Enjoyment After Exam Quotes

baccalauréat exam, then hopefully get into the Sorbonne, to pursue his education. He was planning to major in literature and art. Much to Joachim’s chagrin, Javier flatly refused to join them. At seventeen, he wanted to live with a friend’s family for a year in Buenos Aires after his mother and brother left, and then go to work after that, without bothering with university. He grudgingly agreed to come to Paris in a year when he finished school, if his mother would allow him to spend the year in Buenos Aires. He didn’t want to graduate in another country, without his friends. His new, wild friends meant more to him than his education or his family. Liese didn’t like the family that Javier wanted to stay with, nor their son, and Joachim was upset at the thought of being separated from his brother for a year. He had never lived away from his twin, and even though they were very different and didn’t always agree, he still felt that Javier was a part of him, like a limb, or his heart, a vital organ he couldn’t imagine losing. He didn’t want to be away from him for a year, but Javier fought like a cat to be left behind. Joachim was always more protective of their mother, and it didn’t seem fair to him to let her go to her new life alone, without her sons, even though Francois was a kind man and would take good care of her. Joachim got along with him particularly well, and Francois enjoyed having a son for the first time. Javier treated him as an unwelcome stranger, an interloper, but Francois warmly invited him to live with them in Paris nonetheless. He knew how important her sons were to his new wife. She had

I remember he said something like ‘this should be completely obvious to you’, and to me that was crushing… we had a conversation after the mid-term exam, in which the class had averaged 20 out of 90. It was 25 years ago, and I still remember what he said: ‘Frustration is necessary for learning. This idea that you can enjoy learning is a very American idea’.” Dan pauses, the memory of that conversation etched on his face. “I felt so offended by that claim. My professor felt that to learn, you had to push yourself. One of my dreams was to go back to Venezuela[7] and start a university, and I vowed that I would write in the walls of the university that frustration was not necessary for learning.

Examinations!” cried Thaw. “It’s all examinations! Must everything we do satisfy someone else before it’s worthwhile? Is everything we do because we enjoy it selfish and useless? Primary school, secondary school, university, they’ve got the first twenty-four years of our lives numbered off for us and to get into the year above we’ve to pass an exam. Everything is done to please the examiner, never for fun. The one pleasure they allow is anticipation: ‘Things will be better after the exam.’ It’s a lie. Things are never better after the exam. You’d think love was something different.

Stories from Beyond the Sea – “I could not believe my good luck!” from Page 31 “Not only was she stunningly beautiful but she was also witty, flirtatious and at the same time understanding and loving, I couldn’t believe my good fortune and did all I could to convince her to stay with me in the United States. After getting married to my young wife Ursula, in a small town in upstate New York, and thinking that the US Navy would be a better option than returning to a life at sea on merchant ships, I took the navy exam to become a student pilot. As a commissioned officer with the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade (LTJR) I enjoyed many benefits that the aviation cadets didn’t get, including having basic living quarters. Having had some prior experience flying the right hand seat in a DC-3 when I was in Liberia, I took to aviation, my new endeavor, like a duck to water.