For me, it meant waking up at 5.30 every weekday morning to make it to the bus stop in time for the 6am SBS No. 111 bus that would take me to ACJC. It was a one-hour journey, after which it was a 10-minute walk from the bus stop near Holland Village to school. And the same route home. Ah, but Bert was worth it, I thought, when I listed ACJC as my top JC choice after my O-levels, even though it wasn't a natural choice. I was from a convent and friends were all opting for Catholic JC or National JC.

Bert was a year older, a football star at ACS and the son of one of my parents' friends. I had a crush on him since I was 13 and even though we never got beyond a shy "hi'' on my part when he and his parents came over for dinner once, I was determined to get to know him. And if he was studying at ACJC, then I would, too. Thing was, I did soon get to know him well, the crush melted as they always do (though we remain good friends to this day) -- and I was stuck with a JC that was on the other side of the island from where I lived. Those were the days before the MRT.

Still, I never regretted my choice. Those two years at ACJC were very happy ones. The pressures were there, of course. I had to do well enough to get to university here, which included a pass in Chinese, my worst subject. However, when I look back at 1980 and 1981, it is with sweet nostalgia, and I remember just the happy things.

I was one of only two students from my secondary school to go to ACJC, and so I had to learn to make new friends quickly, and from different schools. For someone naturally shy, it wasn't easy. JC was the first time I was exposed to having boys in the same class, and that took getting used to. Teenage girls have raging hormones, and we would often boy-watch at the canteen. Bert and the other rowdy sports jocks would occupy the far, right-hand corner as you enter the canteen. I often wonder if the new generation of "happening'' students still hang out there. We gave nicknames to a host of boys, and so there were Blue Bag, Blue T-Shirt and Hurricane.

I remember parties (at one held in Hillcrest Arcadia when I was in JC1, a JC2 guy walked right smack into a glass door. It smashed to a thousand pieces, but he was miraculously unhurt) and not a few juicy scandals. There were many rich kids during my time, and the student's car park was something to behold. Later, there was an anti-snobbery drive, and the students had to park their cars outside the school. It was all an eye-opener for me.

The Methodist way of praying (no sign of the cross, different sort of hymns) was also something I had to get acquainted with, and it took me a long time before I could decipher the words in the ACS song. I was in the AD class, a combination offering Literature, History and Economics. Literature was fun, and the teachers were good. Mr Schreiber taught us Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and made it so alive and relevant, it remains one of my favourite books to this day.

I was a dud at Economics though, and when we had Saturday morning classes (with Madam Kee, how I remember her), I'm afraid there were occasions my friends and I would sneak off to go to McDonald's at Liat Towers, which had just opened then.

In my two years there, I also managed to skip every swimming PE class. Clearly, I wasn't a model student, or an outstanding or memorable one. If there were lessons that my two years there gave me, it was that the world's larger than one thinks. It's frightening forcing yourself out of your comfort zone to venture into something unknown and to, well, follow your heart as it were, but the rewards can be worth it.

The ACS motto - The Best Is Yet To Be - did strike me at first as being unduly pessimistic, but today, I understand its never-say-die and aspirational motives. Mostly, though, I'm grateful to ACJC for the warm memories it left me. And in life, I've found, good memories are sometimes enough to get you through a bad day.

Sumiko Tan