WOAH. It’s been a long time since my last post. I’m probably just gonna say that I was busy.

Yup, let’s go with that.

Tomorrow is Convocation. In many ways, I’m both relieved yet stressed… expectant yet nostalgic. I expect that many of my peers are feeling the same way. I don’t exactly know what to make of such conficting feelings… It is both the end and the beginning of something magical. I guess I’ll make the best of it. That said, to be honest, I haven’t thought about it all that much. Up until now, I’ve been going about everything kinda normally… and when I decided to write this post, it hit me…like WOAH. I’m not going to be part of this school already. In a few months I’m going to be in national service. And it’s just foreign from there on out.

To keep my post as salient as possible, I’m going to just talk about school for this post.

Choosing to come to this school was risky for me, I suppose. Throwing myself headfirst into a new system, an untested system, for that matter, didn’t seem like the smartest thing to do at the time, particularly when we all live in such a ‘kiasu’ society. I still did it. I had my hesitations, my doubts… to be embarassingly frank, my 12-year old self was drawn a lot more by the idea of a new campus more than anything. As to whether those doubts were unfounded… it’s probably better for me not to say here. But whether or not it was the right choice, I will never know. Regrets are not something that I like thinking about. But what I do now is that this six-year experience was in its own way, wholesome. I’ll spend a little bit talking about what left an impact on me. Briefly.

Year 1-2 in NUS High is termed the Foundation Years. Unfortunately, for me, i did most of my foundation work in the next two years. People call me slack, I’d just say I’m efficient. Okay not really. I suppose if I learned something from those years, it was the value of Time. I managed to salvage my time here mostly through a lot of efficient work in Years 3 and 4… but the time wasted in the first two years really came back to bite me. I’d write more about these two years… but really, it’s quite blurry to me. I remember my first A in a module I didn’t know there was an exam for, and my first failed CA without knowing there was a group project… but specific details are hard to recall. In a sea of new Year 1s, I was a very below-average slacker student. I hate that about myself, but it gave me somewhere to aim towards for the next years.

then, Year 3. Leaving a class I was acquainted with was probably the first step in my self-prescribed slacker detox. The first semester was frankly, terrible. Probably the most terrible six months I had in the school, and for mostly private, unimportant reasons. I was distanced from my class, I screwed up a little bit more, and wasn’t heading anywhere. But for the next three, 303/403 was what kept me going. Another underlying theme in my high school education was Change. Every two years, we were shuffled. And while we all resisted the change at first, it made us stronger, whether in harsh ways or otherwise. I was so familiar with 102/202 and the way it functioned… there were the hardworking bunch but I never really associated with them… there was the girl clique which was everpresent in most of the year 1/2 classes. And there was the bunch of easy-going, uninspired guys, inclusive of me. 303/403 changed everything. Suddenly, there isn’t anyone who’s going to slack with me. Everyone had their fun but for some reason I was the only one not getting his work done. Then I realized… while things changed, I hadn’t. And the detox continued.

Year 4 was an amazing year. I began to settle in, the strangers became friends, and this strange bunch of people with different interests, different faces, different races… found a collective love. 403 became my family away from home. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to come to school everyday. I felt positive about everything and my grades picked up. The field trips, the outings at Ray’s and Rachel’s house… impromptu games of Whose Line… Change was everpresent. And even good change came with bad change. Seeing new teachers come, getting to know them, and seeing them leave… that was difficult. And of course that emotion can never be of as great a magnitude compared to the teachers who have seen us through the six years… That is a post for another day though. Year 4 was, really just fantastic. It may not have had moments like the Tioman outing, but it was unique to myself, and fresh as an experience which paved the way for a very enjoyable last half of high school. Thanks everyone in 403, thanks Miss Sie in particular.

I’ll leave the next two years for another post. These two years have been so poignant they deserve their own column.

Seeya soon.

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