a time of upheaval and mass demonstrations and those issues engulfed our school as well. We were activists, left-leaning and willing to strike for any reason. Every year for four years we went on strike the first week of October to protest the lack of classrooms that forced some of us to go to school in the afternoon session. We all knew this would happen; it was like extending the four-month vacation we had enjoyed for one more week. Personally, I loved going to school in the afternoon!
Once we went on strike against a single professor. This guy was big and mean and well connected politically. Teaching consisted of reading chapters from the textbook in class, out loud. He was abusive in his language, a real bully. Well, the thirty of us went on strike. We simply did not show up for his class! Believe it or not, it worked. He mellowed a lot and we actually ended up inviting him to a dinner dance we held that same year.
Did I mention that school was tough? Just as in prior years, we were subjected to both written tests and oral examinations. The teacher called us to the desk, asked questions, and we needed to provide the right answers. Stressful, to say the least, but little compared to the pressure cooker of the final exam. When we arrived in the last grade of high school and before we were allowed to graduate, we had to pass an exam which, as I recall, focused on four subjects chosen by the National Education Minister. The subjects would be different, say, for me attending accounting school vs. those in classical studies, but the subjects were uniform in all of Italy. At this point I had studied and done well during the full year and gotten good grades in all subjects only to begin one last trial, a tough one that could derail lots of hard work and sacrifice. Talk about overkill! Anyway, I did well enough to graduate.
I look back at the years I spent going to school in Siracusa as some of the best years in my life. I loved the city and its antiquities. I loved my classmates; we worked hard but had fun as well. I think back to those days and friends more often than any other time or people, outside of my family, in my life.
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