nadine jensen

The four year journey ends seven months from now.

This is our very last recollection together as a class. For the past three years, every recollection was just treated as another break from the humdrum of school, an excuse to sleep and be dismissed early. Never was a recollection considered as something that is of great importance in the activities lined up for the whole year aside from the aforementioned reasons that make it something to look forward to. Apathy was not an issue, but the effectiveness of the activity and the presence and guidance of the facilitator contribute a lot in making this activity a fruitful and effective one to the students. Maybe we didn't offer much of our hearts and minds to it, because for us, recollection was just another recycled activity since elementary that we've all grown with.

It is different this time around. Though there wasn't an obvious trace of eagerness on our faces in the morning that day, deep inside us, we were hoping that somehow, this time it would be different, that this time it will hit us hard and affect us in a way or another, something that would culminate and aggregate all of our experiences together as a class, hoping that this will be an instrument to patch things up, and to be able to work with people that we've created distance with for three years, people whom we've not spent enough time with, people whom we've judged, and people whom we've thought we'd never get along with, maybe this time this recollection will address these things that have remained sublimed and hidden within us.

True enough, it gave us the time to be able to affirm one another with our possessed goodness and admirable qualities, it was the time to speak up about how we really feel, to express these pent up emotions that were kept and were waiting for the right time to explode, to ask for forgiveness from people we've burned bridges with, and to just reconnect with people we've lost intimate contact with while we were busy exploring our lives as individuals. It was also the time to reminisce the extreme heights and extremes lows that we've been through as a class, a time to congratulate everyone for reaching this recollection, a few steps away from the journey's end, and a time to give ourselves a tap on our shoulders for all the job well done. A class as dynamic as ours, we are like heated molecules expanding and bumping on each other as that heat ignites the fervor in our hearts to be competitive and be excellent. There was competition, a healthy one, something that motivates each and everyone to do well, a kind of competition that does not aim for a sole person's success, rather it encourages to release the innate best that each of us possesses, it is a kind of competition where your competitors would extend a hand to help you succeed, so that no one gets left behind. We are a breed of eclectic and varied individuals that meshes and blends perfectly. We do not overpower each other, we complement whatever one lacks, and we compliment things that one has achieved through hard work.

Almost four long years of journey, the very first day we stepped into the institution we were all apprehended of the uncertainty that awaited us, young, vulnerable and skeptical, we've grown to be independent workers who were unified by our differences. We were once strangers, aloof and afraid of one another, anxious and uncertain of where we were going, but as the ride began to take us to where we were heading, we became each other's companion, each other's direction, and in the journey there was One who steered the wheel, the omniscient Who knew all along where we are destined to be.

This journey that have threatened us with the baffling circumstances that fortified our trust with one another. Invaluable values and knowledge that were inculcated in our hearts and minds by the institution acted as our guides during the journey, they were the baggages that we will all carry when we reach on our destination and embark on yet another journey. We will all be treading forked paths, but one thing will hold us together, the journey that we all shared.