Unbeknownst to most people, Helga (a fellow PBA finalist)  and I actually went a state high school in the backwater province of Laguna. Would you believe that the two of us had to do considerable manual labor in the fields (FIELDS!) for Agriculture class? We weren’t the best of friends back then but we shared the enviable task of interviewing *gasp* Slapshock at the peak of their popularity. Both of us also spent considerable time under the Advanced English program where we were trained to handle the production of our school paper. Gideon Lasco - another Philippine Blog Award recipient — is another schoolmate of mine. If I’m not mistaken, he was also one of the last people ever on the Advanced English curriculum.

We all hail from the University of the Philippine Rural Highschool in Los Baños. It’s a little known school outside of Laguna so we’re ok with just being known as UP Integrated School’s sister school in the boondocks. Despite being a virtual unknown, UPRHS or Rural as we (the Ruralites, talk about major eeew factor) affectionately call it has always had a solid performance in inter-school academic competitions and college entrance exams. Passing rates to the University of the  Philippines have always hovered above the eighty percent mark while graduates have been routinely nabbing slots in the list of Oblation Scholars and Integrated Liberal Arts - Medicine roster (during my time, UPRHS took four of the forty available slots - only Quezon City Science High did better with five).

The student population is quite small at a measly 120 per year level. A vast majority of enrolees are from Los Baños, Calamba City, San Pablo City and Bay with a handful of students from other smaller towns in Laguna and Batangas. Since it’s a UP unit, the tuition is negligible. The curriculum has relatively high standards except in the field of Computer Science. To further emphasize the rustic nature  of RURAL life, we only had one year’s worth of a computer subject and what did we do? Well, we  programmed in Turbo Pascal during a time when the language was nearing obsolesence.

Most of my classmates then could write well and had the inner drive to express themselves. The environment sure was conducive to a multi-faceted type of development instead of focusing on purely academic pursuits. The faculty was definitely supportive of athletic and artistic endeavors.

Why am I exactly pointing these things out?

Well, despite the seemingly strong reasons that would make Ruralites *chuckle* excellent bloggers, there aren’t a lot of them right now. Prior to 2007 - the year when the troika of Espina, Weber and Lasco (ok, just play along) broke out of cyber obscurity— there were no UPRHS bloggers in the mainstream. Though technological limitations maybe a serious stumbling block - no campus internet access as of 2004 — I’m sure most students have a stable connection at home and with the many computer shops around, the option to blog is definitely for the choosing to anyone with the time and love for writing.

On the flip side of things, when was the last time that a high school blogging sensation hit the scene? Maybe it’s a case of overapproximation but I sincerely think that it’s anomalous to have only three bloggers [all three good enough to be Blog Awards Finalists] from UPRHS.

 Speak up people! Let’s go back and teach the kids to blog. hahaha.

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