PrefectsInvestiture08 - Jump!

Dear readers,

The CCTs are over! While emphatizing with his friends from other schools who are still working hard for theirs, theokwek has written an essay about the recently concluded Prefects' Investiture 2008 - a reflection on his new duty, or in other words, his new burden.

P.S. Malaysian Montage on Monday! outPASSION outPRIDE outPOWER

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The Straight Times Editor

So it’s over, I thought, as I ventured the oft-trodden junction that represented both the physical and psychological barriers between home and school.

Prefects’ Investiture 2008 ended with considerably less than a bang, which made the gargantuan efforts put in by all of us in the board seem wasted to a certain extent. However, at the end of the day, what mattered weren’t the badly-sized slides that projected way beyond the screen, or the laptop crash that spirited the last thirty seconds of the song into oblique nothingness. What mattered to us were the hours that we stayed in school to rush out decorations, coming back on Saturdays to rehearse the profoundly difficult dance – that happens not to be one of the few talents that prefects are perceived to have, and for us Newly-Elected Prefects, receiving our green-black-red-silver-white ‘School Prefect’ badges, that from hence forth we will wear on our stark white uniforms as a stern reminders of our duties.

These efforts put in to make that Investiture the ‘best in Singapore’, as our seniors so proudly proclaimed, to impress on staff, guests and students alike that the RIPB is a complex, evolving body that is all raring to go, and to display the strengths, leadership skills and enthusiasm of prefects, ultimately were a plain reflection of our commitment to the board, setting our standards for prefectorial work for the rest of 2008. Not unlike raising the bar before one takes that near-impossible high-jump.

Strangely enough, I didn’t feel any greater – or higher – after the four-hour investiture programme than I was before it. Walking back home along the dusty, sand-ridden junction, nothing was different. In fact, the burden on my chest seemed to be heavier than usual. That badge I now wore no longer masked me in the anonymity of a ‘normal student’, no longer granted me the unique rights of certain individuals to break every rule in the book. That badge, far from being a reward, or even recognition, was more a badge of duty than of foolhardy bravery, of humility than of pride, of service than of commandeering, of initiative than of complacence. Indeed, Spidey, with great power comes great responsibility. And this was what I’ve been chosen to live with. Great responsibility. Did I even have any idea what that meant?

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t backing out of my prefectorial office just three hours after being invested into it. It was just that, as I trudged home with my due-the-very-next-day Maths Assignment folded in my pocket, I felt something was lacking in this whole prefects thing. Somehow, I hadn’t grasped the meaning behind the post I was assigned to. What was the drive that stood behind the two famed seniors who had the honour of standing on stage back-to-back, arms folded Raffles-style, representing the entire board?

Just as I pondered the question, I came to the zebra crossing that one normally finds at the corners of cross-junctions. Automatically, almost robotically, I lifted my head and glanced left, simultaneously raising my arm to wave at whatever vehicle happened to be stopping for me. To my mild surprise, it was a primary school-bus. Wondering where the students hailed from, I peered into the windows, and there was another boy peering back at me – probably about five years younger, his bespectacled face, framed with characteristic mushroom-style hair, reminded me of myself.

Smiling, he waved.

I waved back.

The bus drove past.

Realization jolted me. That simple wave, be it an extension of friendship, an invitation to conversation, or a basic: “Hi, I’m human too!” was rare among the classmates and schoolmates I saw around me. Yet this primary school kid had just put the entire school of top 3% of boys in Singapore to shame by waving in greeting to a complete stranger. This, I reflected, was what the post of prefects had called me to. To inspire humanity amid the strictness of school life, to foster caring between students, to connect the family of Rafflesians. And the means? By treating each and every schoolmate with equal respect and unbiased friendship, by maintaining our own integrity and helping our friends keep theirs, by showing that friendly wave along the whitewashed corridors.

Recently my family and I have been watching this Chinese serial based on the life of one of the Qing dynasty emperors at my Grandma’s place every Saturday. One of the quotes of this emperor I find exceptionally relevant: “官容易做,奴才容易做,但人最难做!” (Translated: It’s easy to be an official, or a slave, but hardest to be a human!) Isn’t it all the more important in today’s school life, for prefects to maintain compassion in strictness, integrity in compassion, and humanity in integrity?

Nothing comes without challenge, and much less this duty as prefects to be the life and warmth of the school. But we, donning our new badges, will take up this gauntlet bravely. In the words of Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots: "we are here. And we are waiting."