Outside the Four Walls of the Classroom
This post is in reaction to this article published by The New York Times.
[photo credit: Cassandra Klos for The New York Times]
This is a very intriguing discussion because as much as my college experience is made richer by the caliber of professors who held me and my peers to the highest academic standards - most of the school lessons happened outside the classroom. Cliche as it may sound.
I learned to fend for myself while battling it out for class schedules like tributes for the hunger games. I came out of my shell by being the sole student, not part of block sections since I was a shifter. I became more comfortable with the idea of solitude taking in the frenzy that is Manila. I observed social cues because I had to introduce myself to new people; something I took for granted because I grew up around the same batch from preschool to high school.
Never leaving the umbrella at home because the weather in the south is different from the weather someplace else once you hit a certain distance radius. I was once amazed to see that half of the public bus I rode was wet with rain and the other half dry and hot to touch as we got stuck in highway traffic.
When lost, I had to bear in mind that my version of walking distance is vastly different from the vantage point of the stranger I'm asking. Wearing rubber shoes instead of open-toed sandals for long commutes because I can literally step on broken glass. And that it's perfectly fine to be scared of open manholes because they are submerged underwater once floods descend upon Padre Faura.
I can write a 3,000-word essay on all the other things I picked up while roaming around the UP-PGH area. But that could be for another time.
This pandemic is difficult for young students because going through school at whatever age is a community effort. You forge connections with the sellers in the canteen, the security by the gate, and the librarian who has come to know you by face, if not by name because you help her open and close the library. Definitely not the least, you form lifelong friendships with the schoolmates you pass notes to, drink from your water jug, obliterate your pad paper, lose your pens, borrow notebooks from, share food with to name a few.
But kids are the most resilient, I'm sure they will find a way around this temporary standstill. They will forge their own paths through secret chatrooms and video calls and thousands of emojis and memes. And whatever they go through as a group together, it will be uniquely their own, and still, the stuff lifelong friendships are made of.
