Eleven years (and counting) in Mapua (HS and College), I have been able to encounter different types of Mapuans with different personalities. And if there is one common denominator, that would be the use of OT's or old testaments. These testaments are the quizzes, assignments or even projects of previous students for a certain subject. In time, these OT's have been transferred from one generation to another and the advent of newer technologies have only made it easier.

These OT's are being used as a reference material by the students and if luck has it, quizzes can be exactly the same as those with the OT's. Some professors get too busy to change the questions that come out of the examinations. Though this exclusively Mapuan tradition has been contradicted many times because the students tend to depend too much on these documents - whether we care to admit it or not - that we spend more time looking for them than actually studying the subject matter, it may be considered an already accepted practice, whether the professors care to disagree or not. It is an accepted practice that depriving someone of these OT's can be considered an unbailable offense.

Being an overstaying student for quite sometime, I am having classes now with students from lower batches most of the time. If there are any difference from the students before and the students now, that would be the current students' unfriendliness in sharing OT's as if these coveted documents have evolved especially for them. These kids have also grown to being truly disrespectful to those students of higher batches such as me. And so, I was compelled to go back to the old but more effective tradition - study.

More than half of my classmates in all the subjects I am taking right now are from the lower batches which makes this term doubly hard and challenging for me. I feel being deprived of these OT's and Im getting sick looking for them so I am trying to do everything on my own.

Last week, I was utterly problematic about my upcoming quiz in my Pumps class. The fact that my classmates in that class were very unfriendly made it more depressing, there were no one to study with me so I had to do it all by myself while not being even sure if I actually understand the subject. I spent the whole night before the exam reviewing my notes and even did mock exams alone, refusing a night-out treat from my friends.

On the day the results went out, I came to class late and the quiz papers of those who came in late were on the teacher's table but mine was nowhere to be found. Turned out that my paper was being reviewed by my classmates. I was the only one who got 100.