Where were you, what were you doing when you found out you passed the UPCAT? I think about this now because I just remembered a conversation I had last week with my best friend where he asked, What were your apprehensions when you were graduating in high school? Apprehensions before college? I could not come up with an answer. The answer was lost to me because apprehensive was the last thing I was feeling when I was about to graduate and start my college life in UP. I told him that, come to think of it, passing the UPCAT was not even in my perceived realm of possibility when I was in high school. Getting into a premier university was a notion that was simply...too BIG--a sheer impossibility, in fact--for someone like me to even dream about. ME, who rarely took academics seriously, flunked first quarter Physics, passed Math by the skin of my teeth, and devoted more time and energy to the Student Council, marching and shouting out commands in CAT, and driving my teachers nuts (because yes, I was an obnoxious, arrogant b*tch). When I got a 73 in Physics, I had a heart-to-heart with my teacher who also happened to be our class adviser. I pleaded with her to give me at least a 75. The bargain was, she could deduct the two points from my grade in the next quarter. Being the wise woman that she is, she said no. Miss, wala po akong mapapasukang magandang school... I sobbed. She stood her ground. Sino bang may kasalanan nyan, she calmly asked (Mrs. Imperial is, after all, the epitome of Calm). That is among the greatest lessons I learned from high school: There is no one else to blame for my failure. 73 it was. Shattered hope for a bright future it was. I was a tamad, listless student--but I was a fighter. Still took the entrance exams--La Salle, Ateneo. UP. I remember how I felt so stupid for ticking BS Economics in UP Diliman as my first choice. Kapal ng face. Puro palakol ang grades, namili pa ng quota course! My name was not on the list of UPCAT passers that first came out. No surprise there. We were still in class when the names of the passers were announced. I belonged to the cream section, so it was expected that more than a handful of my classmates made it. Watching friends faces beam with the accomplishment I thought I had no chance of getting was not very painful because it was something I braced myself for. The DLSU and Ateneo results hadnt been released, but I was resolved to enrolling in a so-so university (alright, I am so not mentioning a school name here. Haha!). One afternoon, the last day of exam week, I was waiting for my UPCAT passer friends to come back from UP. I was pissed at them, thinking, Baket bumalik-balik pa dun, alam na ngang pasado sila?! Then I saw the whole lot of them running--RUNNING--towards me. Che-Cheeeee! Confused, I could not understand what all the running and shouting were about. Pumasa ka ng UPCAAAAAAT! You know how we often we laugh at the beauty pageant winner who cries when her name is called out? Ang drama! wed say. Well, when it dawned on me that I passed the UPCAT? Oh boy, I cried. I cried for about five solid minutes. So my friends who just came from UP, went back to UP again that day upon my insistence. I HAD to see my name on that list. When we got to UP, I saw my name, peeled the list off the board, and kept it (Im sorry, I really am very selfish sometimes). So yeah, if you were to ask me what my apprehensions were when I was graduating from high school, I really did have none. That sheer relief of getting into UP erased all that. Ikaw, nasan ka, anong ginagawa mo nung nalaman mong pumasa ka ng UPCAT?
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 12:05:35 +0000
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