this confident about anything in ages. I feel like there's nothing that can stop me. Okay, I admit that there's one thing. But since that thing graduated last year and can't distract me from my homework anymore, I think everything will be fine.
I'm going for that flag and I won't stop until I'm stapling it to the front of our house!