Letters to Cleo #Wattys2016

Chapter 1

"This is your last year in college so I want to make it memorable for you. This activity, which I fondly call journal writing, will be your project for this semester," my English professor said. Upon the mention of the word 'journal' everybody groaned. Who enjoys writing, as if talking to someone, in a notebook anyway? At isa pa, it is only the first week of classes at ito agad ang sasalubong sa amin. "But I made a twist to this journal writing activity," she went on. "Instead of you putting all your thoughts in the journal, I have made it interesting by pairing you off with another person." This made everyone groan even louder. "Think of it as having a penpal."

"Will our penpal be from this class also?" one asked.

"Oh no, of course not. I have made an arrangement with another department, another college, to do this with us. Tthere's no way that you will be able to know or meet the person you are paired with. This way, you will not feel shy about saying things that are really inside your heart and mind. Everything will be truthful, sincere and uninhibited."

Wow! This is one heck of a project. Pero my point ang aming prof, mas mabuti nang isipin namin na may penpal kami kaysa naman ang nakatatak sa utak namin ay nagsusulat kami sa isang diary. Hindi ko alam kung meron bang lalaking mahilig magsulat sa journal. I'm pretty sure none of my friends do.

"And since this is an English class, expect that I will be reading them and checking your grammar, spelling, sentence construction, and most of all your thought process. According to some studies, ever since your generation was introduced to text messaging and all those new applications, the grasp of the English language has deteriorated. I want to make sure that you do not form part of that statistics. Are we clear? Do you have questions?"

A girl from the other side of the room raised her hand. "Miss, how often do we need to write in the journal?"

"Good question. Just once a week." I heaved a sigh of relief, at least hindi ako gaanong mag-aaksaya ng panahon dito. "Oh and I want to lay down some rules. These same rules were also communicated to the other classes. I trust that you will abide by them or else you will automatically get a failing grade for this project. The first one is no divulging of personal information like real name, address, phone numbers, email addresses and the like. We don't want you to stalk each other. And in relation to this, I would like you to come up with a code name or fake name..."

Our professor went on discussing the rules na hindi ko na rin naintindihan. Okay lang kasi hindi ko naman balak seryosohin ito so magiging safe lang ako sa lahat ng sasabihin ko sa 'penpal' ko. Sana lang ay 'wag akong ma-partner sa isang taong masyadong seryoso sa buhay. Baka sa oras na magkwento s'ya sa akin ng mga hinaing n'ya sa mundo ay wala akong maisagot na maayos sa kanya. I don't like drama. I have a lot of those in my life and I don't need more.

My attention went back to our professor when she said that she will be distributing the journals. "These journals have an entry already. Your partner has started the conversation so to speak. I will randomly distribute this. Whatever journal lands on your desk shall be yours for the rest of the semester. Next meeting make sure that you have your first entry there because those journals will be collected, checked and then given to your partner from the other class."