Senior students in our school have been very busy these days; studying, completing school assignments, taking exams, working on their finals and preparing for state graduation exams are all part of their everyday school obligations. The following texts were written by two of those students, Leona Šućur and Paola Koščić, and in them they expressed some of their thoughts about Civil Engineering Secondary School, their expectations, plans and hopes for the future.

Written by: Sanja Bura

MY FOUR YEARS OF HIGH SCHOOL

Choosing secondary school I would attend for four years wasn’t really difficult  for me.  As a child I used to play with Lego bricks putting together cube buildings while other girls played with dolls. I also loved to draw.  I read a lot about Civil Engineering Secondary School on the school website and I wanted to go to a bigger city because I am from a small town in Istria. No one in my family is into architecture, nor do they know anything about it, so I wanted to change family tradition and study architecture.

Being from a small town where there are not many people and arriving to a big city all by myself was a big change for me. I spent my first year in Rijeka getting to know the city, its people, their tradition and attitudes, and I liked that. In school I had to get used to new subjects and teachers who teach them. I made a lot of friends in my class and in my dorm. In my first year of high school I learned a lot about architecture, its history, its importance for the world, and about famous architects who worked wonders.

After the period of adjustment in my first year, the second year of high school passed quickly even though it was much more demanding for me in terms of studying. And then the third year started. Everything was fine at the beginning but the onset of the worldwide pandemic changed everything. I dare say that 2020 was the most difficult period in my entire life. In 2020 my parents divorced, my opinion of people changed, I had online classes and I couldn’t hang out with friends. I was locked up four times for two weeks, no family, no friends, I was alone. School was a little easier in terms of exams and testing, but there wasn’t much knowledge to be gained from online education.

I’m in fourth grade now and I don’t have online lessons anymore, we all came back to schools. As a senior, I can say that there is a lot of pressure on me and my colleagues. We have a lot of programs, exams, graduation, enrollment in college. A lot of difficult decisions about our future education and the future of our work and life await us. COVID-19 is still here but we do our best not to think about the virus and everything that happened last year.

I am grateful for these four years in this school, I learned a lot about architecture.  The teachers were there as a support and taught us about everything, not only about architecture but also about life. I haven’t made up my mind yet about what I want to study. I don’t know if it is going to be architecture or something else, but whatever it is, I hope I’ll successful in it and, beyond everything else, that I’ll be happy.

Leona Šućur, 4 AT

THE END OF ONE CHAPTER IN MY LIFE

I have been attending Civil Engineering Secondary School, department for construction engineers, for three and a half years now and with the graduation approaching and the beginning of a new chapter in my life, I often find myself thinking about the time spent in this school. I chose Civil Engineering Secondary School because my parents are engineers and I have always been interested in it. I also spoke to some of the former students of this school who had told me that I wouldn’t regret my school choice. And they were right.

My first year of high school was a bit tough because I needed some time to adjust to many new subjects, teachers and classmates. Our teachers knew that so they gradually led us into the beautiful world of architecture. In the next four years we had a number of general and vocational subjects, and as it turned out    computer science was one one pretty important subject. There we were taught how to use a drawing program called  AutoCAD which we had to use throughout our entire education and I have to admit it was a big challenge for me.

The most difficult period of high school for me was the third grade. School started as usual in September  but soon our teachers started a strike that lasted for some time. In that period we had no school and many students were happy about that but what we didn’t know was that it wasn’t going to end well. Soon after the strike had finished, a global pandemic began in March and everything was closed. We were forced to do online school. When you are going to a school such as this one, online school is not easy. Our teachers did everything in their power to help us but is wasn’t as good as real school. We couldn’t come back to school so the school year finished in June online. That year was hard for everyone. Not to mention the fact that we couldn’t go on our graduation trip that we all had been really looking forward to.

Now, in my final year, we had online classes, but luckily only for two weeks. Since we don’t know if we are going back to online school again, our teachers started working faster with us because we, the seniors, leave school earlier and there is still a lot of work to be done. Teachers are also preparing us for matura exams we are taking in June. Needless to say, we didn’t get to have our prom because of the pandemic which has probably made our generation one of the rare ones that missed out on both a prom and a graduation trip.

In conclusion,  I would like to say that this school really did fill all my expectations and in four years I learnt a lot about architecture, engineering and constructing big projects. Our teachers did a good job in preparing us for future education and we can be thankful for everything they have done for us. Now it’s up to us to make the best use of our knowledge and to create future for ourselves.

Paola Koščić, 4 AT

Texts edited by: Sanja Bura