Meet a group of students as they prepare to take their baccalaureate test, a rite of passage for young French people on the cusp of adulthood. It can be a stressful time, but the students are pacing themselves well.

Like the SATs for Americans, or A level in the UK, the baccalauréat exam, or le bac, creates more than its fair share of stress in students, especially on the day when they find out the results, the culmination of an entire school career. Students meet outside the school where exam results are posted, and share the emotion of knowing whether they and their friends succeeded or not.

As a gift to journalists looking for a tongue-in-cheek story, French schools have banned kissing. Students ask, “Where’s the harm?”

Ten months of training go into learning to fly a helicopter, but less time is being spent aloft. More and more flight hours are logged in a hyper-realistic simulator that allows young pilots to hone their skills without ever leaving the earth.

The number of French students interested in studying Chinese has soared in French high schools in the last ten years. Though it is currently offered mostly by elite schools, the French government hopes to make it more accessible to all schools in years to come.

Does your textbook ever seem more confusing than enlightening, more wrong than right? A recent study showed that some French textbooks could use a little fact-checking.

Joanna shows us her tiny but surprisingly compact apartment. Her kitchen fits in a cupboard, and she has to climb a ladder to her cozy bedroom.

Joanna is proud to show us her neighborhood. Follow her around her new apartment, her favorite bar, the pretty little garden where children love to play, and learn some useful everyday vocabulary.

We’re back in Central Park! This time, French teens Barbara and Lorraine discuss politics, including the recent controversial Contrat Première Embauche and President Nicolas Sarkozy. (Love him or leave him? The girls don’t quite agree…)

Meet Françoise, a social worker specializing in animal mediation. She visits children with developmental disabilities and introduces them to her four-legged friends. Health management students Noémie and Clémence work alongside Françoise and enjoy seeing the children flourish.

Caroline is an international business student with an interest in journalism. In this video, she talks to us about one of her school projects, which involved writing a supplement for the French magazine L'Express.