Mine certainly does. I don't know about you. It could've sucked for me greatly, but I got lucky.
This is yet another one of my "personal history analysis" journals. Hooray. I haven't posted one in a while, but either way, have a nice read.

Year Zero

When I finished 9th grade and completed elementary school, I started panicking.
The first question was which high school to choose. My parents really really wanted me to go to the local general high school. HELL NO. 4 more years of Biology, Geography, Music class (where you learn nothing about music BTW, just singing some songs and learning about composers), no. Just no. Also, book reports every 2 weeks instead of every month. No.

So I chose the school that so many people recommended me. An electrical engineering high school. Precisely, the IT course. There were 3 at the time: IT, telecommunications, automatics. The IT course had been introduced a year prior, and it's supposed to have more programming and IT classes than the other courses, which I find really nice. My parents didn't want me to go there because I'd have to travel by bus a lot and I'd lose 2-3 hours daily because of the long bus rides. But it's worth it IMHO.

What will happen to me? Will I get beaten to death by bullies in high school? Will professors be evil in high school? How will I even find my way to the bus station in the city?

Thousands of other questions, however, were frightening me. I thought I'd not be able to handle it for sure, right?
Incorrect.

Year One

The first year was not as bad as I thought. I had to get used to taking buses and that stuff.

In the first year, I was in the morning shift, so class would start at 7:00 and typically end at 13:10. It started at 7:30 on Mondays (Practical class + History), and at 7:40 on Wednesdays. Mondays were special: 7:30 to 10:30 (3 classes of Practical class and 2 classes of History).
But that meant I had to wake up at 4 o'clock. D:

There was a bus in 5:40 that would arrive to the bus station in 6:30, so I took that one, until they canceled it, so I had to take the one in 5:15 that would take a longer route but get there in 6:30.The professors were nice. My classmates were angels in comparison to the ones from my elementary school.
I was even given a chance to switch to German. I had Turkish in my elementary school and I got tired of it after 3 years. Some Turks came into the town when I was in 6th grade, they convinced most of the parents to vote for Turkish to be a secondary foreign language and it happened. :/
So I switched to German. Surprisingly, it went really well for me. Mum couldn't believe it.

Sure, there were some classes where I under-performed: Electrical Engineering and Technical Drawing.
Technical Drawing was that one class where you must be precise down to a micrometre. Otherwise you get a 4 instead of a 5. First semester went like 4, 4, 1, 5. That 1 was when I brought the wrong type of paper to do the blueprint on. Second semester went like 3, 3, 3, 5. I could never draw well. But at least this class was only for the first year.Electrical Engineering... my professor was quite interesting. She would go through the lessons at 120 km/h, barely explaining most concepts, and we would not understand much. Lenz's Law, Kirchhoff's Laws, ask what they are to any of my classmates and they won't know. On my first test I got a 1.

Why? Because I was just missing a word or two in my answers, and she crossed basically every answer that had such mistakes. We've even had a situation where we finished all of the lessons for the first year, and moved on to lessons from 2nd grade.

AC currents? Trigonometry? We weren't supposed to learn that right in the first year, lol! But alas, we had to. And frankly, I'm actually thankful for that.
Even though she was very strict on tests, she helped me understand trigonometry and AC currents better later on, in the 2nd year, that is when we got a new EE professor. He's cool.
I had a 4 in EE in the first year. Miraculously, considering that everyone performed badly in it. Like, 60% of the class would fail the test, and I'd be the only guy who got a 3. Of course, there was that one girl who always got a 5. But I can't be like that. She never had a 4 or a 3 in her life. That's just not my style. (don't get me wrong, it's not like I get 4s and 3s often, I actually tend to get 5's, with a tiny tiny mix of 4's - I avoid the lesser marks)

But either way, I surprisingly made some small headlines by winning the Regional Spelling Bee in Mostar and participating in the National Spelling Bee of BiH, and winning 2nd place in an IT competition in Mostar. Pretty good for a first year in HS. This is what I'd see when I crossed the bridge leading to the bus station. Nice view.

