"Interesting"

Doing an activity today on probability. Students had to say how probable it was that this would be their best year (or something like that). Two of them said it was highly probable because their kid/grandkid had got into a new school.

No comment. Just thought it was an interesting take on students here.

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Another student - a freshman in his job - have I mentioned the whole 'freshman' thing before? It's used to refer to people in their jobs. They then use 'second year', 'third year', etc. I still find this quite strange but, in Japan, remember that a majority enter their first (and sometimes only) job straight from university and so it is seen this way - unlike in England where we chop and change jobs so much.

So, this guy studied sports training or sports management, or something like that but wasn't interested in doing a related career (again, pretty typical here, in my experience), didn't know what to do, and so ended up working for an optician's where he does eye tests, etc all day and fits people for contact lenses. Now, I don't know, but I would imagine in England you'd need to qualify in optometry or something to be able to do this, wouldn't you?

He described his life as a student. Unusually for a Japanese student, he lived in halls of residence. A flat of 20 people. All studying the same course, but from different years. The younger students were required to cook for, run the bath for, clean up after, etc, the older students. At university.

Hmmm. Different worlds, aren't they?