School’s out – not only for summer, but for EVER

When I was in Year 7 – that’s First Year if Harry Potter is your major source of information about the British education system – we had to decide whether we were aural, visual or kinetic learners. As in, is it easiest to learn if the teacher tells you or you recite it, if you read it in a book or write it down, or if you act it out or make a dance or something to remember it.

I can’t remember what I said then, but I now know I’m a visual learner. I’m that person who colour-codes every folder, who loves writing out lists prioritising tasks to be accomplished and tick them off as they are done, who crosses off days on the calendar and who puts loads of food colouring into the icing on their cakes.

My point is that because I approach life visually, it’s reached the point that I can’t really sort out how I’m feeling unless I write it down. It could be trying to figure out why I always argue with my father, contemplating my split national identity, trying to decide whether I like somebody or not, or in this case, a pro-con list.

No, not a pro-con Iceland list, but a Student v. Au-Pair list.

I've been talking with my hsot about the possibility of coming as a studen rather than an au-pair, principally because I wanted to learn Icelandic, so II was hoping for some sort of part-time language course. But when I got some more details, I realised the thing this organisation would offer isn't right for me.

You attend secondary school/high school 25 to 30 hours a week (i.e. full time, every weekday), for months and months. The school term started a month ago, and I’m a month too old for the programme. It actively discourages you travelling around Iceland independently and expects you to study what an Icelandic teenager would study… so, not Icelandic as a foreign language. It’s all wrong! That’s just the tip of the iceberg! If you know me, you know how much I hate[d] school and I will NOT do that again. No more maths, no more science, no more history, no more anything than language study. Also, I would only have three weeks off between now and mid-May, and I would have to do lots of orienteering with this AFS organisation, and I would have to PAY, and, and, and -

Really, I don’t want to do this. I want to be an au-pair. I want to be paid, have jobs, learn Icelandic (which I can do better I think by not going to this school!) and be able to travel to see friends and the rest of Iceland.

But before I decided that I had to write everything out in 100% detail or else it’d all be a muddle in my head.

Can you tell?

P.S. The good thing is it seems that I can go on this other volunteering thing with SEEDS near Christmas. Yay!