Polemic

My life is eerily like army. Everyday I book in by signing a book, spend my time alternating between being busy or acting busy, sneaking in a few personal activities in between, finally clocking up the required hours before having to leave in the most stealthy manner. And of course you have to sign out before you leave. Once I get home I inevitably go take a nap before dinner. It's fast becoming a bad habit and screws up my bio clock.
Oh and after the Boro game when Ronaldo won the penalty that decided the game, he used the word "polemic" in the post match interview and had me scrabbling for dictionary.com.
While in the staffroom today, I was chatting with a teacher with my colleagues. She was asking about what happened to the personalities of our batch, and she proceeded to take out a file with all the class lists of the classes she used to teach, which dated back to 1997. In the 1997 file pocket, there was a namecard. She said that this student came back recently and gave her his namecard. Written on it was "Phd MIT".
That really got me thinking. I really want to be able to bring back a namecard and it would be something impressive as well. Not for vanity, it's more for a validation that yes, I did well.
However, I went to my former form teacher and asked her, "Ma'am, Mrs XXX kept classlists of all her students and still remembers most of them. So, what's my name?"
She couldn't answer me.
Well, at least it's an improvement. The first time she saw me when I came for relief, she confidently called me Zhi En.
Anyway, I would like to just air some views about my alma mater. Thinking back, I think the best and the most carefree times were in sec school where my class just fooled around. I kind of regret not making the most of my time then. Now that I'm a teacher there, I see a lot of things happening behind the scenes and realised that a lot of perceptions was wrong. I used to detest chinese, but now I think chinese is a very important subject and would always find the opportunity to use it (hence my various conversations with my former chinese teacher); I would complain about going to school, but now I'd love to go back in school; I would fret unnecessarily about results and compare them with peers and get jealous, now I realise it's so pointless as long you do well in the end for the major exams to get to where you want to go.
I guess these sentiments are a result of growing up. I get if-only-i-knew-then-what-I-know-now moments a lot, but yeah life goes on and I've to just get over it. So just a friendly word of advice from someone who has gone through it before, enjoy your school life. Don't be so eager to get out of school as once you do, there ain't no way back there. Unless you become a teacher that is.