La Toussaint — All Saints' Break

La Toussaint, and the grades out of twenty

November 1st, la Toussaint, All Saints' Day, is a public holiday in France, and it gives its name to the two-week school break around it; universities usually take a shorter pause at about the same time. Although it is a Catholic feast of all the saints, most French people associate it with the following day, the Day of the Dead, and with visiting family graves. Chrysanthemums are the flower of the season, so firmly linked to cemeteries that giving them as a gift on any other occasion can be a social mistake. Père-Lachaise, in the east of Paris, is the most visited cemetery in the city, with graves of writers, musicians and politicians from Molière to Jim Morrison. The other subject of the walk, grades, surprises almost every student from abroad. French grades run from zero to twenty, and ten is the pass mark, la moyenne. In practice the top of the scale is rarely used: twelve is a solid grade, fourteen a very good one, sixteen excellent, and anything higher is unusual enough to be talked about. A twelve that would feel like a failure in some systems is, in a French master's, a respectable result, and the mentions on a degree follow the same logic: assez bien from twelve, bien from fourteen, très bien from sixteen. The advice Sophie gives, compare yourself with your own progress rather than with the best student in the room, is the kind French students give one another every November, when the first grades come back.