Dalat International School: Senior Scribble

It was Thursday afternoon, and we knew it was finally time to play the juniors in basketball. Knowing the hair on our heads was on the line, we were willing to put everything at risk in order to win and keep ourselves safe. Then the game started. The juniors began with a couple points. Then they scored a couple more. I noticed we weren’t responding like we should. When JD Guffy (12) said, “We’re gonna blow them out,” I thought he was right and instead we were down twelve points already. We needed to respond the right way. At halftime, we were down by 10 and were getting beaten by a more energetic team. We weren’t hitting our shots and playing like we should have. However, everyone knew what needed to be done. We needed to lock in in order to beat this team. We came into the second half with the right mentality. By the end of the third quarter, the game had already swung in our favor. The juniors were running out of energy, and we were hitting threes as well. When the game ended and we...

Dalat holds memories in my heart that I will carry with me through my next journey. The journey from middle school days, when survival during the global pandemic was the focus, to now, the end of senior year, has been long, but looking now it was going to end in a few days.  A tight-knit community is about to disperse to different places, bringing new challenges.  Middle school, a time of immature chaos, was a time to cherish. Within the classroom, Jonathan and Soniya would steal my shoe pencil case and hide it among my favorite erasable pens. The romance in middle school was unique because there was so much drama over who liked who, and I just thought the guys we liked would chase us around physical education class in the name of tag and run. Secret spots, like sitting under the old middle school staircase for lunch and at the Hut every morning before school, are things seniors would remember. There were weird moments in middle school when Ms. Kong would make Zavier Buckley d...

  Swimming and playing basketball used to be an integral part of hanging out with my friends. This usually took place at the cove, since it has a usable basketball court and multiple pool facilities.  Nowadays, everyone is so busy with school, hanging out at other spots and taking the pool facilities for granted, that these hangouts rarely even happen anymore. However, recently, it did.  I met up with Raphael Boyle (9), Zach Ooi (12) and Ben DeVries (12) at the Astaka food court before the hangout, to eat some delicious local food.  After eating, we went over to the cove. However, instead of heading to the basketball court, we went to the tennis court. Zach and I wanted to play some tennis, and so we did. We played for around an hour, and had a great time. I was rather rusty, but was able to still serve rockets.  After playing tennis, we met up with Philip DeVries (12), Abraham Miller (12), Clark Zhang (12), Matthias Seevaratnam (12) and Reuben Beasley (10) to p...

  It was our last outing as a class. The final, and fourth one. Compared to the previous ones, this one was probably the best. We had gone to a waterpark before, but ESCAPE is the better one out of the two. Getting there was less of a hassle that I imagined it to be, since the drive was around 10km from Dalat. Once I arrived, I gathered with the rest of the class, and entered the water park. A few things changed however from the last time I was there. Firstly, face identification technology had been established at the entry/exit gates. This was a great surprise for me, since Penang is usually quite ancient in its technology, compared to the bigger cities in South East Asia. Using the Face identification scanners proved to be a great help, since they just scanned your face and let you through. Secondly, the waterpark contains freely rideable scooters now. They go quite fast, reaching around 25km top speed when you have fast mode enabled. This makes traversing the park ever so mu...

  Not many seniors can believe the way time flies. With graduation a week away, many students are reflecting on their journeys at Dalat. No matter if you started in elementary school or joined just this year, soon you will be able to say that you’ve graduated together. We all benefited from Dalat differently. There were certain people who even marked their years in high school by participation in the NFL. More popularly, people chose to surround themselves with sports, joining varsity teams, D-league, regional tournaments, and ACSC trips. Some opted for the stage, performing well-rehearsed lines in front of hundreds, conveying their emotions through exaggeration, tone, and body language. Others focused on clubs that carried their learning beyond the classroom, or devoted their time to service and chapels.  Rebekah Wood (12), leader of Student Impact Club, explained, “It was rewarding to see how even just showing up put a smile on kids’ faces. I was able to build true connectio...

  At exactly 3:15 p.m, something interesting happens at Dalat. It’s not something loud or dramatic. Quite ironically, it's the complete opposite… just silence. One second, the senior campus is alive, and the next second it’s basically a speed run of who can leave school the fastest, and everybody disappears at the same time. If you stand there long enough, you could almost magically hear the echo of backpacks zipping up in perfect sync.  If you ask me, it’s pretty impressive.  Before this year, seniors used to actually stay after school. People would function normally after school, like hanging out with friends, playing basketball, talking for hours, and then finally slowly making their way home. The basketball court was the highlight, it was practically the main gathering spot after school. There used to be games every day, lots of noise, and the adrenaline was brought to the max.  However, now, it’s really depressingly different. After 3:15, you blink, and it’s emp...

  Christal Teoh (12) disrupted a peaceful Sunday night when she announced that Senior Assassin would officially begin the next morning. Within minutes, the entire class logged onto the Senior Assassin app. While most players stayed discreet in the chatbox, Abraham Miller (12) posted a victory emoji, like a warrior celebrating before the battle began. Within twelve hours, Anna Chand had eliminated him: the game’s first casualty, and its first lesson in humility. Senior Assassin, an unofficial tradition that ripples through graduating classes across American High Schools, arrived at Dalat on Monday, May 18, when Christal Teoh (12) of the Senior Class ExCom launched the game, with 43 Class of 2026 students enrolled. “ ExCom decided to run Senior Assassin because it was a fun way to end our high school days and also a tradition that previous grades have done.” Christal Teoh (12) said. Each player draws a single target; an elimination requires water splashed on the target, verified by ...

