I received an email earlier from the department that the graduate office was asking for a copy of my 2nd semester/AY 2009-2010 Form 5. I had no idea where I had placed it and since it was last used three years ago, I was ready to bet that I have already lost it.
I was very eager to immediately go home after work because I wanted to search for it in all of my boxes of trinkets. As expected, I did not find it. However, I was happy to see several things associated with my undergraduate life in a shoe box I have stashed inside my drawer.
In one of the binders with Cattleya fillers, I have several tickets and receipts in the cover. It has Mariah, Alicia Keys concert tickets, as well as the ticket for the first time that I’ve watched the UAAP Cheerdance Competition in 2003. I remember that it was sold to me by my PE instructor right that Saturday morning, and I dragged myself to Araneta to watch it in that jampacked Upper B section. After that event, I was more than determined to try my luck to be part of the team.
I also found several notes for my language classes. I even found a yellow pad paper with a French translation exercise given by a visiting professor — translate Nina’s ‘Love Moves in Mysterious Ways’ into French. It was a peculiar exercise and we couldn’t believe that we were made to translate that song. Turned out that he liked the song so much that he asked all of his assigned classes to translate it. But the paper that I found really funny was the one with my notes for our Latin class. I barely remember anything from that class except for “Mulus gemit” (The mule groans) and “Sumus agricolae” (We are farmers). It was my lowest numerical grade ever (at 3.00, I barely passed the class) but I was most happy to get that grade. Latin was excruciating.
And then, when UP used to issue tangible classcards (they now release them online through CRS), we had to sift through a pile of classcards and look for our names. What was embarrassing about it was that other students/classmates would be able to see your poor grades while looking for their own. News about who got a failing grade would readily spread out. Looking upon my classcards in my box at home, I saw my two INC classcards, one for English 11 (literature something, where I had to endure the extremely soporific” The Iceman Cometh“) and the other was Kas 1 (Philippine history). I was wondering why I did not tear nor throw them out.
Lastly, my first ever Form 5 in Diliman from 2003, containing my basic French classes and the badly spaced schedule of classes. I had classed from Monday to Saturday (except Wednesdays) and the breaks were quite long that I even had time to go to SM North and loiter before going back to school. Also, it was my most costly semester ever, at Php 6,266.50 when it used to Php 300/unit in school. Of course it was a different story nowadays when the tuition for undergrad drastically increased. I remember peeking at the Form 5s of the students I was with in the queue for payment and it was not strange to see theirs marked with Php 25,000 and up. Eeeek! That can already about 5 semesters during my time.
I counted the wrinkled and yellowed Form 5s from my undergrad and they were all present. Imagine I have kept each and every single one, including the summer classes but I managed to lose one of my graduate school Form 5. Some things do really change over time and one of them was diligence. LOL
