College Life

                                          

                                               

Speak your mind..

                      Your school is your second home… (Besides the cinemas, billiard halls and computer shops, of course.)…You wander in every corridor until you finally feel the contours of the floor to which you are going to walk upon for four.. (no, make it five to six - -depending on how long you plan to ‘master’ each subject over and over again each sem.).. perplexing, grueling, traumatic BUT exciting years. It doesn’t really matter if you’re a prototype of the Neanderthal man or a mutant of generation Z. Nobody cares if you come from a galaxy trillions of light years away. What’s important is your clear idea that school is not simply an asylum for zany people like me; it is also a big treasure chest of learning. (oohh..)  

            Sure, you’ll probably develop sleeping disorders, occasional nightmares, bouts of nausea and detect early signs of cerebral malfunctioning, but hey, that’s what makes it such a rush! After all the slave driving tasks, blisters, eye bags, alaxan-imodium-biogesic addiction and novenas to St. Jude, you’ll soon take a bite at that bittersweet fruit of your hard earned success!      

            I do not mean to offend anybody or spark insubordination …what I write down is completely based on my quirky ways of seeing things…your reaction is beyond my discretion …just remember that its healthy to be silly sometimes and its through humor that people maintain balance in a topsy-turvy world like ours.

 Let me tell you now about the simple and yet silly things about my alma mater..(all of which I will keep in the back pockets of my head )…

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                        Hail to our dear SPEDS!... If I play back scenes from last week’s religion class in my head while eating a ketchup-soaked-yesterday’s- leftover- spaghetti in the caf, people would probably think I’m schizophrenic  or something…really, if you’ve experienced sitting at close proximity to funnyman Hans and dead serious Christopher, you’d know what I mean!...’hysterical’ isn’t even close to how I’d describe the class...its the ‘loony bin’ of SELAMS- -SPEDS and non-SPEDS alike! But with all earnestness, I truly salute our SPED friends—you bring soundness in a chaotic world like ours…and I take my hat off to Miss Daoanis—yours is a gift only genuine educators possess.

 The chapel…. If you have nowhere to go and you feel you’re up for some laughs, try to visit the place in your vacant time…chances are you’d come out with gastric pains just by watching our resident retreat master hilariously  blabber his way through the whole session with ‘slightly’ demented and at times… politically incorrect remarks..but hey, no matter what the man says, it’s enough to keep those eyes open and keep people coming back for more. Encore brother, encore!

            Mr. Rongci…”the man” of politics…Machiavelli- -Pinoy style. Everybody who’s been anybody in his class knows what I mean... he’s the boy wonder of political theories. Forget ‘bout the occasional Southern tone, the hour and a half words marathon or the unexplainable thin line between objectivity and subjectivity…just remember the words…”we must all act in accordance with what is expected of us.”  (Move over Nicolo..make way for ‘rongcalianism!')

            

       Everyone’s ‘ate’ at the SELAMS Dean’s office…Tada!..Ms. Congeniality at her grandest state... Even when buried under tons of paperwork or marauded by ‘lost civilization’ students, she’s still up for a smile. I will never forget the bespectacled enchantress…the face that can launch a thousand dropping forms…the tiger lady with an attitude..grrr…

The life saving scantrons…Inside the mind of ‘miss, share your knowledge naman’ classmate: (upon seeing the white answer sheets from heaven, sighs…lets it all out...) “Praise the Lord, Alleluia!”…after an hour of perpetual miniminimynimos and a show of cunning 20/20 eyesight, he passes the paper and gets away with a screaming grade of 1.5…Aahh..Suave...

Mr. Magtoto... how on earth will I start? I grew up knowing the alphabet all too well but damn it, if you ask me the meaning of X and Y, I'd give you hell. Just make sure you're not hypertensive if you belong in his class.  You'll die once he starts calling out names. You'll pee in your goddamn pants when he asks you the value of X. Trust me, the man gained my respect but he also revived my fear of numbers. ;)

The women’s CR at 7 pm… My school, they say, is crawling with stories of ghostly apparitions, possessed beings and other diabolical creatures and the women’s CR seems to be one of the favorite settings! Now, unless you’re a daredevil waiting to experience sheer terror, go and seek these beings in the comfort of an empty washroom. But if you happen to be a chicken like me, I suggest you think twice. Either stand in line in an over-crowded, smelly comfort room...or die urinating in the hands of a faceless assailant.

