Orientations

And orientations have come and gone, and though I might not have been able to make acquaintance with some of my OG, I think I get along with majority of them, and that's good enough for a sociopath like me.

A small number of the OGs I've seen are rather... unbonded? People straddled around and hanging around with their schools instead of with their OGs. Well, this is serious broad-brushing, actually.

I remember a senior of mine talking for a long time about the image of the school, the culture of the school, and the kind of identity an ACSI IB student had. He talked about the differences between his batch of IB students and the proceeding patch of IB students. Sure, I haven't heard anything more idealistic and flower-printed and propaganda-ish in regards to school, but I find it rather hard to ignore his point.

Months ago he talked about a mug that the student council presented to the graduating batch of ACSian IB pioneers. A mug that showed to him that the student council purely saw the image of the ACSian IB candidate as merely one who focused on his studies, drinking coffee at night and staring at the words of the mug, reminding himself of what he was ultimately before continuing to work later into the night on his EE, TOK, IA, or maybe even CAS documentation. I remember laughing rather light-heartedly at the thought of it all, since even though people do make such puns every once in a while, it's not often that the council of a well-standing school actually makes such a joke.

Few months down I see the same mug. I don't really wholeheartedly agree with him but I certainly do see the point he's bringing across. What kind of image are we supposed to portray to the world? Is it this particular image that has been passed on to us by our one-up seniors?

He said that a teacher cried during the Graduation Night of the first batch. That teacher isn't teaching this year. Why did a teacher that cared for his students enough to cry on their Graduation Night leave directly after the year was over?

During last year's chalet, another teacher of mine commented on how a colleague retired, and subsequently filed a letter criticizing the culture of the school and saying how it was doomed to fail.

I don't know how exactly all this links up, but I saw some different types of groups around. There were OGs where everyone was together, bonded as one. There were OGs where everyone was technically together, yet bonded as two, between the guys and the girls. There were OGs where the people split up around and the whole thing was very clique-like.

My senior talked about how his entire year was very bonded together and that the year 5s then were very broken up in comparison, talking about the student council, SAC and the like. Then he talked about how there shouldn't be any girls in IB. Again I don't wholeheartedly agree with him but I do see his point.

Life is headed on a new path. What kind of image are you going to portray to the outer world while on this new path? The kind of image the Year 6s have given to you as a suggestion? Or are you going to find your own? Or maybe you can shirk from it all, the antisocial response.

But if teachers are a sign of anything, the past is gone. Let's move on.

And perhaps then will the best be yet to be.