I made the wrong decision

In the years that went by when I finished junior high school, I had made a lot of decisions that I had to live with for a long time.

Some are definitely for my benefit despite my initial reluctance while some decisions became a crutch which limits my actions.

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September is coming which means the start of a new academic year. I will be 3rd year in college soon and I still have no idea what I am doing with my life.

Sometimes, I envy people who has a clear direction of where they want to go. Or the people who have set examples to follow. Or people who knows someone that already travelled the path they wish to take.

It feels like I am alone in this journey of mine. When I stumble I have to catch myself or risk further delaying my progress. When I am lost, there is no one to guide me back to the right path nor do I have a compass I can use to find north again.

I do not know where I am going. I am still not sure if this is the path that I should take. But there are merely a few years left and I know that I am stuck in this path I had chosen when I was still undecided.

I just posted these thoughts on noise.cash and as i was wriring it felt like I have more words that I wanted to say. I cut it short on noise.cash and decided to share more of what I think here.

How I found myself here

I mentioned in a previous article that I studied in a Science High School for six years. There are other schools in our city which offers a special science class per year but for us, all classes are under the Science High School curriculum.

This does not just mean advanced classes but also additional subjects for math, science, and english. There is also a different subject dedicated to research aside from the 2 science subjects that we already have.

I remember that we have 10-15 subjects, all of which demands our best. The teachers disdain seeing students resting even when it is our free time because we "chose to study there so we must prove ourselves".

I remember the culture shock in my Grade 7. I was overwhelmed that for the first week we already have tons of assignments to do aside from the usual requirements of notebooks.

In my first week there, I experienced for the first time staying up all night just to finish all the things that needed to be passed tomorrow.

It did not stop there. Instead we had to live on pur sleep deprived state for the years we stayed there.

The pressure of being a Science High student is already a lot but it triples or more when you are part of the pilot section.

In our orientation, I remember hearing the teacher said that the students there are the "cream of the crop" of the city. Every contests our school joins, we win no matter who the contestants are.

If a probationary student leave the school they would then find themselves top of the class in regular high schools.

So for the pilot section, we are the cream of the cream of the crop. The best out of the best students the city has to offer.

Teachers gave us harder tests. If the other sections have multiple choices and essay tests, we will have modified true or false, enumeration and fill in the blanks. If the math tests the otger section take are all just similar to what was taught, ours were much harder close to what college students arr expected to answer.

If other sections are allowed to pass an okay research topic, we are expected to provide something more different, more complex.

In the pilot section, competition is encouraged. Teachers intentionally pit students against each other. The idea that you always have to be part of the best group is planted in our minds. We were taugh to out the ones who could not do their part. To remove their names and not ask them why they cannot participate.

In the pilot section, we are taught that we are better than the other sections so we must always come out on top in every school activity.

If you fail to keep your spot in the pilot section rest assured that you will be facing bullying when you are at the other section. I did not experience this personally but I heard the stories of what happened to a former classmate.

She trusted a person with her password so that she can pass an activity for her. But then this person decided to snoop around the private messages. She found some explicit images which she then distributed to the whole class.

This did not just happen once. It happens a lot of times. I cannot say that the pilot section is free of this cruel action because we are not.

The ones who managed to snagged the spot of our former classmates had to fight for them to be recognized as classmates. They mostly stay together as a group.

This harsh environment made our population smaller that by the end of Grade 10 only 3/4 of us remained. And half of the remaining decided to leave the school for good during Senior High School. By the time we graduated Grade 12, there were only around 35% of us that has been there since Grade 7.

I lost my way

The years I spent there, I was stuck on thinking that I have to excel in academics or else I will not be successful. I stopped drawing and writing. I focused more on the academic side and just pursue the things I love as hobbies I barely do.

In my mind the path has already been laid down that I needed to take a math-inclined or science-inclined program in college. I did not stop to think about what I truly want.

And even if I did, I chased those thoughts away when I learned that I passed in the scholarship i applied for.

I needed to take a priority course to keep my spot. And I chose something that is a relatively engineering course.

I do wonder sometimes what could have happened had I chosen differently.

This path I am taking feels like there is not pathway laid down for me. I had to stop every step to lay down the path.

And then I see others who are already known there because they are part of a long line of relatives that took the same course. They have someone to guide them. Someone to tell them what to focus on. Someone to ask the professor to nor fail them.

While for many of us, we are the mercy of the roulette game the professor is using to decide our grades.

I often wonder if I am lost. If maybe this is not the path for me. But it is too late to turn back now.

I will be 3rd year in college soon, and the period of shifting courses to keep my scholarship had passed.

I feel like the path ahead is so dark and yet I know that I will still walk this way until the time that I could tell this version of me that I worried for nothing.

Until then, I might feel lost but I will learn to find the way. I will take note of the rocky terrain for my younger relatives who also wish to embark in this journey.

And I hope that it would be enough to right this wrong decision.

Thank you for reading this article!

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