So we’re nearing the end of school, and I’m in my fifth year of high school, which means that in less than 20 days I’ll begin my exams to graduate from high school (don’t really know how this works in America, but here in Italy we have 2 written tests, first one being Italian and 2nd one being, in my case, computer science, and an oral test spacing through all subjects). This year the format of the oral exam was completely revamped mid-year by the government and everybody freaked out, including the teachers, because nobody knows how it’s actually gonna look.
Basically, candidates will now be given a “document” containing some material (an image probably) and they’ll have to start talking and bridging together all the subjects, from history and Italian to English to computer science. This is all new. For this reason, our school decided that we’d do a simulation to actually show us what it’s gonna be like and picked a couple of students out of every class. I volunteered.
Long story short, I crushed it. Apparently my simulated exam was outstanding and they gave me 20 out of 20 points, and when I was done everybody started clapping at me, teachers and peers.
The next day, a very big IT company had a conference at our school to talk to us about what they do and asked if anyone wanted to have a “mock up” job interview to show students how it’s done. My computer science teacher pushed it on me and I did it. Once again, the interviewer was super happy and told me that had it been an actual interview I would have gotten the job. When I was asked about my skills, I mentioned speaking English and was asked to do a part of the interview in English, which I did and impressed everyone (statistically, not a whole lot of people speak English in Italy, it’s really something that gives you an edge if you can do it). They said they’ll consider hiring me in the future.
So yeah, these two days have been pretty good. Still, I’ll begin university last year and my plan would be to work while I’m also studying for university, and for how motivated I am, I can help but be scared by all of this in the back of my mind. I’ll suddenly have no time and will be thrown into adult life very quickly.
I hope I won’t regret not taking a year off after high school before starting with all of this. I have very high career goals but I also wonder if I’ll ever have free time from now on.
