Training School

It was like high school all over again.

There were star pupils, teachers’ pets, smelly, shy, talkative, weird classmates, flowerpots, late-comers, classmates who peppered their every sentence with expletives, classmates who knew the answer to every question, classmates who fell in love, classmates who fell asleep in class and classmates who had flagrant disregard for the rules.

We had about 20 in our class and it was a mash-up of mainly girls and a couple of guys of different nationalities and ages. The youngest was 18 and the oldest, 28. There were different cliques, the popular, the foreigners, the nerds, the gossips and there were the lone-rangers.

I did not really enjoy high school.

I was always the awkward kid. The introvert. If the teacher was not around, I sat in a corner reading my storybook when all hell was breaking loose. I was the kid who hated having my homework being copied or having my classmates look over my shoulder to see what I wrote on my exam paper. I was the weirdo who sat alone at recess and went jogging around the basketball court after my meal for lack of anything better to do. In my annual report cards, my teachers always wrote that I needed to speak up more and ask more questions.

In many ways, I was still the same. At training school, I tried to improve my learning experience by asking more questions but I soon learnt that was not a very popular thing to do. Not when everyone simply wanted to get the lesson done and over with. I even let my classmates copy my homework but they still didn’t like me. During our lunch breaks, I would sit with Joy and another classmate. We became fast friends.

Perhaps because of my age, I had little patience with my classmates who thought that training school was really a school. I fully understood that I was employed to work and provide a service. The training bit was necessary to prepare us for the job but ultimately, we were not there for fun.

We had a school song and pledge we had to sing every morning and recite every evening. We had a dress code which had to be strictly adhered to. We had to wear full make-up and bun up our hair every single day.

We were trained to stand up to greet any instructor or staff member whenever he/she entered our classroom or when we passed them in the hallway.

We had form teachers and a discipline master. We were admonished whenever we stepped out of line - if our make-up was insufficient or our hair was not neat enough, if we failed to do our readings/homework, if we were late for school, if we failed any of our assessments.

We even had a graduation day during which we had to put up a skit. Needless to say, for a group that diverse, there was mayhem while preparing for the graduation show. I invited my mom and dad to witness the ceremony.

After 2 and a half months, it was finally over. I was so glad to move on to the actual flying phase of my career.