Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

The other day, half an hour before lunch break, I was in the gym helping out with the training of one of the sports club* when a student showed up, holding his pre-enrollment envelope.

It was Ray, the same who I have already mentioned in these “pages” as having approached me in the same context several terms before to get rid of his Friday classes. I predicted, just from his appearance that he was looking for similar help now.

At that point I regretted mentioning to one of the student assistants left in the faculty room where I was going. Being the only one out of the small cadre of academic advisors who was present in school that day, I was not surprised that anyone who showed up for that procedure would come to me.

In fact, Ray was not looking to limit himself to a four-day school week. He had already gone to Sir Joel for advising before, hopefully during the period it was scheduled. But it turned out that two of his subjects were overlapping in schedule, so he had to drop one of them. The registrar’s office would not allow him to (the same as they would not allow him to enroll both subjects) without the signature of an academic adviser.

For this he interrupted my only time for the past few weeks to show up for the students’ summer training in the courts. He would not have had to do this if he had showed up during the enlistment period after course card distribution, instead of the end of the succeeding week.

It was Salvador all over again. Ray couldn’t give a proper excuse as to why he didn’t show up during enlistment period, or even knew about it. If he had not been told where I was, he would have had to come back again the following week, and maybe that would have taught him to follow the set schedule instead of having to waste fruitless trips going to the school looking for personnel to assist him outside of the announced enlistment period. But he was there then, so I had to deal with him.

Talking from the sidelines though, he told me he could wait until I finished, and he sat down at one of the benches. I was satisfied with that, until I could clearly hear him snorting or laughing at each mistake our team would make, or every time someone tripped or missed.

At one point I couldn’t take it anymore that I grabbed the pen and folder from his hand, scratched a few squiggles on the enlistment form and told him to write whatever he wanted there to present to the registrar’s office.

He didn’t leave right away though, and when I asked him why, he said it was past 12 noon already, and the office did not reopen until 1pm. So he still hung around.

That wraps up session number 587. For now, class dismissed.

*I am thinking of limiting my being faculty adviser to one academic, one cultural and one sports-related student organization so as not to overfill my plate. So far it seems that the Young Educators’ Society has to look for another teacher to support them for the coming school year.