A World of Our Own

The USJ area has a number of secondary schools. The schools are, in no particular order, Seafield, USJ 4, 8, 12, 13 and 22. Assuming there are 200 students in every graduating class of Form 5, that would be 1200 students. Of course, there are a lot more than that, but then again, I don't have the student breakdown of all the schools. Nevertheless, out of this 1200 odd-students only 79 are currently finishing their Form 6. Assuming half of the people have about as much chance as getting into Matrikulasi as they do of striking Berjaya Toto's 4D first prize once in their lifetime (I know I am making a lot of assumptions, but please bear with me), that would mean that 2 out of 15 people went to Form 6. Needless to say, we are an extremely small proportion of the number of students who did SPM in our year.

While most of our peers are busy wondering what to wear each day, we have no choice : uniforms, just that we get to pull off our old tricks, again. But being in Form 6 does not only mean that your wardrobe is not shown to your fellow classmates daily, it also means that we miss out on a lot of other things which people who go to college pick up. For starters, cocurricular activities. In Form 6, just like in school, even if we hold positions, we have a teacher or two watching our backs all the time to ensure we don't mess up, or that if we do, we don't mess up too badly. In college, however, as I understand it, we are on our own whenever we plan or execute any activity.

Another thing we miss out on : the freedom to go wherever we like and to leave whenever we want to. Sixth Formers might be above the age of 17, but that does not mean that we are not bound by certain school rules, such as the restriction against handphones (depending on which school you get sent to) and the freedom to leave and arrive whenever we like (especially when we know the teacher is not around).

Just as we miss out on independence, we also miss out on a lot of responsibility. As I mentioned earlier, our cocurricular activities are still overseen by teachers, and rather stringently, while I am at it. Other things such as the responsibility to use facilities such as the Internet provided by a college responsibly or to make sure we pay our rent on time are also taken out from our hands, mainly because most people who do Form 6 are either in normal schools, or are boarders, while there is no Internet in school.

But the one thing we miss out most on is social interaction with our peers who go to college. Most of the "happening" and/or "cool" people go to college. Conversely, the opposite is also true : Most "happening" and/or "cool" people do not go to Form 6. To ensure I do not infuriate anyone more than I already have, I shall just say that these people are highly connected socially. As I mentioned earlier, only a small minority of the people who do SPM do do Form 6. As such, it is hard to keep track of your contacts, especially if you don't have any reason to interact with them on a regular basis. You might even say that we live in a world of our own.

As the number of people who go into college is more than those who go into Form 6, the probability a college student ends up in the proximity of someone who is highly connected socially and who considers the person in question worthy of receiving information is relatively high compared to a Sixth Former. This probability is also directly proportional to the size of your last major clique in Form 5 - the larger your clique, the higher the probability of you ending up in the know. So if you have a small clique, are not close to the people who are in the know and end up in Form 6, with none of your clique members with you (like yours truly) you truly end up living in a world of your own. Contrast this to if you were in college : if there was a reunion, and someone in the college found out, there is a higher probability you would find out too as there are more people in college and the probability that someone finds out and considers you worthy of receiving such information would also be higher.

This is not to say that Sixth Formers do not interact with our contemporaries who are not doing Form 6 at all. In fact, some people do Form 6 and are still able to end up in the know. However, like I said earlier, this all depends on the size of your last clique.

Form 6 is like living in a small world of your own - most of your contemporaries won't go there, you won't be exposed to the big, wide world and are still protected by your teachers. However, this does not mean one will lose touch with one's peers if one does Form 6 - with the advancement of modern technologies, your friend is just a click/call/SMS/MMS away.

Now if someone would keep me in the know....