The
students of Taipei First Girl』s Senior High School may seem very special
to most of the pupils who want to get in a good high school in order to
make the best preparations for entering a good college. Yet not many of
the people who admire TFG are familiar with the ancillary high school
that is part of it, an adjunct that has been designed for those students
who have to work but still want to be in high school. Although an
ancillary institution, it still requires that students to take another
examination to qualify for admission.
Almost four years ago, after the High School Entrance Examination, I
gave it a shot to try the ancillary high school Entrance Examination and
I did quite well and chose to enter it. On the first day, when I took
the first step into TFG, I was quite proud of being a part of it. But
then I heard someone saying behind my back: 「What? We』re going to have
the opening Ceremony with those students of the ancillary school? Is
that really necessary? They aren』t as talented as we are anyway.
Sometimes I really think that it』s quite a kind of waste to have the
ancillary school at TFG.」 At that moment, I was quite hurt by what the
girl said. Though we never met each other on campus after that, I
remembered this event till the moment of my Graduation last year.
During those three years, I discovered more ways in which the students
of the ancillary school were despised. When the instructors saw someone
whose skirt was shorter than what the rules of school had decreed, their
first instinct would be: this student must definitely be from the
ancillary school and so on. Even the student numbers embroidered on the
school uniforms bore a significant difference—the ordinary TFG student
numbers are embroidered in yellow while those from the ancillary school
have theirs embroidered in white in order to tell them apart.
We』ve come a long way in those three years at the TFG. When the moment
of our Graduation finally arrived, several of my classmates, who used to
be quite ashamed of being students from the ancillary school, were proud
to say that they really learned a lot in the past three years. And the
fact stands that many of us really did much better than some ordinary
TFG students on the JCEE. Now if you ask anyone of my schoolmates from
the ancillary school from which high school we came, we』d be very proud
to say that we』re from the ancillary school of TFG.