- I don't want to let go of high school
Congratulations! You just earned yourself the privilege of knowing the billion peso question of the decade: "Why the heck did I choose nursing?!"
Since I'm going to share this to you, it means that either I trust you or that I don't have any choice but to give in and talk. I swear to God that if you ever go around telling everyone what I've been saying here, you're a dead meat.
I know you. I know where you live so don't even attempt to mock me here. And also, while I'm in the verge of my story, don't you ever laugh or else I'll tell your parents that you got a measly line of seven in a nursing subject for the prelims.
Okay, so now that that's settled, how do I start?
College—the word never excites me, nor does it leave a certain chill in my spine. I'm not scared, I'm never scared.
Seeing where it all happened, I'd always come to look back on the past—about my choice. I hated my choice. It was like I was forced out in a corner, told by many that "I can have my own choice" but I ended up following theirs instead. It was like they all planned it from the start. And now I'm stuck here, taking up the famous course chosen by millions of my countrymen because it's the trend, and maybe they wanted to earn dollars.
But I didn't want to earn dollars.
÷÷÷ Do you remember when graduation comes in your kindergarten days (they call it "commencement exercises"), the adults would put you up in the stage and with a microphone near your mouth, you utterly say what you want to be in the future? My friend once exclaimed that she wanted to be a doctor, and now she's taking up engineering. My best friend Penelope wanted to be an astronaut, and today, we're following the same path and we're schooling to become a nurse someday—poor us.
At least that's what I thought.
It feels good to recall your career choices back then. But it doesn't feel that good to me at all because I completely forgot what I said that day. Maybe I wanted to be a teacher? I never knew. Whenever I ask my mother about it, she'd tell me that what I actually said out there was: "When I grow up, I want to be a NURSE!"
Yeah right.
I know my oh-so-dearest mommy would tell me that in view of the fact that I've been complaining about this course since day one and she probably wanted to comfort me—but making up stores is just too much. "I'm just not that stupid, mom"
÷÷÷ I have to admit that I made the wrong choices. And most of the time it is paired with ghastly outcomes. I was reckless and I regretted that, I spent my prelim days during the first semester sulking. Yes, I sulk—the moment I saw the number of quizzes we usually had each day ("every other day" is a quiz in high school, but if you erase the word "other", then welcome to college where there is a quiz every day, and not only in one subject, but probably all).
I hate it. Even the word hate is not enough to contain how I despise it. Everything started to confuse me from the time that I followed other people's advice up to today.
Retrospectively, all of this started some time during March. It was our high school graduation. I was on the verge of being emotional. I cried a lot. And the reason for that was because I thought that if I didn't cry, I might regret doing so. For me, graduation is paired with an obligatory weeping.
I knew that it would take a long time before I could cry like that again—but four months after, I did so once more. And that it is not such a long time at all. At this rate, my crying had not been obligatory.
The funny thing now is the reason for my tears. I haven't expected that I'd cry because of something involving school. This girl, who's encountered a lot of problems during high school, has never experienced a line of seven all her life. Her lowest grade ever had been Mathematics which was 88; she never thought that she'd sink lower than that.
÷÷÷ I still remember the feeling as I held on to that quiz paper. I crumpled it, took a deep breath and slowly opened it for a second time. I thought that when I looked at it again, it would change my score.
But it didn't.
It was a shining 64%--my first quiz in college—a sixty-four percent—a sixty fou— okay maybe I should stop there.
I went to the CR afterwards. Now I know why it's called the comfort room. I don't know if I should laugh about this but four months ago, I was crying in front of the camera. Now, I'm crying In front of a basin. And when I got home, I wanted to pour out all my frustrations so I told my sister everything that's happened.
And guess what? She laughed.
There had been lots of tears after that. Maybe my infancy had been short-lived that I became a crybaby after sixteen years. When I was eleven I thought people who cried were pathetic. My sister once told me, "are you going to cry or are you going to fight?" and I would say "duh. I'll obviously fight ceaselessly"
Looking back, I lied.
The thing is, we can always say that "it doesn't really matter". But I'd usually answer "well, it matters to me".
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