School life and gap year

This is going to be a longer post so grab a cup of tea or coffe, snuggle up, lean back and get ready for a lot of reading!

If you didn't already knew : the German school system always changes (at least the time you have to spent in high school) and I feel like its way more complicated than the American or the British school system. 

You obviously go to kindergarten, four years primary school and then you have to decide which school you will be going to next. There is a school called "hauptschule" (graduation when you are around 14-15), a school called "realschule" which is kinda like middle school (graduation when you are around 15-16) and "gymnasium" which is like high school (at the moment you graduate when you are 17-18 but it'll soon change to 18-19). 

Differently gifted children go to different types if schools - the more intelligent you are the longer you have to go to school (which is, if you think about it, really stupid haha). 

When you went to high school you'll be able to go to university afterwards. When you stopped school after any other school you can only start working in a job which doesn't require studies (but when you've been in middle school you can still go to high school afterwards!).

I decided to go to high school, even though my parents wanted me to go to middle school because they thought I couldn't handle the pressure or something like that.

In year 10 I had to decide in which subjects I want to take my finals in and I chose art, german, geography, english and biology. I also have to attend classes in math, religious education, sports (which pulls down my average SO MUCH because I always fail at team sports) for 4 semesters and politics, history and something like theater for two semesters. I also had to choose jurisprudence for 4 semesters and I chose spanish for 2 semesters, too.

My schedule at the moment

As soon as this semester ends and the 1,5 last and final one starts I'll have to write many exams which will be important for my graduation and then in May 2015 : my finals which will be followed by my graduation and prom in July (only if I pass my finals but neither I nor my teachers think that I'll fail so I'm optimistic)!

I think I am able to say that I'm a good student. In Germany, the grades in the last two years go from a scale from 0 to 15 (15 is the best).

Currently my average is somewhere around 11 (I'd like it to be better, but I'm still proud of it!).

At the moment I'm still 16 and if I would want to start going to university after I graduated I would have to apply to different universities right now but I still don't know what I want to do with my life. In my opinion it's kinda unrealistic to expect students to know what they want to do the rest of their lifes when they're only 16 or 17. We're all still so young! 

I definitely can't decide something so important right now, so I decided to focus on getting a good graduation grade which will give me the opportunity to do nearly everything I could imagine later on in my life. 

So, I'll take a gap year next summer and I plan on doing an aupair year in America or in the UK to improve my English and to have better chances at the job market when I'm older (because I definitely want to do something with the English language). I'm really into America, their lifestyle and the landscapes and I really want to experience it myself but at the same time I'm afraid of being a 12h flight away from my family and friends so the United Kingdom would be a great alternative because it's really pretty and interesting, too (and I'd only be 1-2h away from home, yay!). Maybe I do both, who knows. I'm a real family person so I'm not really sure what to do now. I want ro travel A LOT during my gap year but I think I won't have enough money for that (I don't have time for a job at the moment..) and I hope I'll know what I want to study when that year is over! 

That's all I can think of right now (and I think it's enough anyways haha!!) but if you have any questions or suggestions what I can do in my gap year feel free to message me.

xx