Traditional teachers…”bato-bato sa langit,ang matamaan - huwag magagalit…”I share the same frequency with those students who are bothered by the urge to press the button on their chairs which says: “PUSH BUTTON TO EJECT TEACHER.”

Under these profs, I have learned the art of going to sleep with my eyes open, perfected the game of hide and seek (hide from the razor sharp eyes of the teacher and seek thy cell phone), recite a three-word prayer when the prof is in a hellish mood: “God, help me.” and last but not least, I definitely learned the value of a working pen and a decent paper.  

Tyrannical security guards… I can certainly find it in my system to understand that our manongs in uniform are just doing their jobs…but I don’t have the slightest idea why they seem to have a fetish for school ID’s!  Could it have been possible their minds were altered to look at these plastic cards as trophies…or perhaps that of the prized  ’ring’ tied to Frodo’s neck? …Beware of the universal soldiers! They’re armed with x-ray vision, built in metal-alcohol-dope-printed underwear detectors and looks that could just make you squirm and say “eto na i.d. ko.”

The death defying PHL…Why? PHL is no place for people who are freaking scared of heights like me. Whoever designed the building was obviously oblivious of the principle: ‘what goes up must go down’. Those heaven-forsaken bars won’t hold you if in case you fall off and plummet to your death. If you don’t die, you’ll suffer debilitating injuries...in which case, you shall end up in a hospital bed looking like a damned veggie and live through your own inferno thinking the subject should have been ‘dropped’ instead of you.   

The treacherous air conditioners… Everyone loves these babies. With the scorching heat of Mendiola, the fumes of those despicable PUVs and the onslaught of gazillion students, people are sure to glue themselves to these monster machines…but beware, these things live up to their name. These are monsters ready to inflict a nasty chill and a bothersome cold. If you’re not up to experiencing early symptoms of Hypothermia, then bring a jacket man!   

Never-ending rallies in Mendiola…here’s how I see it :  If I lose that much sanity in my system from all the clashing ideologies in my head, I figure I’d be finding myself in Mendiola --holding a damned banner, screaming my lungs out and eating a stick of fish ball while anticipating a water cannon shoot my way. Of course, that would probably be ten to twenty years from now…in a situation when I’ve probably spent a quarter of my lifetime trying to get a decent job and blaming my misfortune to whoever is occupying that forsaken seat in the Palace…pathetic, isn’t it?

            

       Pedestrian ethics 101…street smartness is the name of the game. Observation and actual experience of crossing the dreadful Recto-Mendiola street can most likely help you NOT to become road kill by speed-addicted drivers. Unless you intend to lose all dignity and shrink in utter shame for failing to make it to the other side alive, join the anarchic groups of students who get a kick out of playing patintero in the middle of the freakin’ road! Remember: if you cant make it alone, there is strength in numbers. (get it?)

            

       Back alley turo-turo’s…if you find yourself dreadfully sick to your stomach of our cafeteria’s decade-old menu consisting of endless siomais, fettuccini, waffles, pancit and the like, there’s always the ‘point-points’ at the back, you know.

             

            Of course, I can write a hundred things more worth noticing about CEU, but I choose to reserve them for ethical and security reasons. I figure I’d be sooo DEAD if I go on rambling ´bout things I find extremely amusing in CEU. Someday, when I’ve finally reached the cosmos, I will look back and laugh my bladders out and reminisce how crazy college life was. For now though, my life would have to revolve around a truckload of subjects, research studies which spell H-E-L-L and a potential plead for insanity!....the battle isn’t over yet, ‘the eye of the enemy is moving’…time for round one…ting, ting, ting.