What's happening in your world?

[redchild]

I do too! It seems strange to me, the thought of having to straddle two years with one year of school…is it confusing for those of you who have actually had to do it? I guess if that’s “the way it is” then that’s what you become used to but it is difficult for me to grasp that, if I went to the US, I may start my senior year of schooling in, say, 2010 and then finish it mid-2011. It just seems so much easier beginning a new school year at the beginning of a new calendar year.

Yeah that would be a lot easier to keep track of the time spent in school. Starting and ending a school year with New Year's in between gets pretty confusing when you have to fill out applications that ask for specific dates.

Thanks redchild. As his ‘teacher’ for the first eight of his thirteen years of schooling (including his preschool year), his finally graduating probably seems more personal and significant to me than it may have if I had not had any direct input into his education. I could be wrong…

Wow I didn't know that, that's awesome.

There are so many different pathways to an equivalent destination on offer nowadays that there isn’t such a great pressure on school-leavers to ‘decide’ as there once was (at least, that's the case here in Australia).

Completely agree. Most people I know in college are spending a lot more time than the traditional four-year plan to get their degree. The world is so much more complex now that I don't think universities can really keep up. It's really up to the individual to make their own path.