Illiterate in Literature

In six years that I’m in college, I first flunked an exam recently; as in F-L-U-N-K-E-D. Considering that I begged my instructor to let me take the test 2 weeks past than scheduled so I would have time to review because there were a lot of things that needs equal attention, I still failed in Panitikang Filipino (Philippine Literature).

The midterm covered 3 chapters: the pre-revolution against the Spanish colonizers, the American, and the Japanese periods. I focused reviewing on the descriptions of settings thinking that the test shall ask what forms of literature were prominent in a specific time say for instance, poems and plays during the Japanese era although English was restricted. Part 1 of the exam is matching the authors with their pen names and I broke no sweat for the few who just spelled their surnames backwards but the rest are so tough that should they be living and using their aliases today, most would not be able to identify them still despite the absence of threat to sue them for libel and the like. Part two listed the titles of the works which are not so famous to a common citizen and its authors must be provided. Listing at random the names provided in column B of the preceding part is tantamount to suicide; I did it nonetheless. Last is identification where of course we had to provide what’s being asked such as “The Japanese who supervised the publication of Liwayway” and “The first Filipino woman debater who’s eloquent with Spanish”.

I went over the questions blankly until I felt like I would be fossilized as time went by. When I had answered about 12 questions, I was told by my instructor that I already got 8 correctly. After scribbling 10 more answers, she said nothing’s changed. Waahhh! In times like this, 8 is not a lucky number at all. Worse, since this course is my special class because I can’t attend its actual schedule, scores for quizzes and other classroom activities rely in this exam. Fail this, and I fail all.

I’ll bet that if these questions were asked in a game show, nobody shall win the million-worth grand prize in its entire season. Or maybe, eight will.