Fresh new school, fresh new start?

By Eternal Elder

The first week of classes have passed already. This is it – there’s no turning back. Tapos na tapos na talaga ang bakasyon. At hindi na rin masyadong tinatamad ang mga profs natin dahil pagkatapos ng default idleness during the first meeting ay nag-didiscuss na sila.

“Fresh new school year, fresh new start”. Ilang beses ko na nga bang na-encounter ang phrase na ito the past few days? Pero sabagay, there’s a ring of truth in it. Kung tutuusin, pareho lang naman start of classes tuwing June at November, but for some reason, iba ang feeling ng June start. I don’t think it’s because June is preceded by the summer vacation. Dahil kung tutuusin, mas mahaba pa ang bakasyon natin kapag sembreak kaysa sa summer break dahil sa summer classes, diba? But the fact that June is the start of a whole new school year, there’s an added thrill.

This is the season na usung-uso ang resolutions. We won’t cut classes (kahit large class pa) anymore. We will start studying a week before and we won't resort to cramming a day before an exam. We will aim for 1.0. Or sige, be more realistic, since things grades don’t change drastically, we won't settle for anything worse than 2.0. Sawang-sawa na tayo sa mga 3.0 at 2.75. We will stop relying on our classmates for our assignments. The library will be our new vacant-period tambayan.

By the end of July, we will have cut our first class already. We will have been late for class 3 times. On a day before the first exam in one of our majors, nagpa-promise na tayo kay Lord na basta’t bigyan lang niya tayo ng 50+ grade sa first exam, hindi na talaga tayo mag-ca-cram come second exam. That way, hindi masyado mahirap bumawi.

By the end of August, we will have compromised our personal cut-off grade of 2.0 to 2.75. And if worse comes to worst, by the end of regular classes, nag-nonovena na tayo sa Parish of the Holy Sacrifice for at least a 4.0 para lang makapag-removals.

Woah, such a gloomy picture to paint on just the 6^th day of classes, eh? Hehe! Pero aminin mo, nangyayari talaga ito. Well, unless of course halimaw ka. Tapos BAA or EEE or MBB ka pa. Nako, you’re definitely not from this world, haha!

Well, maybe, things like these don’t happen to most of us, or maybe they are not as bad as these. But the point is, each start of the school year, our pure desire to excel will almost always be tarnished by our old habitz during the course of the school year. Tatamad at tatamad din tayo. Mag-ca-cut at mag-ca-cut pa rin tayo. Male-late at male-late din tayo. (Again, as disclaimer, this only applies to those who are in the relative middle of the Bell curve of responsible students, okay? Hehe).

So guys, the moral of the story is – maging mabuting iskolar ng bayan. As corny (and as tibak) as it may sound, yun lang naman talaga yun eh. No matter how corrupt or untrustworthy the current government is, it is still responsible for the great bulk of the cost of our college education. We owe to the responsible tax payers – never mind the hooligans that manage to win Senate or Congress seats.

Is it useless to come up with a list of resolutions at the start of the year, even if we know fully well (based on at least five sems and summers worth of botched resolutions) that we are most likely to break them anyway? Of course not. It doesn’t hurt to want to aim for excellence at the start. Imagine when we don’t aim for anything excellent at all. Yun ngang nangangarap tayo, pumapalpak ka pa rin tayo somehow, yun pa kayang wala tayong kapanga-pangarap at all? Because you see, every now and then, with the right attitude and right motivation (and right amount of recreation), we succeed at what we seek to achieve. Every now and then, we exceed our expectations and be truly proud of ourselves. Hopefully, from then on, we can excel at more things in our acads, and in life. (Aaarrgh, nosebleed).

PS. Huwag tayong magpaka-GC at the expense of the way we treat our friends or classmates. Here’s something to ponder about – having good grades obviously makes us good students, but it doesn’t necessarily make us better people.

Cheers to a successful and fulfilling school year for our respective acads, and to Aguman! ^_^