high school (last of two parts)

"Time is a great teacher,
but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."
--Louis Hector Berlioz

i've been out of high school for almost six years now, and here i am still reminiscing about...

¤ her rusty and run-down buildings.

¤ manang sikad from whom we bought our candies, chips, and manggang hilaw until she and the likes of her were forbidden from entering the campus.

¤ heaven a.k.a. the elevated array of (in)convenience stores within our jungle complex. one needed to take a trip to heaven i.e. climb up some creaky make-shift stairs in order to purchase anything... from candies to paper to ballpen to pencil to chips to banana cue to camote cue to whatever. heaven was eventually closed because, according to rumors, illegal drugs were also sold there. hmmm... i think it was closed because the canteen just wanted to do away with competition. hehehe.

aside from them, i also remember these...


greek and roman sections
if in other high schools sections were named after virtues or scientists, ours were named after the greek letters and roman numerals. that means you wouldn't encounter sections matulungin, madasalin, mapagmahal, mapagkumbaba or einstein, maxwell, rutherford in our complex. instead, you'd hear about the sophomores of delta and epsilon, the juniors of kappa and lambda, and the seniors of rho and tau, as well as the sophomores, juniors, and seniors of I, II, and III.

once out of high school, those in the greek sections could claim to be part of delta kappa rho, epsilon lambda tau, delta lambda rho, epsilon kappa rho, delta kappa tau, epsilon kappa tau, delta lambda tau, or epsilon lambda rho. with those possible affiliations, you'd think that students belonged to fraternities or sororities, but nooooo... for the record, frats and sororities were (and still are) forbidden in our school.

by the way, you are currently reading the thoughts of a delta kappa rho who to this day hangs out with the likes of epsilon lambda tau and epsilon kappa rho.


math and science overdose
back then, we only had three major subjects: math, science, and others. with deeper emphasis on math and science...

our high school was were our delicate cerebral matters were first subjected to intensive mathematical and scientific torture... er... training under the watchful eyes of intellectual mentors who stopped at nothing in pushing us to and beyond our limits. it didn't matter that we were too young to be driven to really crack our heads with concepts which were more apt to be learned in college. we were molded to endure, to meet and exceed expectations with mind over matter approach. it was up to us to put our hearts somewhere safe because, most of the time, the training dealt with the mind devoid of its heart.

all for the names of science and math, we had...

¤ arithmetic, algebra, geometry and integrated science during the first year.

¤ algebra, geometry, earth science and biology for the second year.

¤ advanced algebra, statistics and trigonometry, chemistry and science research for the third year.

¤ selected topics in mathematics, calculus, physics and science electives (physiology, organic chemistry, and selected topics in physics) for the fourth year.

we had those as well as the other equally demanding subjects which we had to take every year for four years: filipino, english, values education, physical education, health, music, technology and home economics (business and distributive arts -- where i learned to read and write gregg shorthand, dressmaking, foods, drafting, woodwork, electricity, handicrafts), social studies and history.

needless to say, high school in our high school was a painful, time-consuming, and stressful yet rewarding process. we were far busier than some college students. a lot of people who observed us from outside our complex thought that the things we were made to go through were social life-disabling. well, from our point of view, they were not that disabling. really. contrary to beliefs, we were not mere thinking machines. us? thinking machines? thinking, yes. machines, no, we're definitely not... but we're capable of making people think of us that way. hehehe.

we had moments of seemingly-endless torture due to math and science overdose, but we also had moments of fun, fun, fun.


drama series
aside from being made to do number-crunching, scientific endeavors and logical reasoning, we were also molded to become thespians, total performers.

year after year, we were required to come up with our own group presentations, in which we were all expected to be at optimum performance level. no holding back.

cry. wail. do comedy. dance. sing. act. entertain. in other words, we were subjected to pakapalan ng mukha. daig pa namin ang mga sumali sa mga search-for-stars contests. there were no exceptions. we were made to forget limits. the goal was to impress our difficult-to-impress (read: obsessed-with-standards) teachers.

we had broadway presentations, puppet plays, noh plays, and whatever plays -- all of which demanded much of our time and showcased our talents, resilience, creativity, resourcefulness, and our intense determination to strike with awe the powers that be.

we mastered jose rizal's noli me tangere and el filibusterismo novels chapter by chapter through acting. not only did we learn the stories, our acting were also polished, and our abilities at adaptation were put to test every meeting day. pati baluktot na tagalog namin, nahasa rin.


outings and joyrides
from the outside, we might have looked like we didn't have lives outside our acads... but that's far from reality!

despite our hectic schedule and time-consuming, slow-death-inducing requirements, we somehow learned how to find time to "detoxify".

with "detoxify", i mean, going out, enjoying an acad-free day or hour or moment.

from our respective houses to the school in tibanga to internet cafes to the children's park to the lawns of redemptorist church to the likely and unlikely nooks of the city proper to the cool waters in the swimming pools of timoga to that playground in npc compound of ditucalan to dalipuga falls to the beaches in iligan... we enjoyed stress-free moments and made our marks (and did some crimes). hehehe.


disciplinary sanctions
there were times, too, that we got carried away and gave in to juvenile delinquency. in fact, we kept the members of the disciplinary committee working 24/7. we got them paranoid but we're quits because they made us paranoid, too. hehehe...

by the time we were about to leave high school, everyone in my batch had earned his/her share of disciplinary sanctions! but i guess, the disciplinary sanctions and the worst meted on us deserve to be shared in a separate blog entry. masaya kasi ang worst na tinutukoy ko. celebrated case!


next up: paskin episode (a.k.a. the celebrated case)...