“I could have studied at the #1 public high school in the US. I did not, and here I am.”
The Star Cinema blockbuster “Starting Over Again” resonated with me not because I missed out on some great flame, something I had the misfortune of regretting for the rest of my life. Rather, it’s the movie’s concept of a timed email that delivers an unsolicited message from an earlier self to an unsuspecting future self.
Those with untidy inboxes that result from sentimental hoarding or borderline apathy will discover that their emails act as a time capsule of sorts, for better or worse. In my quarantine-induced mission to declutter my account of thousands of unread emails, I rediscovered the electronic trail of a path I had not taken half my life ago.
Back in the middle of the pandemic, the year 2021 marked a decade since I had chosen to forego my slot at the School for the Talented and Gifted (TAG) at the Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Magnet Center in Dallas, Texas. It’s not easy to get into what has been tagged by the media as the number one public high school in America for at least nine years. Yet I gave it up for an opportunity to return home to the Philippines after a six-year stay in the United States.
From what I can discern in the fog of memory, my parents had given me that choice to stay for the chance at a better future abroad. It was ultimately my decision to leave it all behind for an uncertain trajectory back in our home country. Today I look back — but not with longing.
As fate would have it, I’ve gotten a glimpse at the future that could have been, thanks to an administrative oversight that resulted in my still being included in the mailing list of my alternate alma mater. For four years, I continued to receive updates on school policies, the yearbook that I imagined I’d have spearheaded, social activities I would have skipped out on anyway, like the talent show, and very real college opportunities.
It’s not so much just the school I had passed up on but the hypothetical life that it entailed. Physical letters arrived at my grandmother’s residence, revealing that I had university scholarship offers thanks to my association with TAG, which I never even attended. Would I have gotten an economics degree at some prestigious higher education institution or studied for free at an Ivy League school? Who’s to say, really?
And what about the man that I would have become? I think of him at times, and when I do, I’m almost sure that he would have championed ideals that I would not support today—for he would be a product of American exceptionalism. Manifest destiny was his, not mine. So rather than stay west, I headed back east in an irreversible decision that I continue to stand by.
Here in the Philippines, I studied at my hometown’s main public high school where I learned foremost to acclimate to a culture that I had forgotten and left behind in my formative years. Then I entered the University of the Philippines, a privilege which, among many academic and life lessons, humbled me.
A spot in the country’s national university, funded by taxpayers’ money, only motivated me to seek a future beyond my own. One that every Filipino can be proud to inherit and pass on to future generations. I have no illusion that I can do it on my own, but to have been part of it is a great honor.
UP notwithstanding, the best school anyone can attend is outside the classroom. In a country mired with poverty and injustice, the greatest faculty are the broad masses who have firsthand authority on Philippine social realities. It is them from whom I continue to learn.
To contradict the great American poet Robert Frost:
I shall be telling this with a sigh.
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one more traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Ratziel San Juan is a Filipino journalist interested in culture and human interest stories. Off work, he binge eats, watches, or plays whatever he wants at the moment.
