I tried quite a large number of emails and password combinations before I got here. But anyway. I just felt a strange urge to write what I thought.

I remember there was a point in time last year, and as I was taking the badge off my secondary school uniform, I held it in my hand, looked at it and told myself: “I’m gonna get back into Hwa Chong after I get my results no matter what”

Then it was results day. I sat at the bottom of the stage, worried yet excited. They started calling the top scorers up onto stage. I sat there confidently, waiting for my name to be called. 10 A1s. 9A1s. 8A1s. 7A1s. 6A1s. And completely no sign of my name. I sat there, shocked. Partly because of my unexpected results. But mostly because the prospect of me being unable to get back into Hwa Chong was staring at me right in the face.

At that moment, I genuinely felt Hwa Chong had so much to offer me. The school. The people. The class. All brimming with potential. Yet, I was about to be kept away from all these because of my results.

You could then imagine how nervous and afraid I felt as I lined up and waited for my form teacher to give the results back to us. She smiled as she passed my results slip to me, yet at that moment, it felt more like a consoling smile rather than a congratulatory one.

I signed my name and opened my results slip, trembling. I quickly scanned through the paper. A B4. A couple of A2s here and there. I quickly counted my L1R5. And recounted. And recounted again. And then I almost shouted out.

Yes! I am going back to Hwa Chong!

That was then.

Today, a year and a half had passed. It is technically the last day of school. Somehow, that fact never quite seemed to set in until I was on the bus back home. Today was largely uneventful as usual. We had the usual dose of lectures, tutorials recess and what nots. As our last lesson ended, there was this odd sense of emptiness. Our last ever tutorial as a class in Hwa Chong ended. Just like that. There was just something lacking. Something that is characteristic of all other “special” days. It just lacked this sense of significance.

Perhaps, then, it was this lack of significance in even our final day of school that serves as an apt illustration of our class.

Let’s be extremely frank with ourselves. Our class, although some of us might disagree or would not like to accept, is less united or bonded as an entity than we would like it to be. It was not sudden or abrupt. It was just this gradual, subtle process that we all naturally started drifting into cliques. Or “gangs”, as Renice often likes to put it.

Perhaps a couple of us might sometimes look at other classes in envy, on how they can be so “bonded”, or why their class seems so fun, then lament on the state of our class.

As our class slowly divided into groups and drifted into parts, it gets harder and harder for us to put it back together. Overt attempts often appear as over-enforced, or simply put, “trying too hard”, merely appearing as just awkward.

Yet, there were instances where without any deliberate attempt, our class actually really looked like a class. And the catalyst of it all was not JTS, STJ or anything else. It was, albeit somewhat strangely, captain’s ball.

Initially it appeared to me somewhat odd. That ultimately, throughout these 2 years, the missing link that many of you might have been looking for to bond our class together lies in this simple game during PE.

Perhaps it was because when playing captain’s ball, our differences did not appear all that pronounced anymore. Everyone was part of a homogeneous group, running about the field. There was just too little time for anyone of us to think or judge each other. We just passed to the first person we saw.

Perhaps it was because playing captain’s ball kind of gave us a common goal to work towards. And the results were not only tangible, but immediate. We could immediately see the rewards of scoring a goal, and so worked towards it as a team.

Perhaps it was because we “suffered” together in a sense, as we did push ups when we lost a point.

I think that few sessions where we played captain’s ball together was actually enjoyable for many of us, whether we admit it or not. Not because of the game itself, but because it was one of those rare instances where we were doing something together as one class. Somehow it showed me the potential our class had, and gave me a short sense of reprieve from our usual state. And I think as we leave Hwa Chong eventually, it is these shared memories, of PE, of Mr Tan’s lessons, of Maychew debating with Mr Foo during econs, the T-H-A-M song and everything else we ever did together as a class, that we would always remember.

In the end, I don’t know how much I will miss the school(or not miss the school) until I leave the school itself, just as how I didn’t quite understand what I really felt about the whole concept of being a “class” until “class” officially ended today.

The only time we would see each other would probably only be during prelims, before we all go for study leave, and then A levels. What others might feel from reading this is really inconsequential to me now.

Perhaps there is this idealistic part of all of us that wants to be part of a close-knit group we can call our class. It is merely an over-rationality and over-sensitivity of what others might think of us that has prevented it from happening.

boon pin