THE finish line exists. It just keeps moving.
For senior high school students in their final stretch, the end of the school year is close enough to feel but far enough that the work hasn’t stopped. Requirements are still due. Performance tasks still need to be completed. Somewhere between September’s earthquake and November’s floodwaters, the academic calendar kept moving too, until suddenly, without warning, it was March.
Aethan Corona wakes up every morning thinking the same thing.
“Ah, hapit na gyud mahuman,” said the Grade 12 ABM student from San Carlos School of Cebu Senior High School. The feeling is real, but it sits beside something quieter. The days still feel like ordinary school days, even as the last ones are running out.
“All I do is try to get the job done,” he said. “It just feels normal.”
His girlfriend studies at a different school but is in the same batch and grade level. She celebrated her 19th birthday in March with schoolwork still unfinished. They are on different calendars and moving at different paces, but they are headed toward the same finish line.
“It feels great to be with someone with the same vision,” Aethan said. “To finish school and live independent lives.”
Not every school ends at the same time. Jericho Montejo is counting down to March 30. The Grade 12 ICT student at St. John Bosco Cotcot National High School has 11 days left.
“Sometimes I would reminisce about the previous years,” he said.
Kent Harvey Wamilda at Informatics Visayas still has over a month left, a different calendar and a different kind of waiting.
“Just normal school days,” he said. “Kind of relieved, for some reason.”
The year that brought an earthquake in September and a typhoon in November was supposed to have been behind them by now. Calendars were reshuffled, deadlines were pushed back and makeup classes were scheduled. Then it was March and the work was still there, while graduation was either 11 days away or 40 and the distance between those two numbers felt larger than it looked.
The academic calendar eventually ends. The requirements eventually get submitted. Somewhere between almost and not yet, students are finishing what they started on timelines nobody chose, in a year nobody planned for.
Gryl Pepito / San Carlos School of Cebu Senior High School