Making New Memories with Old Friends

This week, I went out of my house 3 days in a row to celebrate the end of my first college semester conducted f2f. This is the story of my 1st day out arranged the night before.

It all starts with me leaving the house by 11, hoping to reach Shangri-la Plaza (I will call this place Shang moving forward) by 12 noon. I originally planned to meet them after lunch around half past one due to their classes, but someone wanted to meet earlier, so I settled for 12. The commute going there was uneventful, unlike the commute going home, so stick with me to the end if you want to know the mishap that happened there.

Once I was in Shang, I decided to walk around the floor for a while, window-shopping the brands that were just out of reach with my finances right now. Then, my friend Bettina surprised me at Starbucks. It’s been more than a year since we last met, so we almost made a commotion with how loudly we greeted each other. She had one of her online classes ongoing; while we waited for the other two friends, she was practicing drawing with vectors. At the same time, I couldn’t resist spilling some of the events that happened to me during my first face-to-face college semester.

An hour and a half passed. The fruity seasonal drink I bought from Starbucks is already empty. Bettina’s iced tea is still half full. The vector drawing of her dog’s finished, as well as her class. Finally, the third invited friend, Jessie, arrived. To absolutely no one’s surprise, he came straight from summer class and was therefore late. He made up for it though by buying us lunch at Bonchon. The news sharing continued over there, and we were all loud and energetic doing so. I had to remember the social skills I learned: waiting for someone to finish, checking their faces and tones to see if they were listening, and more. Neurotypical people take those for granted, but I had to learn all those social cues the hard way because they weren’t instinctual. Anyway, back to the day out.

The last ever friend, Soleil, finally arrived, and we were almost evicted purely for the noise we made seeing her. To be honest, the noise came from mostly her and me, because we truly haven’t seen each other in so long. I was jealous somewhat that she was glowing, while I was still looking like a zombie due to the finals week I had to endure. The news-sharing session became even MORE energetic, and I did comment how instead of saving money, we all saved “chika” to share instead! (Chika is Tagalog for “gossip” but with a positive connotation.) 

After we finished our lunches and our news sharing, we decided to explore the mall. Shang is an upscale mall targeted to people in the higher economic levels; the prices at Rustan’s department store certainly weren’t afraid to call us 4 peasants. It was Soleil’s first-ever trip to Shang, so we all stayed together like how ideal friend groups do in horror movies. 

With how vast the mall is though, we got hungry and decided to stop by Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for coffee and snacks. I wanted pictures since we all managed to meet up as 4 after a long time. After we all smiled at the camera on my phone, we got our orders and enjoyed the happiness that came from good company and good food. We all agreed to split the bill evenly; Jessie threw a wrench in the plan by paying first. But, we got our way by making him share his GCash acc number for us to pay our share. 

It seems impossible on paper, but my friend group and I managed to tour the whole Shang Plaza in one afternoon. Of course, all 4 of us had definite stores we wanted to visit, but we also had fun showing Soleil all the whimsical escalators that loved skipping floors. I think only Jessie and I bought stuff in Shang; he got a Burberry perfume that he loved the scent of, and I stocked up on the toiletries I needed. 

The group started leaving one after the other by 1730; Soleil left with her mom and sister, Jessie booked a motorcycle ride to his condominium, and Bettina was fetched by her brother. Bettina and I toured Shang the longest, and I knew it was time to go home when she left.

Going home by myself was a lesson learned the hard way. I took a taxi cab to go home for convenience, but the traffic made me short on cash by the time he was about to drop me off. I told him to wait for me to collect spare change; luckily, there were enough coins at home to cover the commute fare portion I lacked. I was told to never take taxis to go home anymore, but I also kind of hope other people still do so. The taxi driver shared his struggles along with his fellow drivers about how they had to appear in court due to their employers not paying their mandated insurance and etc. for several years. I do hope taxi drivers in the Philippines get treated fairly soon.

The day has ended, but my thirst for social gatherings is far from satisfied. I’ll write posts about the other days out I had in Pasig when I have the energy and time to do so. Until then, I’ll be resting from the tumultuous and memorable college semester I had this year.

I finished my first year at UPLB

So, here I am again, with a brand new post after a long time being MIA.

And I’m here to tell you that I’m finishing my first year in college. Shocker, isn’t it? I’ll skip over the events that happened before I started college since this article is solely about my experience being a freshman at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) taking a BS in Food Science and Technology (BS FST).

My whole first year in college was done remotely; therefore my daily commute was traveling the great distance between my bed and my laptop in the same room in order to open Google Classroom and Canvas. I’m very grateful that for my first semester, the College of Agriculture and Food Science (CAFS) arranged my subjects and schedule for me. (You’ll understand why later in this post.) So, as soon as I got my schedule set as my laptop wallpaper, I ventured into my BS FST freshmen group chat to ask around who else attended the same classes as me. I found several people and we made a group chat together; we mostly requested zoom links from each other.

