Page 226 - Demo

226 THE CLARENCIAN 2024-2025Sections were reshuffled, friends were lost and made, but there was one thing reminding us of the good old days of sitting in front of a laptop and attending class: the teachers occasionally said %u201cMute yourself%u201d to us, and we talked in text form sometimes.Eighth and ninth grade introduced us to a whole new word%u2013%u2018Board%u2019. While you%u2019d think vocabulary in first grade would already have taught us what a board was, we hadn%u2019t seen the double meaning. Oh no%u2026 not in the slightest. This wasn%u2019t the board we doodled on every day, be it erasing letters off and nonsensifying the diary or even the board we wrote on at the teacher%u2019s request (well, more like our request).This board, also known as the Council, is the one that puts the %u2018C%u2019 in ICSE. The dictators of every school. The final test, the Board exam of our school life%u2026 (wait, aren%u2019t Board exams the Board exam of school life?) Board exams, the ultimate boss battle of our school lives. No cheat codes, no save points%u2014just pure academic endurance.As for me, I have a lot of memories from eighth grade. I loved Model United Nations and even placed a couple of times. I became a middle school leader%u2013the historic first set of them after the pandemic. Extracurriculars were at their peak, with a plethora of opportunities. This was also when Dr. Jerry George, who had been the principal since 2014, dropped the bomb%u2013he was resigning. Enter, our Administrator, Cmde. Prem Reuben, a retired naval officer, whose job is to keep the school shipshape (pun very much intended), and run a tight ship, even if we%u2019re in the middle of the Deccan Plateau, nowhere near the sea.In ninth grade%u2026 I won a CLADS event and could finally relate to all those freshmen on American TV shows%u2026 by being one! I wrote an article for the 110th magazine, ranting all about my school life and cracking terrible jokes in between.I flipped to last year%u2019s CLADS and couldn%u2019t help but smile as I remembered each event. The competition is always entertaining and the cheers are even more so. The practices were long and tiring, but everyone worked really hard to make it a success, especially the committee.CLADS events were a yearly spectacle, like our own mini-Olympics, minus the global recognition but with double the drama. Who knew something like a poetry contest or a %u2018Battle of the Bands%u2019 could be so cutthroat?I mentally sighed. That was a lot of history and this is just my failing memory. Consider how many students, teachers and staff have been here over the years. This school has impacted many lives and I%u2019d probably need to hire a scribe%u2014all the stone tablets and pillars in the world wouldn%u2019t be enough if someone were to write it all down! Either that, or my patience would be dropping at light speed.Next came all the class photos. School photos captured every awkward phase %u2014 from ill-timed blinks to bad hair days.