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It's the end of an era.
When I was younger, school seemed like a never-ending series of graduation and admission. Pre-school, kinder/prep, grade school, high school.... It was one school year after another. And now, I'm at the end of that line. After my short-lived summer, it's not going to be another school year that I go back to. It'll be the real world, a different beginning in store for me. I am about to enter the rat race, without the excuse of my naivete or student age to allow me to coast on by. You know how everyone's always kinder to students? With less expectations and more allowances for mistakes? No more of being spoiled like that, haha!
I officially graduate this March, 2011 and leave my alma mater of four years, Ateneo De Manila University. It's been my home for the past few years, an institution that I can proudly say I am part of. I can only feel nostalgic about all my Ateneo experiences and tricks that I can now bestow on my younger brother who is entering the same.
But as I move on and say farewell, I can't help but make a list of the things I'll miss - not just about Ateneo, but the life of a student in general.
1) Free cuts
There are days you just don't feel like going to class. And still you do, forcing yourself to trudge slowly to the classroom and upon arrival, finding out you were being given a beatific gift - a free cut!
2) Suspended classes
A guilty pleasure. It's not that I want destruction to rain on our city - that's not the fun in it at all. I just want an excuse not to go to class. The feeling of waking up blearily, wanting desperately to go back to sleep, checking your cellphone and finding a bunch of messages saying "No classes today!"
3) Laugh-out-loud funny class moments
Inside jokes in the classroom, a teacher with a great sense of humor, roars of laughter at something unexpected that leaves your stomach hurting.
4) Seeing your friends
Self-explanatory. You don't need permission to go to school like you do to places on weekends.
5) Summer, sem-break and Christmas breaks
Mid-way, I start getting bored anyway and lose things to do. But the anticipation and the countdown that leads to it, and the first few days where doing nothing still feels like bliss.
6) UAAP basketball games
There's nothing like watching a game live, hearing the drum beats and the cheers drown out your voice, watching with bated breath as the last few seconds decide who wins the game - and screaming your heart out when you find it's your school. And the feeling of pure pride as the whole Araneta Coliseum (blue side) raises their arms and sings the school song, especially getting louder as everyone shouts the part "Win, or lose, it's the school, we choose!"
7) Cutting class to watch a movie, eat out, or go to the game
You know what? I won't remember the days I spent dutifully in class, forcing myself to stay awake but looking at the time longingly every few minutes. I'll remember those days I threw care to the wind, said to my friends, "Tara, cut na!" and coasted on to do something fun, like catch a movie, eat out or watch a UAAP basketball game.
8) Exceptional lectures
Sometimes, you're not expecting to learn something - but you get caught up in a lecture that was particularly mind-blowing. I.e. Theology class with Ray Aguas.
9) Hanging back, chilling out in the caf, SOM Mall, or where else
Self-explanatory.
10) Katipunan food trips
Many well-spent calories at the local KFC, McDonald's, Shakey's, etc.
11) The feeling of having printed the papers you’ve worked on or submitting a major project
The subject of hours of toil and sleepless nights.
12) Getting an allowance for not doing anything.
Self explanatory.
13) Manang's Liempo and Lechon Kawali, with a special patis/soy sauce/vinegar concoction
Likewise.
14) The kind Xerox ladies who always have a smile and a greeting ready for you
As a corollary: being done with mountain high piles of Xeroxed readings and notes. I have years' worth of scratch papers ahead of me. I may turn 30 and still be using the other side of a wretched Accounting worksheet.
15) Automatically checking for your ID every time you see a security guard
It's not just me. Most Ateneans suffer from a post-traumatic stress disorder of the ID sort - sometimes I'm in a shopping mall and the mere sight of a guard automatically has me checking for my non-existent ID lace.
16) Enlistment woes
Everything about the process is nerve-wracking - finding out your random number (holy *?!#% last batch), waiting online for enlistment time (get ready to sign in a minute or two earlier than PC time), having fast fingers (and a fast connection) to click on the few remaining slots of a much coveted class (meaning: easy A teacher) and coasting along with a few tricks, like submitting enlistment even when you're not done and praying the site won't crash so you won't repeat all the steps over again. Many have not emerged in one happy piece from this stressful process. I'm often one of them.
17) The kindness and community in being "a man for others," exemplified in things like the Ondoy Volunteer Operation
18) Ateneo jokes
Oh come on, who doesn't have their own repertoire of school pride jokes? It is said, after all, that it is in the process of other-ification that we reinforce our own identity. (At least, we’re honest) Haha.
These are just some of the great memories I've had. But I've had my time. As I leave Ateneo, I give the role of making memories to the incoming and current students, and wish them true-blue luck. Besides, I always tell myself, there's no need to be sad, because life's like that - as you leave things you've loved, and enter into the unknown, it remains that every moment has the capacity to be a great memory - if you let it.
