We go on an overseas trip every summer. I would really like to go somewhere else beside the United States of America, but we’ve been to the States so many times already that it seems just like a backyard that we visit once a year. Europe is just too exotic and people say that you need to know some European language before you can go around the place yourself. We could join a tour to make our lives easier, but being extremely individualistic, we prefer to wake up at the time we set ourselves, eat where we want to eat, and go to every obscure nook that we want to go to. So last summer, carrying as little clothing as possible and pretending to diet a few weeks before our trip so we could stuff ourselves there, we headed for New York.
But of course, who was I to talk about the good life? Quite literally, it was this particular summer when I was in the States when I watched the life that I had planned for myself for the next two years self-destruct. I was supposed to get a Q. P. I. of 3.5 this sem and then I would have to get something like 3.65 for both sems in my senior year so I could graduate with a cumulative Q. P. I. of 3.5, making me graduate with Latin honors. This way, I could get away with not going through a summer internship. After all, a cum laude graduate without a summer internship in P&G or some other company could still get away with getting a good job, right? With all my free time, I was going to teach CAT in my high school and then organize some things for school, since I was going to be an officer in an org for the upcoming school year. Unfortunately, things were not to go that way.
During the time that the grades for the second semester were to be distributed, we were already on the second half of our trip, which takes us to Texas. Texas has strange weather and the people speak strange English that I can't understand, and it has no public transportation, which makes going around the city by yourself, extremely impossible. The only reason we go here, is because my cousin, her husband, and my little six-year-old nephew live here, and we like visiting them. So it was here when my father called from the Philippines to tell us that he had gotten our grades already, and that my dreams of graduating with a cumulative Q. P. I. of 3.5 had been shattered, smashed and devastated by my Philo teacher and my Family Law teacher.
It had been a difficult finals week for me before I left for the States. I had various grades that I needed to meet for my various subjects. I didn’t only need to get an “A” in my finals in Finance, I had to smash the grade curve so formidably, to prove that I deserved not a “B”, but a “B+”. I had to get only an 87 on my finals in Sales, a law subject, in order to get a “B+”. And then, I had to be more insightful than Socrates, Aristotle, Descartes and Arendt put together in order to move my Philo teacher into giving me an “A”. And then, I had to wait for Atty. Theodore Te, probably still to busy mourning for his defeat in his Echagaray case, to come up with the exemption list for our finals in Family Law. Sales finals was pretty okay, but after taking the Finance finals, authored by no less than the department chair of the management department, the infamous Mr. Rudy Ang, I knew that I had to use my connections with the Divine Sophos for my final orals in Philo.
My knees were shaking as I stepped out of the room where my Philo orals was held. I felt like I had apologized like Socrates, before the Agora, a few hours before his death. I felt like I had been cross-examined by the twelve Supreme Court justices for my involvement in a several contorted case. I was boiled, deep-fat fried and souffled. But I felt that Houdini, Siegfried and Roy, and David Copperfield could not have done a greater job at putting up an illusion of learnedness and expertise regarding existence. I’ll bet that after I stepped out of the room, even my Philo teacher was doubting the meaning of his existence.
I had to take my finals in Family Law the next day, but only because the standard for exemption was 94, and I got 93.5. I took the test, feeling lucky that as always, Atty. Te had recycled his exam. We were apprehensive for a while when we saw the names (Rico Yan and Juday), but we were relieved when we saw that he had only replaced the names from his old finals (Richard and Lucy).
Despite of this, I did not make my target Q. P. I. Socrates was executed after all even after his stupendous performance in the Agora: I was given a B+ instead of the B+/A that I needed to pull my grade up in Philo. Atty. Theodore Te did not give us the grades we deserved. That is still being appealed by some of my classmates, but I doubt that my grade will ever change from a B. And in Finance, I contented myself with the fact that Mr. Rudy Ang will eventually get his just desserts.
I am still dreaming. I have computed my grades again. I will need 3.75 for both sems to graduate in the honorable mention category. I am still trying. I am still trying.