And bam, the first year ended in the blink of an eye. I survived with a GPA of 4.57, where 4.50 is the minimum for an excellent status (or let's call it A if you wish. 1 = F, 2 = D, 3 = C, 4 = B, 5 = A).
Sooo yeah, then I had a nice summer break and the 2nd year began.

Year Two

But MAN, is the 2nd year good!
I got Programming, something called Processing and Transmission of Signals, and Electronics. I lost Chemistry, Technical Drawing and IT Systems. (BTW classes are not optional in this country - you get them, you have them, and you lose them)
On Programming and IT class, I'm basically the guy who walks around the classroom helping his classmates with their technical problems, and then finishing the actual task on my PC in the last couple of minutes. The two professors are surprised by my efficiency. Of course, sometimes my classmates would get scared of the things I was doing. :v

Two classes I like in particular are Practical class and History. They are held in a special place, away from the school.This is a photo from the cleaning action. We were taking out all the trash and cleaning the place up.Playing Super Mario Forever during History class. One of the circuits we built on Practical class. Not quite happy with what we're doing to the IC itself, but hey, it's flashy!

And some of you know that I'm a school mapper.The professors actually like this project, believe it or not. Tell me whatever you want about that 2007 incident, but you know I'll ignore it. :^)

And recently, I found about an extra class where we'll work with Arduino boards. Man, I've been waiting to get my hands on one of those for a while.

The 2nd year was a great change.
I was no longer in the morning shift, I was in the other, afternoon shift.
Class starts at 13:20 and ends in 19:30. However, that ending at 19:30 never happens in my schedule.

Monday:       11:45 -> 17:10
Tuesday:      13:20 -> 19:00
Wednesday:    07:30 -> 10:30
Thursday:     13:20 -> 18:00
Friday:       13:20 -> 18:15

Next year, I'll lose the following classes: History, Physics, Practical class, Electrical Engineering ( ), IT.
I'll get the following: Mobile Programming, Computer Networks, Computer Architectures, Democracy, Digital Electronics.

Conclusion

Well, frankly, I've learnt nothing new about programming in high school because I already learned it at home, except the difference between a++ and ++a. (we have C++ for these two years, and we'll get another language in the 4th year)

But what I did learn was a bunch of stuff about electronics. It made me start following YouTubers like GreatScott, ElectroBoom and the like. Not only did I find ElectroBoom's purposeful bloopers funny, I actually understood why they happened and how to prevent that stuff. Lol. Sadly, I don't have many options for buying components. I'll have to get components somewhere. There's a Conrad shop in Sarajevo, and other electronics stores. I'll see what I can do about this stuff.

I met new friends, got used to a totally new community and place. It's quite nice for a change.
The only problem with these new friends is the same as with my old ones. They have no particular interest in anything.
Basically, these guys (and girls) signed up for a school about electrical engineering and programming, yet they don't like either of those.
Most of them signed up in my high school either because they had no idea what school to sign up for, or because they quite simply had a cousin in this school or a close friend.

Had I decided to go for the general high school, I would've been suffering, lol.
Their professors are super strict over there and I'd pretty much be an amount of wasted potential. And people would be disappointed. :/

But yeah, this high school rocks. I love it more than elementary school.
If I made the wrong decision, it'd probably suck like it does for most ex-classmates of mine. The general high school wasn't the only choice though. I could've gone for a medical high school, or a construction high school, or a traffic high school, none of which I'd like lol.

There was a girl in elementary school who had all 5's, and even she has trouble in that general high school. I was the only 1 out of 2 people who actually signed up for this type of high school, and the rest mostly went to the general one. And they're suffering, from what they told me.

Either way, I'm pretty much happy now, since I'm slowly getting to know my abilities and what kinds of jobs I'll want to do in the future.

I might end up writing a part 2 or 2, 3 and 4, who knows.