People say they are out of work, out of a job, out of money.
I am now out of school.
How nice.
Sixteen years of formal education comes to an end.
How do I feel about finally being able to put an end to doing homework, trolling through research and mobilising those hand muscles to write non-stop for two hours at those mind-numbing exams?
I don’t feel particularly happy or sad.
I think the best description I can come up with for describing my current sentiment is that I feel at peace with being done with all of formal education. I am glad that I have learnt many, many, many things from those years of listening to both wise and unwise educators. I am glad that I have learnt many, many, many things from having those years of free time being a carefree student to read all the useful and useless crap that I did. I am also glad that I have learnt many, many, many things from those years of experiencing life as a student who has been lucky enough to have had several chances to participate in activities and projects that extended my education beyond textbook knowledge.
And very importantly, those years of schooling have taught me that the most important things in life cannot be learnt in school (also thanks to Murakami for that inspiring quote, who probably got it from somewhere else, someone older than we).
There is all the contention and debate out there about how the education system is placing too much emphasis on examination results and academic achievements, but the truth is parents are the ones who need to be educated rightly about how they should be educating their children. Not every child has the compatible personality and temperament to be able to adapt well and thrive in conventional school environments in order to excel in one-dimensional examinations, while having to juggle the demands of social life, peer pressure, family life and personal development.
It has been a long and difficult journey, the years of schooling that have pretty much taken up 70 percent of my lifetime. In moments when it felt like nothing but failure will ensue, different things saved me. Sometimes it was a sentence I read in a book, sometimes it was a sentence a friend said to me. Sometimes it was this one song, sometimes it was family. Sometimes it was that scene in that TV show, sometimes it was a movie. Sometimes it was a paragraph in a textbook, sometimes it was some stranger’s blog that I chanced upon.
Not every problem came from being in school, but every problem felt worse when one is stuck being in school. Yet, being in school is the one condition that can grant one freedom like no other stage in life, because of the concession and liberty protected on account of one being a minor.
We will never feel like this again, my friends. Cherish the memories while they are still fresh in your mind and note them down somewhere before you can never regain the level of remembrance as vivid as you are capable of now.
As the adage goes, out of sight, out of mind.
Out of school, out of time (to continue being a wilful, noncommittal and unaccountable young being).
It is now time to get to work.
on ongoingness 