  There are games that end with a whistle, and others that stay with you long after the field is empty. For me, this year's ACSC was both.  Before our final game even started, I could already feel myself getting emotional. My designated hair braider, Hannh Blacklock (11) was braiding my hair for the last time. The moment I heard a small sniffle from her, neither of us could hold it together anymore. It’s strange how such a simple action hit me harder than I expected. We had done this so many times before that it felt normal, but this time it was different because we both knew it was the last. Sitting there while she finished my braids, surrounded by my teammates getting ready, I realized how much I was going to miss all of this.  The match was against last year's champions, ICS HK, and from the second the game started, we played like we had nothing left to lose. The Jakarta heat was exhausting, but we kept on pushing harder and harder, remembering how much we had worked f...

 As graduation approaches, a student struggles to let go of a relationship that never even began. This individual had spent months pursuing a girl. According to friends close to the situation, the feelings between the two seem somewhat mutual. Despite the mutual feelings, the pursued individual has made it clear as day that she does not want to begin a serious relationship at this point in life as they both transition into something bigger. Regardless of this, the student holds on to the possibility that things could work out. Friends describe this situation as frustrating, in some cases, even delusional or far-fetched. Jayden Juday summed up the situation bluntly when he was asked about his opinion on the relationship. He quotes, “As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly.” While the statement was mostly sarcastic, it perfectly describes the pattern that many friends noticed. The student had a stubborn love of returning to the same emotional state, despite al...

  One relationship changed a longtime friend group and left several students wondering what happened to the person they used to know.  For many students at school, friendships are a major part of daily life. Lunch tables, weekend plans, and after school hangouts are often built around close friend groups. However, those friendships can quickly change when someone enters a serious relationship.  One senior’s sudden absence from his friend group has become an example of how quickly priorities can shift. Over the past year, one student who was once heavily involved with his friends abruptly stopped spending time with them. According to several classmates, he began declining invitations to hang out, stopped attending group events, and became distant from many of the people he had known for years.  Instead, he now spends nearly all of his time with his girlfriend. What used to be daily conversations and regular hangouts turned into complete silence. Jayden Juday (12), one...

It’s the time of the year when the end of the school year and summer break are approaching. Everyone’s minds seem to numb as time passes, and seniors have already tumbled down the deep hole of senioritis. However, there was one obstacle left before it was all over: the finals and AP exams.  Teachers might have noticed a number of missing students from your classroom over the past two weeks. They might have overslept or left early for the break, but most likely, they were doing an AP exam down in Heritage Chapel. AP exams were held in two separate sessions during the day: the morning session, from 8 am to 12 pm, and the afternoon session, from 12:30 pm to the end of school. Occasionally, if you arrived at school early or passed by classrooms at lunch, you would spot a group of students scrambling over notes right outside Heritage Chapel. Once the exam was finished and students were dismissed, there were plenty of reactions on display for exhibition, from the debutant, frantic sophom...

 Most would call this the most stressful few weeks of the year. This is where all studying finally has to pay off. As APs finally come around, you can feel the tension rising as students start to cram for their exams.  Some students decided to study in groups, hoping that their friends with higher knowledge would be able to help them get through this, while others decided that the best way to study would be to lock in alone. Of course there are some exceptions to these two options. In every grade there are always a couple students who decide to not study for their exams, thinking that their natural intelligence would be enough for them to pass. These are the students who walk into the exam hall with no stress and zero worries on their mind, and after finishing their exam, walk out laughing and making jokes with their friends. Russell Lee (12) stated, “It don’t matter anymore, it’s all done now,” as he walked out of his AB calculus exam. The take away from this is that ever...

  As the year goes by there is one thing on almost every student's mind—AP Exams. The dreadful thought of exams linger in every student's head, but ironically enough, preparation is only done a few weeks out, or more commonly than expected—a few days out. The time you’d usually spend scrolling on your phone, the time you spend hanging out with friends, or, with family, is replaced by a measly laptop, notebook, and pen—it prompts one to rethink their ideals and connotations associated with exams. It almost seems like I’m making an astute criticism of students, but unfortunately I am also subject to the very same issues that most students face during this overwhelming season. This season in particular is essentially a test to see if one is ready for the real world, when one’s passions and responsibilities conflict with one another, leading to a stark reevaluation of one’s day.  Fortunately, by adopting a carefree mentality, exams did not disperse much stress upon myself in contr...

During chapel two weeks ago (April 30), we had a panel of neurodiverse voices, prepared to share their perspectives and answer questions about neurodiversity! It was very interesting to see how each person’s journey through their neurodivergence was uniquely different, yet relatable to each other. Ms. Lee, who has ADHD, didn’t learn about her diagnosis until well into her adulthood, while the children on the panel learned about their diagnoses early on thanks to the growing research and education about neurodivergent disorders. This panel wasn’t done just for show, but to encourage everyone to develop empathy and understanding for neurodivergent people. Having the opportunity to listen to how varied the responses and experiences of the panel were, despite having the same neurodevelopmental disorder, was a great learning experience that Neurodiversity Awareness Week helps support.  Reflecting on my previous Senior Scribble, I want to reinforce how important it is to celebrate and em...

  This past week, here at Dalat International School, students from every grade had the opportunity to witness panels featuring neurodivergent students and staff from every walk of life. These panels, held during Wednesday and Friday chapels, allowed individuals diagnosed with various forms of neurodivergence, including ADHD, OCD, dyslexia, autism, and others, to share their personal experiences with their conditions.   The panels provided the students and staff with an outlet to share both the perks and struggles of being neurodivergent, as well as to address any misconceptions or harmful stigmas they’ve encountered. The panel members unanimously encouraged the student body not to generalize people with neurodivergence, as everyone has unique experiences and navigates the world differently. Furthermore, they reminded us that being neurodivergent has nothing to do with effort and intelligence and everything to do with experiencing the world through a different lens. Ms. Cari...