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Sounds like you live in a place with middle schools. Our system goes straight from elementary 7th grade to high school 8th grade. I grew up with middle school
by klyrs 3y ago
Sounds like you live in a place with middle schools. Our system goes straight from elementary 7th grade to high school 8th grade. I grew up with middle schools and think they make a lot more sense.
That said, I'd rather a "wait until 18th"...
- gnicholas 3y agoWe have a mix of schools that start with K, 4th, or 6th and end with 8th. Where are you that high school starts with 8th grade? is that still called "freshman year"? I'm in California and have never seen a school like that.
- klyrs 3y agoWell technically, we call it "grade 8" rather than "8th grade" (and that I slip up here is a tell that I'm a foreigner) and it's technically "secondary school" but I don't hear people call it that. High schoolers don't have cutsey names for the grades. They're just... in grade 8, in grade 12, etc. This is in Canada.
- gnicholas 3y agoThey don't refer to "senior year"? I don't think of that as cutesy at all — just descriptive. Do you refer to university by these 'cutesy' names? Or is it grade 13-16?
- klyrs 3y agoCaveat, my kid is still in elementary school, and I don't really interact with high schoolers yet. In my time in university here, I didn't hear that language being used. Wikipedia tells me that Canadians use "first year" to indicate its first year students, but "frosh week" is a thing. I did my undergrad in the US, though. Even there, if I ever heard somebody say "sophomore," it would have come from the mouth of a confused freshman.
- gnicholas 3y agoCan I ask what region you went to college in? I'm familiar with schools in several regions (went to college in PA and graduate school at a UC) and people regularly used these terms IME. I'm curious to know where they're not used (or if this is a more recent development — I graduated law school 15 years ago).
- WheatMillington 3y agoThis is a very American thing. Here in New Zealand, you just refer to the year you're in. No one says "freshman" (whatever that means), or "senior". It's just "I'm in year x". Same at university - I don't know what all the names you give your years refer to exactly, and doesn't it get confusing between 3, 4 and 5 year programmes of study?
- gnicholas 3y agoIt doesn't get confusing during undergrad, since pretty much everyone is in a 4-year program. Graduate schools are different: in law school are a 1L/2L/3L, most masters programs are first-year or second-year (since there are no other years), and PhD programs often don't use years because people take different amounts of time to finish. But in undergrad, it's all pretty standardized, at least in my experience.