So we had farewell assembly yesterday. Like… some official closure to our time in RJC. I have to say it didn’t feel anything at all like the graduation ceremony I had in RI 2 years ago. It’s kinda odd. You’d think that I’d be so much closer to my JC class. A lot of people say that friendships in JC (particularly with girls) are usually much deeper than friendships in secondary school. I can’t deny that it seems very much so, but for some reason I feel much closer to 4I than I am to 1D. There… might be something more to my friendships with 4I than DotA conversations and soccer, but I guess I’ll never really know.

Anyway, in between the mild joking at some of our friends getting awards, shaking our heads in disbelief at the GoH (let’s not go there), and laughing silently at the 3 girls who got owned by Elizabeth when they went up for colours awards, I suppose the whole ceremony was actually pretty enjoyable. A bit too much… sentimentality for my taste, but on the whole it wasn’t so bad I guess.

But while watching various friends and others go up to collect their certificates, there came a point (inevitably) where I began to feel that I’ve somewhat wasted the last 18 years of my life. Not even at the level that those people getting awards were, why should we limit the comparisons to people in our country? Andrew Mcmahon composed ‘Me and the Moon’ at 18. Fernando Torres was the captain of Athletico Madrid at 18. What have I done? Not exactly a very fair comparison perhaps? But still, something to think about?

Have I really achieved nothing in my school life? Or simply just nothing that gets any recognition? There were actually plenty of other people who worked their asses off for some thing or another but never got any award, but at least they have the satisfaction of knowing that they DID something, and that nobody is going to begrudge them that. I suppose the certificate itself is meaningless, but that intangible thing that you take with you from what you did is what’s worth it.

I suppose if I did take anything away from my time as a student in RJC it’s rather… hard to define, to say the least. Or as a student anywhere else, for that matter. I have 3 trophies in the cabinet, 2 of them from my time in primary school, and 1 from Sec 1. The first one I ever got came after my PSLE. 2 years in the school’s advanced maths club and I was getting kinda pissed that everything we won got taken by the school, and all we got left with was some lousy certificate. My last time representing the school earned me that trophy, which just looks nice now, but hardly brings back any memories. Anyway from JC it’s really hard to say what I did, or what I left behind, if anything. … … Yea I can’t really think of anything.

And yet somehow, I still don’t see myself going up on stage to collect an award for service or anything of the sort. It’s just… not me? Added to the fact that I would feel the ceremony and awards were bullshit all the more were I actually involved in it. Not that I’m taking anything away from the award winners, … well not all of them at least. Colours awards for sports are fine, because they’re awarded to people who’ve taken their sport to the highest level that they could reach at this age, and that kind of excellence is definitely worth rewarding. (Not that everyone who deserved it was recognized though, far from it). But as for awards for Community Service, and all the like… Well, you know my thoughts on CIP.

I guess in the end I’m just annoyed that I’m becoming more and more like what I always feared I’d turn out to be: mediocre. I’m nowhere near the level to win a colours award for any sport, but I’m far from being incredibly unfit and lousy at sports and the like. I’m nowhere near the intellectual genius that so many others in RJC are, but I’m far from stupid either. My music was never good enough for MEP, but I at least pulled off a few performances and a half-decent composition. I never made WCG DotA, but if nothing else some people recognized that I was a worthwhile replacement for someone on the school team (even if they did call Ming Kiat first -.-)

Oh I suck at art though. Still can’t colour within the lines.

I never really got over the disappointment of prelims. Not so much the math and econs grades, which were totally expected and can easily be worked upon, but more so for KI and Lit, 2 subjects that I thought I would do relatively decently in. I compare my prelim essays with the model ones and the disparity of quality just stood out more so than ever before. It’s like… when you compare your 18/25 essay to the model 22/25 it doesn’t seem so bad, but when you ended up with like 14 it really starts to show, even though you don’t think you did anything differently. I’d work my ass off in the coming month and I’d probably end up with Bs for both subjects. I’d solve my problem of not engaging with the question, but I highly doubt I can reach the level of ideas being generated by my peers whose experiences have somehow brought them to a higher level of thinking. It didn’t really help that compared to the ‘4 As’ he demanded of most everyone else in class, Booth only asked for ‘At least Bs’ from me. Not something that I’d normally give a damn about, but well… just goes to show, doesn’t it?

Uncharacteristic humility from me. Must countermand it by adding this line.

I keep talking about how I want to go to the UK to study Lit. I initially came up with that more because it was something I didn’t mind doing, and it also gave a satisfactory answer to the frequent question ‘what’re you gonna study in the future?’ when ‘Hav’nt decided yet’ no longer seems to be a good enough response. The dream… or whatever you may call it seems to be getting further and further away now. My parents assure me that they’ll willingly pay for my tuition fees, but right now my pride doesn’t seem able to take that. I don’t know, maybe practicality will overrule in the end.

I guess I understand what Mr. Hodge meant about green bulbs in our life, using a rather roundabout way and obscure examples. I think when he talked about green bulbs being the things that we become so fixated upon, such that we lose focus of the eventual destination, he was warning us not to let studies and the exams become our green bulb? It’s hardly unimportant, but it’s not everything. Something which is understandably hard to relate to now, but I’m sure with the ‘benefit of hindsight we can see that our teachers/educators had the wisdom to see what we could not back then’. (Damn he was so full of shit)

If you had to choose between 4Bs, and ACCC, which would you choose?

The irony of it all is of course, that in the struggle to break free of mediocrity, I become just like everyone else.