Frame it up in memory

I'm penning this down 2 hours after graduation, hence the memory of walking down the stage to receive my certificate is still fresh in my head. That glorious moment took all of 20 seconds.

But watching my friends looking all smart and Harry Potter-ish collecting their respective booklets drove home the point that three years have came and gone - that we are really moving on from this shared polytechnic experience. I'm going to be all sentimental here and reminisce right from the very beginning - Day One of school at TP.

New beginnings can be scary - and it was, at least for me. I was one of the few from my secondary class to choose the poly route and enter a school that was far from the area I grew up in. Basically I had no friends or neighbours, not even the faces of distant acquaintances to count on seeing.

But it was with a stroke of luck that I met Rachel and Stefanie (we were set to be each other's "rock" for the first year), and slowly the rest of the lot - Eudora, Mich, Jon, Brenda, SL, Nava, Mel to name a few - through various circumstances. I can easily say that for the most part of it we were getting comfortable breezing through school, with the flexible timetables and a great deal of free time to hang after classes. Aside from the relaxing class time and group assignments, the next thing that I remember doing was gallivanting around Tampines Mall. A lot.

Then there was the overseas trip to Perth, which was definitely a highlight of Year 1 too. The people that came along made the trip what it was, and a large part of why it was so memorable was because we had Mr Guo as our supervising lecturer and he was just the best that you could ask for.

The most fun I had in a semester (the ones that future students should look out for! Unless they revised the modules, then too bad) was Year 2.2 - simply because the modules were the most interesting ones and I was in the company of the best group ever. Multi-camera work and radio lessons were the ones I looked forward to most, and I was glad to be learning from the best teachers in these fields - Mr Teo and Ms Khoo.

In terms of enrichment, Year 3 was undeniably the best at that. Internship taught me so many out-of-classroom skills and gave me the wake-up-this-is-reality call that I was in much need of. The final semester was the most trying of them; it was hardly smooth-sailing. In fact it was riddled with mind-bombs, time-explosives and pressure-balloons that made us jumpy and hostile to one another. But in the midst of it all I still managed to have a wee bit of fun, and for that I couldn't be more thankful to my "rocks" in year 3, Deanna and Keith. I know without a doubt that I would have lost my marbles if not for them.

In this existence we call life, I guess you could say three years are considered as a blink. But these three are especially worth a mention. They are the Foundation Years - the years you spend exploring yourself as a person, picking up important soft skills and values that will be useful forever, and making friends that you have come to hold dear to your heart. My medal was a nice cherry on the top, but I cannot say it belongs wholly to me. In its soul lies those of my teachers, course mates, group mates, friends and family that have accompanied me on this journey of self-discovery and worth.

This was not just an education to me. I'll go as far to say that for me, it feels like something out of the Game of Life (my version). That we had to play the dice and make our moves. Each new step brought a different challenge. Sometimes it wouldn't consistantly be in our favour, but we always managed to move forward. And guess what?

I won. We all won. :)