Hello there and good morning! This is yours truly, James Patrick A.

Gaetos, or you
can call me instead as JP since most people, even my own family, would always prefer
to use initials—don’t worry if you want to call me Patrick. Currently studying as a Grade
11 STEM student at St. Joseph’s College of Rodriguez (SJCR, St. Joseph’s, or St. Jo,
as many would prefer), I am totally honest to say that here I am, having survived my 1st
Quarter of many triumphs and defeats, but still doing fine and still learning something
new every single day. And today—I do not know if this essay would be too long as far
as I would concern—I am going to write something about myself and my experiences at
SJCR for the past three months. So what else, above all, is the first thing I would like to
write here other than to write about my first day at school!

Here I am, on my first day of school, and with my new friends/classmates and Sir
Henry. The first classmate I could easily identify is Nathan—at first, he’s too shy, only for
me to realize that he actually is very smart. There were, yes, games that are related to
identifying ourselves, and here’s me, with courage and full heart I introduced myself as
someone who has asthma and autism (a special child). The days went by, I met new
teachers, new subjects, and got to know some basic stuff about the school, the SFIC
sisters, and St. Joseph and St. Francis of Assisi (man, I cannot deny the fact that I am
truly inspired by his life story). And as weeks went by, I started to learn everything—from
the origin of the universe and solar system, the mathematical functions, verbal and
non-verbal communication, Christianity (and more about Jesus, His life and ministry),
ICT, the basics of chemistry (I cannot forget the accuracy and precision, atoms, nucleus,
electrons, and the periodic table of elements), and more about the Filipino language and
culture (that led me to write numerous essays and essay-type performance tasks), to
conic sections, philosophy (Western philosophers…) and about the optimization of
energy systems in our body.

While I do have good things to say about my experiences here at SJCR (I got two of
my former classmates who are currently studying as HUMMS students—their names
are Percciloise and Eeshone; plus, I got much closer to Vaughn, Raymond, Ian, Asher
Victoria, and Justin), I also have some bad moments. For instance, I got caught by
Ma’am Regina for using my cellphone, because we were too noisy at that time. And,
during exams, I forgot to give to Ma’am Amor my PEH test paper while holding my
notebook to which I am supposed to return it to my bag, and had a hard time answering
Pre-Calculus. Nevertheless, I also have good moments, which include numerous group
activities (can’t forget the group reporting for Earth Science-Oral Communication), and
moments that are considered as milestones. In this case, I am referring to our previous
victory during the Sci-Math month celebrations—Sofia Garcia, ang aming winner!

Above all, I learned in my life that in all of the triumphs and defeats, I should not stop
learning something new. To go deeper into knowledge and understanding. And more
importantly, I learned that prayer is the most important thing that all of us should do,
asking God for His protection, abundance, and wisdom. I hope this essay will be of
great help for myself to be better equipped in the future. And I’ll always remain, J.P.G.