Okay, 3.5 meters is not any more inherently comprehensible than 12 feet.
I’m not denying the superiority of metric, I wish the US would just switch over already. However, unless you already know how long a meter or foot is in reality, you won’t have a good idea how high she can jump. Relating it to something makes it a lot easier to understand. Jumping 35 books is a terrible analogy, but jumping over 2 tall men would work pretty well.