"This is a very important test," says the n-th lady with a wide smile I see that day. "But it’s nothing to worry about," she adds, seeing my not-too-enthusiastic expression. "Just try to do it as quickly and as carefully as possible," she smiles even more widely.
With a deep-set belief that there is some internal contradiction to her words, I start the test. It turns out that it’s an insult to my intelligence. Which makes the situation all the worse, since, deeply insulted, and strained by two hours of trying to sign up to a British school on top of that, the aforementioned intelligence decides to abandon me completely...
I press the “play” button on the computer screen for the third time. While I manage fairly well on the conventional, written questions, to which I’m used from Polish school, my thoughts are already miles away halfway through the problems that necessitate the use of headphones.
The test is disgustingly practical, and therefore presupposes knowledge of British reality. I’m supposed to click on the check which is filled out correctly – and no one gives a damn about a Pole that might not know what a British check looks like.
I’m being unfair. Oh yes, everyone gives much more than a damn about me. If it hadn’t been for the chemistry teacher that had been helping me out for the whole day, I would’ve been running from one part of the school to another not for two hours, but for five, and my frustration would’ve reached its heights after five, not ninety minutes.
Yes, the first hour-and-a-half was alright, and at times even pleasant. At each turn I was struck by how “American” the British are – smiles almost never leave their faces and kind words almost never leave their lips – words such as “That’s lovely!” and “How can I help you?”. A Pole finds a smile so wide for such trifling reasons difficult to believe, so he says loftily and sarcastically: “How fake!” . I reply that it’s just good manners. It’s hardly reasonable to accuse someone of “fakeness” when, for example, being angry, he doesn’t show his anger.
Besides, if I’m to be sincere (and that, as you can see, is a prime virtue for a Pole), I don’t care much whether the waitress that serves me is really happy or not. I only want her to smile at me and ask me if I have everything I want, because that’s part of her job. And sometimes the mask can become the face; I think that a waitress that smiles more often turns happier. During our first few days in England it felt as if everyone here took a deep liking to us personally. I find it hard to believe that a completely insincere smile could have caused such a feeling.
All this doesn’t alter the fact that after two hours of signing up to school my smile felt unskilfully stuck on and I would’ve liked everyone to just leave me alone, instead of constantly asking me if everything was alright. I was beginning to run short of synonyms for the word “yes”...
It seems that the turning point was somewhere in the office of the maths (not “math”, this is Britain, after all) teacher. I tried to persuade him that I’m really capable of finishing a two-year course of mathematics in a year. "But you won’t be able to attend all the courses, you don’t have enough room in your timetable ," he protests. He’s so persuasive that I begin to believe that the feat I am proposing is indeed impossible. Then I remember that I went to a mathematical school. Explaining this to him is no easy task. You can hardly blame a teacher for doubting a student from a foreign country – and a girl at that! – when she says that she’ll finish a two-year course ( a course that English students often have troubles with) in a year.
Eventually, I managed to persuade him. Nineteen exams in a year was a bit tough, but boy am I glad that I didn’t give up and attend first year courses like he wanted me to – trying not to fall asleep would have been much tougher.
As for the test on that first day of school, I never did find out my results and it seems it was not such an important exam after all.
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