(L-002) The Bumps and Hills

The Bumps and Hills

The next year was a little less bumpy. New years just passed, I was already pre-enrolled due to the aforementioned arrangements, and all that was left for me was to wait for updates about the schedule and when class start. THAT was what I thought was left.

A few weeks before classes some of the teachers in the school got in contact with me. The teachers informed me that there was barely any student that signed up for the TVL track. I was shook. It turns out that there was only 3 of us in our chosen strand. That’s when I remembered the past year where I barely saw any students of the same strand, and about the school arrangement.

That arrangement pretty much makes it VERY hard for me to transfer to a different school and other students of the same level from doing the other way around. We were stuck to 3 ever since last year, that was it, no more, no less.

They told me that we had 2 choices, we either transfer to another strand or persevere and carry the costs of only having 3 students for the same strand. If you think about it, it would’ve been simple. Just transfer or keep going, it’s not like there’s much costs to continuing. That would’ve been the case if TVL didn’t have different strands and if those strands didn’t have many specializations, unfortunately that wasn’t that case and even more unfortunate was that we had different specializations. That wasn’t the only problem, remember, I took TVL as a track, ICT as my strand, and computer hardware/systems servicing as my specialization.

Those conditions pretty much means that we shoulder almost all tools and supplies we need, not to mention that we took different tracks and specializations. This means for me that I will have to shoulder the costs of tools, hardware, and software that I may need for computer servicing, luckily for me, I already had some tools and things like a computer, the problem which is that my mentor wouldn’t be able to personally monitor how I work, which means I am risking those supplies if I do something wrong, and computers aren’t exactly cheap.

After taking it all in, I decided to postpone my decision. It took me a few days, and more unfortunate for me, in the span of deciding, the other 2 students pretty much switched to a different track, one of them taking STEM, which is also one of my options. I was left all alone. I was alone in the track, strand, and specialization that I chose. This prompted me to really make sure that my parents know what I and their money will go to.

After a few days, I decided that I will continue.

I stayed in my track. on the course of the ongoing year I called my father, asked him if there was a spare computer that he stored in the past when our computer cafe closed down he shipped it, I dismantled it. I purchased a crimping tool and added it in my toolsets, some supplies that I was informed to be needed like materials for ethernet cables which I ended up making, got a new flashdrive, and downloaded an installer for windows.

After going through months of those small bumps I’m finally almost finished. I am almost done with this current struggles, a few months away from graduating and also a few months away from the quarantine in the Philippines from being over.

I’m proud to assume that I will have graduated before May 2022.

Leven

(L-001) Not-so-Smooth Sailing

Not-so-Smooth Sailing.

According to the 18th Congress – Senate Bill No. 1190 of the Philippines, the average class size of elementary public schools in the Philippines is 43.9, a few tens above our neighboring countries hence, affecting the effectiveness of teachers educating said classes. According to the same bill, the implementation of such bill is to help alleviate aforementioned problems.

Now, that is not exactly the case for me. I wasn’t packed in a classroom with more than 50 students, well, not anymore since I’m not in a public school anymore I suppose. My first problem on the other hand are still regarding class size.

When I first enrolled in my current school, I couldn’t remember as to why, but I was mixed into a single class. Now, for context, I was Grade 11, Covid-19 was just declared as a pandemic by WHO a few months ago, all of us was as prepared as we can be for online classes, a all of us (hopefully) has picked and enrolled according to our chosen strand. Now for me, that was Technical-Vocational-Livelihood, computer hardware servicing. Handsy.

A few days later, I was confirmed to be enrolled to my selected school and was added to the class group chat. Now, I wasn’t exactly mad or surprised, but when test piloting the classes, I learned that the whole class wasn’t exactly people of the same strands. We were oriented about how the school is gonna approach the quarantine, the pandemic, and online learning, kind of like how things would’ve went in the our usual Filipino first day past normal classes, except online, through the computer.

According to the teacher that oriented us back then, we were to be taught the non “handsy” stuff this year, with the following year being the time where it will be mostly hands on and where we’ll finally be sorted according to our strand. It was all nice and fun, I did noticed that there were only so little amount of people that took the TVL strand, not that I care. Unlucky for me, that turned out to be a premonition, a harbinger of what was about to happen the year after.

Anyway, that year didn’t really flow smoothly which is to be expected since online learning was very alien to us since Philippines internet capabilities isn’t that great even if you look at it in a good light. That year wasn’t easy. Deadlines were broken, extended, and bended, Students would disconnect midway or even end up not attending classes for plethora of reasons, and we’d constantly try to appeal to our teachers to maybe lengthen or extend deadlines, sometimes even trying to ask for allowance for us to pass very, VERY due activities.

Well, that was the first year done. Not exactly smooth, but we passed the trials. some deadlines were missed completely, and our grades weren’t exactly shining, but we got through.

On to the second year.

#001

Leven