21st Century UPCAT
TRIVIA: I took the UPCAT in August 11, 1993, three months after my nephew Garrett was born. Yesterday, fifteen years later, Garrett took the exam. I am Jurassic.
His mother’s in a conference in Cebu and since my Ate is well-aware of my vast knowledge of UP geography (“Gala ka kasi”), she asked me to accompany her panganay to the UPCAT.
I have no doubts to my nephew’s intellect. He’s studying in a science high school. And he’s weird and eccentric. Two main ingredients of any UP student.
We had lunch first at McDonald’s where I saw a young boy, probably an examinee, with his friends, lagging a T-square. Maybe he thought there’d be engineering questions because he applied for engineering.
And then there was the longest cab ride ever — from Philcoa to NCPAG, a distance which can be likened to Banaba to Budgetlane (for the San Mateo people) or GMA Network to Kamias road (for the city people — like San Mateo people aren’t city people haha). There were SO MANY CARS. This is really testament of how much the UP population has changed. They should’ve made a new screening process — no cars allowed inside the university. Every examinee should take the UP jeeps as part of their initiation.
Garrett’s hands were clammy and he was quiet for most of the time. I told him my Full-Proof How-To-Nail-An-Exam Secret — SKIP QUESTIONS (hehehe). If you can’t understand it the first time, it’s not worth the next five seconds of your life. Think of exam questions as a dimsum platter — eat the ones you like first, then just go back to the ones you want to try.
Garrett was also immersed to one of the fundamentals of UP life — long lines. We stood in a line of about a hundred aspiring kids (with cellphones more expensive than mine) at the entrance of NCPAG. When we were near the door, I told him two things: “Good Luck” and “Don’t panic”.
I trodded over to the UP Shopping center to buy a UP centennial sweater because my eyes hurt from the waves of blue (ADMU) and green (DLSU) jackets that parade in the office all day. Time to mix it up with some maroon.
I had four more hours to burn so I did the following: (a) looked for a place to get a footspa and a pedicure; (b) had coffee and cinnamon at red ribbon in Katipunan (which was nice and quiet and secluded — spent an hour there) while reading one of my X-files books; and (c) bought pizza for Cojie.
If there was one thing I enjoyed about five hours of doing nothing in UP, it was the long walks. Traffic was too heavy to get on a jeep or a cab, so I walked from NCPAG to Shopping Center, then from Shopping Center to Katipunan, then from Katipunan back to NCPAG. Good thing it was cool with a bit of rain. Perfect for 90s nostalgia. Especially with songs like “Back for Good”, “Dreamlover”,”In These Arms (Oo! Bon Jovi! Bakit ba!)” and “Looking Through Patient Eyes” blaring from my MP3 player.
At around 430, I headed back to NCPAG which was the exact idea of about a hundred other parents and guardians eagerly waiting for the exit of their kids, as if this was American Idol and they would be handed a gold ticket at the exit.
The examinees started to trickle out one by one at around 530. Some looked defeated. Some were just relieved that it was over.
Was the UPCAT really that hard? I can’t seem to remember. I had a boyfriend and my waistline was 28 in 1993. I didn’t really care.
A group of girls and one borderline-homo guy came out and just stood in front of the gate. Right in front of all of us, just stood there like it was a stage. They spoke in typical cognotic tones.
“Did you, like, get the question about the cow??”
“Yahhh… so hard…. that question about the cow…”
“Omigod… yah….”
“Yahhhh….”
If you ever catch me saying “Yahhhh”, please shoot me.
At about 6pm, Garrett came out. I asked him how the exam went. He just said he had a pounding headache. “You want ice cream? Chocolate?” I asked in jest, he smiled.
Maybe there’d be another UP psycho in the family in the next few months.
-0-0-0-0-
Nothing much has changed since 20th century UPCAT. It always seems to be raining during the UPCAT — maybe God knows that the exam coupled with extreme heat will drive the kids insane.
I took the UPCAT with my friends Asereht, Ledam and boyfriend Oloap. (Some genius back in highschool thought it was cool to reverse people’s names. Great. Ana spelled backward is still Ana.) We said a prayer at the Sta Clara (where the Katipunan LRT station now sits) and bought blessed pencils, which apparently just worked for me (hehe, yabang). I also remember that I was having my dang period, so I literally shed blood and sweat for that exam.
Has it really been fifteen years?
