Because Switzerland has a different school system from the US (we start two years later and it goes on for an extra year) and I'm just now graduating.
Bear in mind though that it's not even remotely like an American high school and focuses mostly on providing people with a classical education; I speak five languages, have taken two years of neuroscience, biochem, three other sciences (six years each), fascism (1 year), political history, population geography (six years each) and fairly complex mathematics in addition to receiving culinary lessons.
There is also a focus on writing research papers (I've had to do roughly one per year, the largest of which was 17'000 words and has just been accepted into a national competition). It's also incredibly elitist, with only 30% getting into and going to high school and by extension university, so the classes tend to be very, very advanced. Graduating from this system is considered so impressive that many of my classmates are getting positions as substitute teachers for secondary schools in the area without even needing a university degree or even needing to show anyone their grades while they're waiting for their next classes to start in September.
Precious is the name of the cluster-diamond brooch-pendant, not a particular diamond within the piece.
She is being fixed because three of the 100-something rose cuts fell out when she was being cleaned by a charming young gentleman in an antique jewellery shop who was so enamoured of the piece that he offered to clean her.
This was initially quite worrying because rose cuts are no longer produced and you can't just insert modern-cut gems into an almost 200 year old piece; modern and antique gems are not at all compatible because the quality of the light refraction is too different. Fortunately, I managed to find a jeweler who had some rose cuts set aside and could do it.