During my first semester, I took 8 subjects which equaled around 18 units. I enjoyed all my subjects, but I’ve never experienced such an intense yearning after the return to face-to-face classes until I took Agriculture 31 (Crop Science). Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed learning about crops from their types to their farming procedures. It’s just that my professor insisted on conducting plant experiments at home which I hated intensely. My father laughed at my dramatics about that but I still stood my ground about how I’d rather grow mung bean plants in an actual lab instead of our house. I definitely won’t be that type of adult who cares for plants anytime soon; I’ll leave that to my mom and almost every aunt I have. (Also, rice water compared to tap water stimulated more growth and development in mung bean plants, if you’re curious.)

My favorite subject during that semester was definitely Food Science and Technology 11. My professor described it as a subject that gives a bird’s eye view of everything revolving around food. I mostly absorbed knowledge about its fundamentals; from the food industry to food groups (proteins, carbs, etc.) to food safety, and food preservation. I’m proud to say I got the highest grade with that because it would be a shame to fail a subject directly related to my course.

Obviously, with many subjects, I had many requirements due. As a student, I always prioritized submitting outputs on time over everything else. As long as my deadlines were met, I was satisfied with my work. Google Classroom helped me keep track of requirements from all subjects that were due within a certain week. My Canvas subject deadlines though were another story; I almost always forgot what papers were due on which day. That all changed with the next semester though, since the reverse situation happened where the majority of my subjects used Canvas. In Canvas, I adored the Calendar feature because it gave me a bird’s eye view of how busy I would be in a given month.

Speaking of my second semester, the pre-enrollment and enrollment periods were hell. Yes, these are very strong words, coming from someone who all had to do was click buttons with a mouse, as said by both of my parents who experienced an even tougher enrollment process for the same university. Here’s the thing; I’ve never known that a website could experience all known web errors with the highest lag possible until I used the Student Academic Information System (SAIS) website for enrollment. Good lord, so many subjects ran out of slots, and all the subjects in my shopping cart became unavailable really quickly. Ideally, I would have taken 18 units, but I only managed to snag 12; 14 units is what I got if you counted my Human Kinetics 12 subject. (That subject was only thanks to my professor’s prerogative or prerog for short.)

Speaking of Human Kinetics 12, I ended up learning Line Dance in that subject. My outputs were mostly videos of me following along with my professor’s given line dance routine with music. The difficulty increased as the subject progressed; the easiest dance I did was to Fireworks by Katy Perry while the hardest was to Maria by Ricky Martin. (That song was wickedly fast for line dance, but it was fun!) Classes were conducted over zoom, so imagine me in loungewear following along with whatever steps were being described by my professor. Sometimes, I was asked to demonstrate what I learned so far, so that meant my bare feet and smooth legs were vulnerable to criticism for bonus points. I remember holding up 30 minutes of the lecture because I was terribly confused by one step in terms of direction.

One subject I was incredibly scared to take was Physics 51. It shouldn’t be a surprise to you if you know me through my works that Physics is the bane of my existence. Thankfully, the professor helped me understand the concepts that befuddled me greatly; we started with the basics like force and ended with magnetism. Thankfully, there were many resources that helped me understand all the homework given to me throughout the semester, but my performance in quizzes and long exams left a lot to be desired. I actually believed I was doing better than I thought, but my mom almost died from stress after seeing my scores. Here’s a Canvas feature for all the gunners out there: on the mobile app, there’s a line that tells you the mean score of all your classmates, the lowest, and the highest. And, I was mostly performing worse than my classmates with me falling behind the mean. I had a score I often bragged about as 37/45, but Canvas showed the mean score was 41/45. I’m just so thankful I’m done with that subject because taking any more Physics subjects might stress my parents out even more with how abysmal my performance could get.

Remember when I said I had a subject that made me desire face-to-face classes badly? Well, in my second semester, I had one that made me appreciate my blessings as a student capable of attending online classes. Microbiology 11 is a beginner subject about how microorganisms are studied, but you can summarise that subject with a quote from Raven Symone: “Ya Nasty!”. Microbes live in almost every environment you can think of to the point that conducting experiments about them means going through lots of effort to ensure ONLY your microbe of interest exists in the said area (aseptic techniques, anyone?) I’m very thankful all the experiments were recorded on video and all I had to do to collect data was to describe the results and interpret them. Grade 10 and 11 Research still haunts me with all the failed experiments my old groups did with bacteria thanks to flawed aseptic techniques. I still learned valuable knowledge about the various microbes that existed around us.

Now, you might be wondering: “Garrett, how were your grades this year?” Well, imagine a rollercoaster drop. That’s the best way to describe the difference between my grades for the two semesters. My grades were impressive during my first semester, but they all took a dive downward for the second semester. I’m not really proud of them, but at least they were still high enough to maintain my scholarship. So, I will be spending my break tutoring myself because I do not want to fail the higher Chemistry subjects I’ll take next school year.

I still don’t fully know what I plan to do after I graduate from this course but that’s okay since it’s too early for me to worry. Right now, all I need to think of is enrolling and acing all the subjects listed in my curriculum.