Destination Unknown

I sometimes
wonder how it would’ve been if I’ve studied at Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU)
instead of at De La Salle University (DLSU). (e.g. Would my e-mail be admuchou
instead of dlsuchou?)

Honestly,
it wasn’t far-fetched. I DID pass the entrance
examination, even though it was inconceivable. What will
remain in my memory as a question eternally unanswered is: How could I have
passed?

It
certainly has got nothing to do with my mental capacity. Throughout the duration of the entrance examination I was so angry, flaming,
fuming, overwrought, distraught, agitated and unnerved -please, just how many
adjectives do we need?- that it would’ve been impossible for my mind to
function at its optimum. Among the four college entrance
examinations (UP, ADMU, DLSU, UST) I was so certain I flunked this one
that I was determined not to find out about my results from other school, and forget the
examination ever happened.

You see, I was in Bacolod then. The examination took place in USLS,
or University of St. La Salle (Oh! The Irony!). It really wasn’t
that the venue was theoretically incorrect; it was the situation where the
proctors, examinees and "uninvolved" students place it.

First of all, it really couldn’t have been prevented that the electrical suppliers of Bacolod
really blows. Not a month pass without power interruptions occuring at least once. But what people of
USLS could have done was to provide generators. I really don’t buy whatever alibis they would make to explain how USLS, a part of an educational committee that claims "world class" like a mantra, cannot afford to supply temporary
electricity for entrance examinees. We were supposed to take the test in
an auditorium where light is as essential as water is to human body. With the
lights out, we can’t see anything!

After experiencing one power failure, examinees were forced
to transfer to a classroom. Not only was this classroom lacking
ventilation, but also silence. No amount of
sound-proofing can muffle the next door’s gymnasium’s hodgepodge of chants,
cheers and commentators of an ongoing basketball game of the now defunct MBA.
The noise was bothering me so much that I couldn’t even understand any section of the reading comprehension
test, which consists of some writings that could’ve been passages of Brothers
Karamazov (the Timbuctoo material haunts me to this day).

As if it didn’t bother me enough, the power resumed and we
have to scramble back to auditorium without any appreciable time
extensions. This mean we have to answer 50 science questions in less
than 20 minutes. As if all hell hasn’t even broken loose, the
power failed again!

By then we went back to the classroom, and stayed there, oblivious
as to whether or not the power will restore (and it did). It’s bothersome how a generator can be supplied to the ongoing MBA basketball game and
not to the auditorium where people are taking up what might dictate their
future. Isn’t Saturday supposed to be a day when electrical power consumption of
a school is kept below average? Why so deliberately cost-cut on examinees but
not on basketball game spectators? All pretenses aside, can anyone honestly tell
that a basketball game is more important than an entrance examination? It’s not
even a playoff, elimination or championship game!

And if that wasn’t good enough, some examinees don’t seem to
know how to lower their voices. They keep shouting questions to the
proctors, startling fellow examinees uninvolved to their “uncertainties".

As you can probably think by now, the ADMU entrance exam
experience of mine was devastating, factored by nonchalant,
self-important losers. After a few months and after completely losing hope
of ever passing the test, Tara, a friend of mine, phoned me and said the result of
ADMU entrance examination is now online. She also said that I
passed the exam.

After logging on to the internet, and visiting ADMU’s site,
my mouth jaw landed on the floor.

There was my name. I passed. This was the first time all logics and rationales betrayed me.

The only reason why I didn’t choose Ateneo over La Salle is due to the course they offered. I’m not particularly interested in becoming an Environmental
Scientist because I don’t enjoy nagging - and I even find it stressful. If I did pursue my education at ADMU, regardless of whether
or not I shifted midway, who knows what my college life would’ve been like.

To these days, what could’ve been had I studied in ADMU, is a subject where I often play my imagination with.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 7th, 2005 at 8:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.