Confession 0.5: Grow Up and Dig In
Jasper Emmanuel Y. Arcalas
The Journalese
"All things at first seem hard; it's just a matter of adjustment and coping. By the time you get used to it, it's just a matter of improving and having your comfort zone."
Growing up is different from growing old. Everyone grows old, but not all grow up. They say high school is the platform to grow up, to be armed with knowledge and to be interdependent, especially during the senior year.
It sounds interesting yet it's like any other year on any other school calendar. You are still enclosed by four painted corners decorated with educational materials and you meet teachers eight hours a day, not to mention you get to
have a break in between. Even though you want to end your relationship with assignments, projects, seat work and examinations, you just can't. It is a part of your curriculum, the same way that it is already a part of your daily
routine.
But what makes senior year rise just like water ascends above the oil?
It is the transitional period towards college.
Snap back from fantasy, it’s one step closer to a new journey - welcome to reality!
This is the time to close the door, leave all bad memories, not-so-helpful habits, maybe even friends in your old room. In exchange, you open the doors of gold and black, furnished with 401 years of history and enlivened by bulbs of new hopes and visions.
One must be ready for it, but not absolutely. Surely, we will miss the bridges turned to bricks. Things that became dust particles spread all over the vastness of our thoughts.
You open the doors to a strange place. Every corner of the room has a word engraved on it; Pontifical on the left, Catholic at the back, Royal to the right and in front, Journalism. Is this real world or fantasy? No, it's college. It’s another transition but this time, to the “real” world. Entering this last phase of education before the working place, one may expect things from A to Z; college may be three letters shorter than high school but it's longer in terms of pressure, hard work, and will. It could mean more coffee cups to down, more sleepless nights to endure, more papers to crumple, more inks to drop in shorter time to kill.."Bawal na ang petiks!"
It might be true for one but not for all college students: the fallacy of combination.
On the other hand, it's a new environment after all, an exciting one. You're studying in the oldest existing university in Asia. You have a variety of fast food chains within the premises with a park-like feeling. There are also new names to remember, new faces to familiarize, new bridges to form, and a new way of living. And there are lots of things at stake.
Beyond the academic world, there is a social dimension formed both in and out of the classroom. Friendship, they call it. It is natural to form a bridge of belonging with each other, we are all social animals after all; but for some, friendship is a mere word. Together with friends come security, hardships, interactions, pressure, and all. It's a package deal. But the real struggle comes from the lessons that teachers don't write on the board nor give in the examinations.
The question is could you cope? One’s not shock proof to a new culture and environment, but something's for sure, a thought bothers the mind: the sense of belonging. Will you fit in?
Once seated, you realize the room is filled with various students ranging from those who graduated in the brightest colors: sports enthusiasts with banners of victory in athletic meets displayed in their previous schools, happy-go-lucky teens, and a lot of different-shaded people. Along the lines of the paper, time wrote as fast as it could.
And you cope with everything. Yes, everything. From the point that you have an Economics class where you only experience the feeling of being a candidate in a beauty pageant, in examinations where you are seated based on your grade. And having a living Wikipedia in your history class where you get information overload far beyond the speed of downloading in your fillers. With time, you begin to build friendships.
Peer pressure, it still exists. It's obvious among small groups formed in the enclosure. Well the saying goes, birds of the same feathers flock together. But even with the divisions in the class, there is still the sense of unity, the sense of oneness.
All things at first seem hard but it's just a matter of adjustment and coping. By the time you get used to it, it's just a matter of improving and having your comfort zone. It's a good start after all; We still have four years of stay in AB. J
The Journalese
"All things at first seem hard; it's just a matter of adjustment and coping. By the time you get used to it, it's just a matter of improving and having your comfort zone."
Growing up is different from growing old. Everyone grows old, but not all grow up. They say high school is the platform to grow up, to be armed with knowledge and to be interdependent, especially during the senior year.
It sounds interesting yet it's like any other year on any other school calendar. You are still enclosed by four painted corners decorated with educational materials and you meet teachers eight hours a day, not to mention you get to
have a break in between. Even though you want to end your relationship with assignments, projects, seat work and examinations, you just can't. It is a part of your curriculum, the same way that it is already a part of your daily
routine.
But what makes senior year rise just like water ascends above the oil?
It is the transitional period towards college.
Snap back from fantasy, it’s one step closer to a new journey - welcome to reality!
This is the time to close the door, leave all bad memories, not-so-helpful habits, maybe even friends in your old room. In exchange, you open the doors of gold and black, furnished with 401 years of history and enlivened by bulbs of new hopes and visions.
One must be ready for it, but not absolutely. Surely, we will miss the bridges turned to bricks. Things that became dust particles spread all over the vastness of our thoughts.
You open the doors to a strange place. Every corner of the room has a word engraved on it; Pontifical on the left, Catholic at the back, Royal to the right and in front, Journalism. Is this real world or fantasy? No, it's college. It’s another transition but this time, to the “real” world. Entering this last phase of education before the working place, one may expect things from A to Z; college may be three letters shorter than high school but it's longer in terms of pressure, hard work, and will. It could mean more coffee cups to down, more sleepless nights to endure, more papers to crumple, more inks to drop in shorter time to kill.."Bawal na ang petiks!"
It might be true for one but not for all college students: the fallacy of combination.
On the other hand, it's a new environment after all, an exciting one. You're studying in the oldest existing university in Asia. You have a variety of fast food chains within the premises with a park-like feeling. There are also new names to remember, new faces to familiarize, new bridges to form, and a new way of living. And there are lots of things at stake.
Beyond the academic world, there is a social dimension formed both in and out of the classroom. Friendship, they call it. It is natural to form a bridge of belonging with each other, we are all social animals after all; but for some, friendship is a mere word. Together with friends come security, hardships, interactions, pressure, and all. It's a package deal. But the real struggle comes from the lessons that teachers don't write on the board nor give in the examinations.
The question is could you cope? One’s not shock proof to a new culture and environment, but something's for sure, a thought bothers the mind: the sense of belonging. Will you fit in?
Once seated, you realize the room is filled with various students ranging from those who graduated in the brightest colors: sports enthusiasts with banners of victory in athletic meets displayed in their previous schools, happy-go-lucky teens, and a lot of different-shaded people. Along the lines of the paper, time wrote as fast as it could.
And you cope with everything. Yes, everything. From the point that you have an Economics class where you only experience the feeling of being a candidate in a beauty pageant, in examinations where you are seated based on your grade. And having a living Wikipedia in your history class where you get information overload far beyond the speed of downloading in your fillers. With time, you begin to build friendships.
Peer pressure, it still exists. It's obvious among small groups formed in the enclosure. Well the saying goes, birds of the same feathers flock together. But even with the divisions in the class, there is still the sense of unity, the sense of oneness.
All things at first seem hard but it's just a matter of adjustment and coping. By the time you get used to it, it's just a matter of improving and having your comfort zone. It's a good start after all; We still have four years of stay in AB. J