Episode Five: College: OGEC

I was a Fine Arts student.

When I was starting out my college career I was advised by a girl friend of mine (girl-friend not girlfriend) to enjoy the days as it will come as fast as it came. Need not to say her prediction seemed to me as true. Coming from a Catholic school with very strict environment, college was very refreshing. I had all the time in my hands nobody was rushing me, there was no torment. Maybe that's the reason why I appreciate FEU more than my kindergarten, grade school and HS alma mater. Although I must say that the high standards that my school gave me prepared me well fro the college algebras, english, and a lot of the basic stuff. That I am most thankful.

Also in FEU I got to have a wide variety of choices when it came to meals, not only do FEU have a canteen but students were allowed to lurk around the whole of Manila if they wanted to buy foods elsewhere, in my former school sadly that was not the case, it's either you rely on your "baon" or go to the gold-digging canteen where meals are served at the minimum at a very high price!

I think FEU gave me the school I wanted all along. As I said I respect my former school but compared to FEU I love the latter more.

Ok here's some story about my days in FEU:

When I was in FEU there was this OGEC curriculum (OGEC stands for Office of the General Education curriculum), it was imposed to all first year students so that most of the minor subjects could be taken up during the first year without any major subjects so that if a student decides to pursue a different course different from his/her first choice he/she won't be hassled changing courses because all subjects taken up are minors. So you see it was not known to me until my very first day. So to my surprise when I got into the room designated for me when I applied for my schedule, there were guys who were into accounting courses, psychology, nursing and others.... I was like "Whoah! am I in a twilight zone?" turns out I was one of the only few who did not know of the current policy.

Within the next few days I assembled a new group, comprised mainly of a geek, a coño, a pasaway, a nerd and two stoic guys (one was me). Our favorite "ulam"? Monggo soup by Manong Dugyot. Our geek friend had this shack apartment just beside FEU and we would camp there during breaks, at the lower portion of the apartment was a mini canteen by Manong Dugyot (I codenamed him that because he was like an arabic guy that don't take a bath), there were 6 of us and the coño guy can't argue with our preferential place for food or be doomed to eat alone. That how we were until we finished the first sem of the first year.

Around this time I realized:

1. I had this character to bring people together, even though not as leader but as a bridge.
2. Girls get attracted to me, even I don't know why. I'm stoic remember?
3. I was still in the upper levels of each of my class.

It was the first in a long while that I had girl friends (again not the romantic side but friends), and I love them they were morale boosters for me. Alas, Come 2nd sem all the allies I rallied to my side were lost to me. We ended up not being classmates anymore, and I was left by my lonesome again without any classmate from the previous semester.

2nd sem, First year: I had new friends whose image were meaner, bigger, we had a grand time tripping. We were not the "It" boys but my pals had the making of Mafia members. They looked brute but are really friendly. It was at this time I had my first difficulty in college. Logic.

Logic was easy, problem was that subject's schedule was too early for a teener coming from Cainta to abide to. I was most of the time tardy at sessions thus not understanding the subject altogether. At mid-term my grades for the subject still hangs in the balance, last time I checked I was near 5.00 or failure. It was also true for half of the class. I felt so tense, nearly hopeless. I even informed my mom that I might flunk it... But then again, I think the "One Above" never wanted me to fail, I doubled my efforts of coming to school our class was at 9:00 and now I was waking up at 5:00 at 6:00 am I was on my way to school. Fuck the LRT-2 then, the traffic that it's construction yielded was just too much sometimes I would arrive at my designated room 5 minutes before the Logic subject. Imagine a 3-hour travel everytime!

Somehow I sighed some relief as I was quickly getting the groove from the subject, although I would sometimes arrive weary-eyed, sleepy, I still was catching up with the lessons. Finals came and I had 2.50 voila! What was wonderful for me wasn't for my other classmates a quarter took the plunge.

First year is finished at last. OGEC was over, on with the next nightmare!

But that's for the next ish peeps! Until then... Don't break a leg.