RSSPC and Polaroid Metaphors
I won 3rd place in the Regionals Secondary Schools Press Conference.
Isn’t it just amazing how good things happen when you least expect it? When I went to the venue for RSSPC, I internally laughed at myself for even trying. And then I fast-forward to when I went to school on a Saturday to see that chalkboard announcement saying that I actually won third out of about a hundred other delegates.
Woke up to my best friend, who is our Science Feature Writer, calling me to say our adviser wants me to go to school asap, hence the 'I just woke up' face.
We looked like square pegs in a round hole during the RSSPC. We looked so out of place in that sea of checkered skirts. I remember some kids were actually laughing at our uniform back in DSSPC. And as though our physical irrelevance wasn’t enough, we also felt out of place inside. We didn’t prepare for this as much as the other kids from the RSSPC hashtag who trained the whole day with their school paper advisers. We just simply went there and listened to the lecturers, hoping we’d actually have something to write about.
Nobody really gets this whole Campus Journalism thing. In school, we were like New Directions from Glee (It did not go as far as that though. No slushie-splashing whatsoever happened but still,). Not even our parents knew what on Earth we do in RSSPC. All they know is that we write for the newspaper. In fact, my grandma’s friend actually congratulated me and said, “Oh, Journalism! Does that mean you can join the military?” I wasn’t able to contain myself so I blurted out a big “What?” and he looked really clueless so I just let it be. But all that never really mattered. We like writing and we don’t care if people don’t get us
Campus Journalists with our school paper adviser, Dr. Ninette Gines. We call ourselves Nettyzens.
So yeah, back to the RSSPC.
All I ever expected to happen during the RSSPC was that we’d have fun just like we did during the DSSPC (Divisions). But the moment we stepped inside the venue, we were immediately overwhelmed by the number of students lining up just to register. It’s not my first time joining but the venue was a lot smaller and I’m not exactly a big fan of people shoving and pushing each other (now that I think of it, it kind reminded me of a mosh pit).
"What's the name of our school publication again?"
After the registration, we listened to the lecture which was held in the middle of a freaking hallway. And I immediately went all cranky and texted my classmates that we paid for this, that we didn’t experience this during the DSSPC, and so on. I mean, I had to sit on the floor in my pencil skirt without any source of ventilation for heaven’s sake. It was not fun. But the lecturers kept it short and sweet. All they said was that feature writing is basically just drawing pictures in the readers’ minds. I suck at art and I can’t literally draw pictures, so the idea of drawing mental images into the readers’ minds gives me hope that maybe for the first time, I don’t suck at something that involves art.
After the twenty-minute lecture, we headed to the rooms for the contest proper. I just sat there quietly while admiring my seatmate’s Doctor Who bag and eavesdropping to some guy’s story about how his school is the biggest in Taguig (and also mentally shutting him up). After a few awkward minutes, my other seatmate with the non-Doctor Who bag spoke to me and started with, “Why is he so loud?” I chuckled and replied, “He keeps talking about how big his school is,” She snorted in reply and we just started talking. After a while, my other seatmate with the Doctor Who bag joined us, and we talked about BBC and Neil Gaiman. It was awesome.
Then the judges came. They wrote the letters B and S, with spaces after each letter, on the chalkboard, and said, “Guess what the theme is?” Then one of them quickly added, “No, it’s not bullshit.” And everybody laughed because that’s the first thing that came to our minds. Somebody randomly shouted, “Bisexual!” And then we laughed even more. When the judges said it was a trending topic on Twitter, I shouted, “Blank Space” but he was already writing it down. A group of girls in the back fangirled while I fangirled silently because my seatmates said they don’t listen to Taylor Swift.
The theme was too vague. I almost just passed my clean paper because it was, in fact, a blank space (ha, real funny, Casey). But obviously, I didn’t. I ended up writing about myself, about how I’m a blank space. I started with a Polaroid picture metaphor. I explained that life is simply an undeveloped Polaroid picture. Nobody knows if it’s going to be good, bad, or just decent. Then on the next paragraph, I wrote several other life metaphors (cliché, I know).
“Life is walking home from school, thinking you did your best on that Physics exam and waking up with a big fat F on your face. It’s hating your parents for forcing you to go out with them ‘to have fun’ and ending up with a smile in your face, and a pen in your hand, ready to write about your new adventure.”
What I was trying to say is that, life is full of surprises. In most cases, what you think would happen will be the opposite of what will actually happen. So we never really know. And that’s what happened when I found out that I won third place. I didn’t see it coming. I wasn’t proud of my article. I thought I’d place last, but the opposite happened. And it’s crazy. That’s life for me. It’s “Shaking that polaroid picture, fading in to what may be a good, or a bad picture.” In my case, it’s a good picture. And I will remember that for the rest of my life.
(Oh and after the competition, we almost got into a fight over souvenir shirts with some other students from another school. Let me just tell you, we went a bit sassy and we walked out like a boss.)
We didn't even wait for our shirts to dry.
