Confessions of a Cat-holic (65)

Auntie Linda's husband, Michael Reed, was a professor in the computer science department at Columbia and an employee at Blue Sky Studio. I didn't fill out his name in my application form to Columbia though because I didn't think I could get in given that my IB grades were not among the most competitive and I sucked at taking the SATs with many failed attempts before I hit the minimum for entry to an Ivy. I also thought my ties to him were not close enough to be considered a legacy. I only met Mr Reed once in my life, prior to college. Having said that, Linda was by far my favorite relative.

But then again, I had only met Ada less than 10 times in my life. Maybe I should have filled out my uncle's name in the application form for Columbia. I didn't know why I didn't. I must have checked the wrong box and ended up in the wrong school. My life was a mystery.

I was not surprised if other Asians called me stupid because I really was not good at maxing out and bragging about myself. Maybe I just didn't want to appear like a name dropping douchebag. I was worried that Columbia would actually call and contact Michael to find out our distant and somewhat superficial relationship at the time. I would rather be prudent than being called an overly contemptuous swagger.

Back to my class selection, which was key to my later academic development and landing at Columbia, I picked the pre-medicine E class for my first choice. It was called the "elite class", because the best students went there, with almost no exceptions. Typically, they would take the first batch of 6-7 students from each class in F3 and gathered them in a pack in F4 to give them the best resources, such as the best chemistry teacher, the best chinese teacher, and of course the best english teacher. I thought to myself why not flex my brain a bit and try challenging myself. E class would give me the best options opening the most doors for me for my future major choice. Only the best two classes, which would be A and E class, would give students the option of studying additional mathematics together with either geography or history. I chose E class which meant that I had to get stuck with geography and forgo history even though my proclivity really was tilting more towards the other way. I guessed if I could get in the best class, I really should give myself the edge of studying with the best staff and students.

Right after the two, it would be B and D class, which studied economics with either geography and history. B class' option again was geography and it was considered the better one, because, like I said, many SPCC students considered history useless and geography easier because it was relatively more sciency.

B class was known to attract the best looking girls, typically mediocre in academics with more time to take care of their looks. Many of these girls in B class were bimbos with dyed hair, wearing heavy makeup and strange looking haircuts to garner the attention of guys in school. The class was heavily imbalanced again, just like many other aspects of the school. It was made up of 38 girls and 3 guys. One of these girls was Serena, who later became my friend in LPCUWC. She actually went out in an official relationship with the I.T. support staff, Lit, in her last year of schooling at SPCC. Serena had strange tastes. Actually, I thought she had a strange mind too. She went out with an eclectic collection of eccentric people. After the I.T. support staff, she dated a 40 year old banker who resided on Perkins Road and escorted her back to the dorm with a Porsche. She was only 16 at that time so it was a 24 year gap in age. I suspected that she did it just to match my boyfriend at the time, who lived at Mayfair on May Road. I couldn't believe there were people who chose their boyfriend or girlfriend just to show that they could parallel their envied rivals. She reminded me of Mike the headless chicken. The fact that she could survive this long without a brain was truly a miraclous urban legend.