josephite diary

8/11/2019 Josephite Diary

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July 2013

The first excitement of the year was the Fr. Eric Vaz Memorial Inter-School

Hockey Tournament, the time of the year when students beg their teachers and

the Principal to allow them to go to the stadium and watch the match. The term

match seems inappropriate. A more appropriate term would be thrashing

because, like always, no school was a match for our Josephite junior and senior

hockey teams.

Of course, many times, some teacher or the other would tell us that there were a

lot of portions to complete, in which case, the teacher wouldnt be allowed to

teach and would be forced to allow us to go for the match.

Intensive classes and club-swinging practices overburdened us, not to mention

the projects. After a month of fun, 2 of them were already due before the exams.

This meant that there was barely any time to complete them and barely any time

to study for the exams. On begging the teachers to extend the deadline of the

projects, we received a fixed response of about how wed been informed about

the projects in the beginning of the year itself and about how we should have

completed them by now.

Many stayed at home to complete the projects. After a lot of tedious work that

continued into the late hours of the night, many of us managed to complete the

projects which were due in July and submit them on time. But the relief was short

lived. By completing the projects due in July, we were merely jumping out of the

frying pan into the fire as we now had to study for the exams.

August 2013

Our results weresatisfyingat the very least. We assured our teachers andparents that wed do better next time. Immediately after the distribution of

papers were the heats for the Annual Athletic Meet, followed by rigorous club

swinging practices even on Saturdays. But this also meant that there were

virtually no classes for the entire month. This month was a big party!


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September 2013

Sports Day passed like a breeze and within no time we were faced with the Half

Yearly Exams. Portions were completed in a rush due to the scarcity of classes.

This was a month of absolute misery. Never before did we have to study so much

for an exam.

October 2013

Our misery continued well into the first week of October. Just before the exams

got over, we were reminded that the deadline for submitting most of the other

projects was after the Dassera holidays (which were immediately after the

exams). These holidays had very limited enjoyment and were extremelystressfulfrom hasty trips to Bannerghatta National Park for our Geography

projects to trips to historical locations, mostly within Bangalore, for our History

projects, to long overnight work on other projects. It seemed that we were doing

so much work for our projects but by the end of the holidays, we still found

ourselves staying up late to complete them.

After the holidays, we received our papers, and yet again we assured our parents

and teachers that we would do better next time. During the few weeks after theholidays, most of us were still completing projects, whether by staying at home

and completing them or by coming to school and doing them while the teachers

taught us, with the constant fear of their confiscation.

When a teacher confiscated a project, before returning it, he/she would remind

us about how there was time during the lunch break to complete them. Having

been accustomed to playing on the field every lunch break, this was a completely

new experience. Some obediently utilized the lunch break for projects but most of

us continued to play on the field.


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November 2013

The days passed by and many projects were still due. The Diwali holidays

commenced, which was a nice break. A few days after the holidays, there was the

Phenomenon 2013, our school fest. This was probably the biggest event this

academic year. Dance, rap battles, debates, quizzes and the exhilarating

performances by Inner Sanctum and Nikhil Chinappa were some of the many

memorable events that made the Phenomenon 2013 special.

This was followed by our class picnic. It was a bit disappointing that we wouldnt

have an excursion like last year, but something was better than nothing. We had

quite a great time at Urban Valley, with paintball, swimming, adventure sports,

etc.

This brought us to the inevitable problemthe submission of our projects.

Luckily, most of the tedious work was over and most of us managed to submit

them.

At the end of the month, most of us took part in the SJBHSMUN. This was the first

MUN (Model United Nations) that our school was conducting. The thought of the

MUN was initially boring. Apart from the students who had taken part in MUNs

before, the idea of a simulation of the working of the United Nations seemed silly.

However, after a few tedious MUN orientation sessions, this actually seemed

quite fun.

The actual MUN didntseem half as boring as the orientation sessions. More than

actually adhering to the formal procedures was the chit-chatting (literally chatting

through chits). One of the rules of the MUN was that none of the delegates could

talk to each other. The only legal way to communicate was by means of sending

chits. Of course, this was misusedfrom sending love letters to girls from all overIndia to anonymous pranking through chits to getting caught and having to read

out your chit on stage! The hilarious humiliation of countries and the motions for

entertainment (which often included embarrassing scenes on stage) were some

of the major events that will be remembered by every participating Josephite.


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December 2013

The arrival of the month of December made us come to terms with the fact that

these few days would be the last few days of school life, the last few days of tenth

standard and most probably the last few days of studying in St. Josephs.This was

it! 6-10 years had been spent in this prestigious institution which was now our

second home. We decided to make the last few days memorable.

This time, we wouldnt seek fun and pleasure by annoying the teachers, we

wouldnt seek it by bunking and we most certainly wouldnt seek it by damaging

school property. To some, that would seem like no fun at all. That didnt mean we

didnt have other means of having fun. The classroom was filled with chanting of

favourite lines said by our teachers (Yaaeees!, Crescendo! etc.) We prankedthe students of other sections. We had paper pellet fights. We played classroom

football.

Our bonds of friendship grew stronger. A sense of gloom passed over us when we

realized there were just 5 days of school life left, then 4 days, then 3, then 2, then

one and then there were none left. Never before had we been this disappointed

at the beginning of our Christmas holidays.

To make it worse, our prelim exams were immediately after our holidays. This

meant no enjoyment, even on Christmas! There was absolutely no time to finish

studying. We were so preoccupied with our projects in the previous months that

we had completely forgotten about exams.

January 2013

More and more studies! This was the time when we had to be very serious about

our studies. We may have goofed around during our previous exams, but thistime our parents and our teachers expected us to do much better than before.

Failing or doing badly in these exams would only show that we were not prepared

for the boards when there was barely a month left for the board exams to

commence.


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It is simply impossible to express the elation we experienced this year was when

the prelims got over. We had survived! All this time it had seemed like a life and

death matter, but regardless of this, we had still survived. Only the board exams

stood in the way of us completing tenth and our lives of being Josephites.

It was unthinkable not to come to St. Josephs everymorning. It was unthinkable

about how we would never be able to have all the fun that we had in school ever

again. We would never have guessed that there would ever be a time when we

actually had to leave St. Josephs.But all in all, we were still brothers of the same

Josephite family and we would always be.

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