It hasn’t dawned on me that it’s finally June till I was walking home this morning to find, no, not traffic just yet, but sleepy kids in their school uniforms. And I was suddenly, oh, right. It’s June now.

Back maybe four or five years earlier, this would be my favorite season—it’s the time of the year when you go around sighing loudly for everyone to hear that omfg, it’s school time again; yet you’re secretly excited because it ends the yearly era (meron ba nun?) of your parents nagging you nonstop to clean the house or at least clean your damn room, since you’re on vacation anyway. That, or maybe the plain fact that as a lowly student dependent on your parents, it’s no baon = no gala, and summer isn’t exactly as fantastic as it really is till you’re working and you have all the money but no time to go around splurging it on vacays. I know my professors would differ if I would say I love school. Tardiness streak aside, I loved it. And I specifically loved college because La Salle Dasmarinas is nothing if not for trees and splendid amazing people.

So walking around with these kids lamenting their late night tv marathons and cursing the alarm clock, I was forced into nostalgia by my jealousy—not the uniforms, no, definitely not; but by the exciting things awaiting them when they get to school. They say you never really learn till you’re out in the real world, but you’ll never understand how powerful the four walls of a classroom can be because it somehow shaped the idealism that would mold you into how you would further learn from the real world. Whilst the real world can be rough, the walls teach you that you’re the best and, plainly, YOU CAN. And if you hang on to your ideals long enough, you just might go through the real world thinking you indeed are the best.

When I got home, I popped in one of my old CDs and browsed through some of the pictures. Amusingly—baby faced grins aside—we all looked mayabang. Not the same yabang that we all have that’s clearly made by the salary and position, but the yabang with idealism fresh from college. The yabang that “we’re equipped, and we’re here to change the world.” Grabe, I miss that uncorrupted pride. Haha.

Ikaw, do you miss school?

More pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=118285&id=656793975&l=e7ac4237b4