UP Prep in my mind

We met for what might be the last grand reunion of the Prepians, the name proudly carried by graduates of the University of the Philippines Preparatory School, effusively dubbed “the best high school.”

Not an empty boast, for Prep was created first-class with “a pilot curriculum appropriate for teenagers with the aptitudes and intellectual talents required by university studies,” a faculty with the best graduate and postgraduate training here and abroad, and a rigorous entrance test that winnowed a few thousand applicants to only 100. Its legion of graduates (including Vice President Jejomar Binay) have contributed to the country and the world in all fields of human endeavor.

We crow now, but then we never thought we were special, a bunch of youngsters trying to get a good education to prepare us for college and, eventually, for life itself. Prep was so egalitarian you never thought of social-economic classes. I celebrated my birthday in Sampaloc with classmates including my freshman crush. We were welcomed in gated houses and other hospitable abodes. Religion and geographic distinctions never mattered. Only after high school did I learn that a classmate belonged to the Iglesia ni Cristo. I thought everyone was either with

UPSCA (UP Student Catholic Action) or UPCYM (UP Christian Youth Movement)! I was made aware I was an Ilocano when I got a grade of “74” in English because of my accent. The only divisions we had were the sectioning: I-Sampaguita, II-Rosal, III-Champaca, and IV-Lotus.

The daily grind of school was a mixture of learning and leisure. I would wake early to take rides from Sampaloc to Padre Faura, enter Rizal Hall, and climb the stairs to the third floor with schoolbag in tow, trying to beat the morning bell. But in the fourth year, the pace slackened with the first subject being physics. In the first semester two of us were the butt of gentle ribbing of “Wow, legs!” due to the short khaki pants we wore, which we immediately forswore.

PE was every Saturday in the UP Diliman campus, but someone made it every break by wrestling with me. We had our meals either at the canteen, at Philam, or at the corridor for delivered home-cooked fare, after which we would venture to Erehwon, La Solidaridad, or Alemar’s. Tuesday afternoon Mass was at the PGH (Philippine General Hospital) Chapel. After 5 p.m., it was either the second-floor library or the USIS (United States Information Service) library in Santa Mesa for the research assignments of a teacher who promised to squeeze our coconuts and gave surprise quizzes that she graded as very, very, very good or bad. At times I had to rush to Recto to buy back issues of Life magazine to submit to her.

We gained knowledge with a slew of mentors teaching us art appreciation, natural sciences, Philippine history, Pilipino (under our assistant principal of the immortal line “I tell you, you will not graduate”), English (under one who gave me an “excellent” grade for my interview with a Ramon Magsaysay awardee, journalist Mochtar Lubis), algebra, economics, and geometry (under one we remember for the “Impressions” we wrote of the world around us).

We grew to be rounded young men and women with extracurricular activities. We were members of the Students’ Theatre, Glee Club, Interact Club, and Junior Cooperative Association. We had our Junior-Senior Prom eating balut (brought in an attache case with, was it gin?), attended conferences and matched skills with other students and more often than not came out on top, went on educational tours, riding rusty Pantranco buses, slept in dusty schoolrooms or at the Patria Hotel in Baguio, had convocations, scouting, PMT, the whole works.

Only ours extracted the best from us. Pushed to the limits of excellence, we grew in four memorable years comfortably together as one batch, one family. In the end, in solemn ceremonies at Abelardo Hall, where we heard some last platitudes from our commencement speaker,

Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., we parted ways after stretching the night of our graduation ball.

Today UP Prep is no more. Only Rizal Hall stands, keeper of memories it witnessed and listening to footfalls reverberating in its halls. We hold in our hearts our part of the memories, and we met again not to see what we have become but to relive what we were once. Maybe, just this one last time, because to paraphrase MacArthur, the deepening shadows of life prevent us to say that again we shall return.

Heredio O. Bello Jr., 62, belongs to UP Prep batch 1968. A freelance writer and former member of the Ilocos Sur Provincial Board and barangay captain of Barangay Quirino in Santa, Ilocos Sur, he is now a consultant at the Provincial Capitol.