wow. so much had passed since my last post four months ago. [i do not update my blog much often back then.] back then i was furious at myself for not making it on the director's list for three times in a row, furious that my relationship with my str groupmates was spiraling downward [it's all my fault because i didn't give enough effort in our STR project.][STR == science and technology research. let's just say it's the high school counterpart of ECE198. or not.], and worrying that i would not graduate with honors (although it knew that it was a bluff since i needed an average of 1.8-something to graduate with honors. and the lowest average i attained so far in my pisay life was 1.6-something. and i knew it all along that i would not graduate with highest honors since i need a flat 1.0 average, or the next highest average, to do so.) [haha. define grade conscious.]

but what happened? i made it on the director's list on the last quarter of my pisay stay, with an average of 1.410. [mininum average requirement for director's list is a quarterly average of 1.500.] i was not satisfied at start because i was so close to attaining a higher average, but in the end i was contented that i made it. my relationship with my str groupmates improved. we even won the best poster during the ymsat week. [YMSAT Week == youth math, science and technology week: a week full of activities related to the sciences (duh). in contrast to our Humanities Week. also the week where we present our STR projects for general viewing. held every february.] (and we were so shocked because we all thought it was so ugly. [it had so much typos. :)] luckily they did not post it outside the str unit.) and i graduated with honors - one of more than 50 in batch 2007 to do so. [with honors: GWA not lower than 1.5; with highest honors: GWA not lower than 1.2. rough equivalent of magna cum laude and summa cum laude in up. :)]

after everything in pisay, after chasing my teachers for signatures for the last time as a pisay student and finally being cleared after a month since i returned my books, [clearance week. a grace period to settle all our accountabilities to the school. otherwise, we won't get our report card.] after stepping out of pisay for what may be the last time, what's next?

most of my friends will not be studying in UP. although most of us are going to UP, not all will go to UP diliman. and not all that will go to UP diliman will take BS ECE. and not all that are qualified to get a degree in BS ECE will continue with it. [i already know a few people who left EEE.]

philippine science high school now looks like an Arc de Triomphe that we've all left behind in pursuit of our dreams and ideals. and like the rues and avenues that branch off from the Arc de Triomphe, we had to take separate roads to shape our lives in what we hope to become in the future. [ah ok. i know it doesn't have to be that symbolic. but it makes sense.]

college now seems an entirely new different world to me. a new world that i have to conquer on my own. and i do not know what to do. i'm still crippled by the loss of my mother a year ago. and i'm still trying to stand on my own feet while helping to make my brother learn to stand on his own, without help from anybody. [i'm still under the same struggle.] and since i may no longer see some of batch 2007 again, i feel like i have to restart everything. i feel alone again, [more than a year later: i no longer feel alone. because i'm not alone. i'm just single. ampf. talk about being bitter.] just like four years ago, as i entered pisay, which was by then the greatest risk that i took. [i went through the same disoriented state after elementary, since none of my classmates from grade school made the cut.]

i am so tired of thinking. i feel braindead now. and then i remembered something that sir vlad mentioned to us one time during econ class. [i learned so much from our econ class. not just econ stuff, most of which i have already forgotten by now, but things about life and God. sir vlad would be one of my most unforgettable teachers and mentors.]

"change your paradigm!"

i really never understood the concept of paradigm (nice job for being the first ever Gawad Supremo) [Gawad Supremo: title given to the winners of KKKwiz, a history quiz bee held during our Humanities Week. Gawad Supremos get their names immortalized on bronze (or bronze-looking) plaques. yes, my name is literally placed on the walls of pisay.] other than that you see blue everywhere when you look through blue-tinted glass simply because the glass was tinted with blue. if you look outside of the glass, nothing will be blue.in other words, how things look may seem different if looked at from different perspectives. [i never knew whether my understanding of a paradigm is correct.]

but the hardest thing is, if you are exposed to the blue-tinted glass in a long period of time, there will come a time that you would not realize that you are looking through blue-tinted glass at all. similarly, if you look at things from one perspective too long, you will eventually forget that you can look through the same things with a different point of view.

i have been exposed to pisay life for 4 years, and since then i had been looking at the world from a pisay student's point of view. [so, what is the pisay perspective? that i don't know how to explain.] and now that we are being stripped of this pisay-tinted glass with which i had looked thorugh to view the world for so long, we are blinded by how the world looks without pisay life. [or not. i think i've been too attached to pisay to say this.] so this was where i had been mistaken.

now, i'm trying to look at my future from different points of view. nevetheless, i will never know what might happen in the future. so i cannot say on whether i'll be enjoying my stay in UP diliman at this point. [more than one year since this post: i do enjoy my stay in UP. thanks to UP Circuit, G18, and some of my classmates from other subjects.] because i have not yet gone through it. even if i'm looking through my glasses, through the blue-tinted glass, or through pisay life and experience, i will never know what lies ahead.

only God knows the future. the only thing do is to make sure that we have a clear look, a fresh paradigm at what lies ahead...