SecondarySchool

When I changed to grammar school, some other things changed too: only two boys of my old class were there with me in my new class, on the new school, the classes were bigger, about 25-30 pupils per class, there were more subjects, eve more boring ones, and the buildings were huge!
I was always very quiet and did not say much. I did rarely put my hand up to say sommething. In elementary school it didn't make much difference, there were fewer kids and who didn't rise the arm, had to say something often anyway, but here itt was different. At the beginning at least my written marks were okay. I started with Latin, instead of English. This Latin class was the beginning of my problems with bullies, and sooon following bad marks (The Latin class was only a course of all the Latin beginners of the classes together.). After a short while teasing was my everyday life, especially my love for horses, which I drawed nearly during all of the lessons, was often used for this purpose. My parents only new about those things long times afterwards, at days I was so frustrated that I never wanted to go back to school, because else I didn't tell much about what happened at school. I only survived these 3 1/2 years, because I had befriended an also shy and quiet girl. She also liked horses, was about as tall or rather small as I was and couldn't swim - just as me (swimming I learned during the holidays between my 6th and 7th school year, while spending our time at a lake). Later on she had also another friend, what I did not understand, but what it made easier for me to leave this school. After those 3 1/2 years I was fed up with this school, and my parents decided to send me to another one, which also was closer to our house.

There I started in Grade 8, I changed schools in the middle of the schoolyear, what is quite unusual. There in this class I must have acted quite cheeky, from what a schoolmate of this time said; from what I remember it was rather confused, because I often did not know, what was required, what I shoul do or should not do. Anyway, I remember a test in Physics, there was a question: 'What is a Nonius? It was meant the scales on a (don't know, kind of ruler?). But because I had not listened to that, I didn't know, and what I wrote instead was 'A Hungarian type/race of Horses' - which was absolutely correct, but was not questioned.
The pupils of this class seemed all to be very grown up, thogh they have not been much older then me!
That is one of the observations I made during my schoolyears: My classmates developed in front of my eyes and quickly overtook me. Everytime I came into a lower class the same happened: Suddenly all the pupils wered ahead of me, an again I hadn'd realised how they did it, without me seeing their trick.

Anyway, I left this class at the end of the schoolyear, because my grades in English were nothing for discussion... (In this school everybody had to learn Englisch as the first foreign language). In this lower class I coped relatively well for a while; at first, I was the 'newby', was something interesting, like everything that is new, but that was reduces quickly, since I did not act, according to what their curiosity expected. Honestly, I still do not know which way of acting would have been correct, I still do not know, what I actually have done wrong, but I was a loner, and didn't stand with the others, I suspect that was a crime.
During the first years in this class, whre I stayed 4 1/2 Years, something happened, which has given me to think long time after it actually happened; in this moment it just irritated: Two girls, identical twins from anothe class of the same Year, who often liked to tease me before, went downstairs next to me in school, and one of them made me trip over her leg on purpose. I tried to keep on a relevant/objective level, took all of my courage, for finally finding out why they did all those nasty things to me, and asked them, what they had against me. Their answer was: Because you are so strange! I was baffled, why was I strange? But instead of keeping cool and asking further questions on how they thought I was strange, I only said in a lame way, because I am in noway quickwitted: So, I am strange, and what are you? - Well, nott strange, was the answer!
My grades were medium from that time on, well, but in many subjects extremely differeing from time to time. In Mathematics e.g. I have had the full spectrum form 1 to 6 (well, 1 was more often than 6, which I had only once during this time in Maths.... [1 ist the best grade]). It always depended on my motivation and my interest in the subject, wheter I was good or bad. For History, Politics or similar subjects I was never enthusiastic, ergo I was always bad in those. In German my level lowerede and lowered, since no longer orthography and grammar stood in the focus of attention, but more and more text-interpretation and analysis of poems, books and orations. In general I was just medium, that didn't even realy change in the upper classes [like 6th form in England], only here you could see the contrast between nearly no to no oral participation and good to very good written participation. Unfortunately also groupwork was favoured by many teachers and was more an d more important, and that was really nothing good for me - it was partially really horror to me. Groupwork was only to work with me in one of two ways: Either, I didn't do anything, was quiet, was not really with the others, that was rather often the case, or, if I knew much about the subject and was enthusiastic about the topic, I did nearly everything on my own, and the others only coul watch and do nearly nothing; what 'real' groupwork is I did never experience. I think I was not able to do real groupwork, probably it is still the same... (at least that was the case in the apprenticeship and study combination, which I started last years autumn and gave up this years february...)

In the 12th grade I got the idea to go to school in England for half a year, and since that was really a fixated idea in my head I really managed it, with great support from my parents. The only condition from my school was, that I had to repeat year 12 after returning to Germany. This condition did not hurt me, because I had no bonding to that class at all, and in the class below some teachers taught, that I preferred anyway. Moreover, this way I had the chance to improve some grades after coming back..