With the coming of the last week of school, my brain has been filled with thoughts of assignment deadlines, cramming, internships, auditions and a buttload of other things.

And the fact that I have only one column left to write is most definitely not the least of these thoughts.

In the beginning of this semester, I promised that this column would give you a glimpse of what goes through the mind of someone who did not grow up in this country.

Keeping to this promise, I will give you one more look into the window of my mind as we approach the end of another school year.

Thinking about the end of the school year reminds me of my other alma maters. One was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The other was in Singapore.

I remember that in both schools the year always ended with a class party of some sort.

Unlike the system here, students were grouped into classes of 25 or so, going from class to class together with a few exceptions, so there was always a strong class identity.

Our final exams were structured in such a way that there would always be a week of school left for us to get our exam papers back.

Yep, the exams were all written ones… there wasn’t much filling out of bubbles, though there were objective sections to each paper.

After we got them back, we had a chance to either share our grief or our joy with our classmates, whichever the case may have been. And we would always have a party at the end of the week to send off the school year in a big way.

During that last week of school-with-no-more-lessons, the class would be making plans on what food to bring for the party, what theme to decorate our classroom with (the equivalent of the homeroom in high schools here I think), and what souvenirs the members of the class would receive for the year.

The souvenirs usually ranged from little hand-made placards or scrolls to hand-painted mugs or class T-shirts to commemorate having belonged to this particular class.

A standing tradition in these parties was a presentation of flowers as a little thank-you to all the teachers who taught the class.

Needless to say, the teachers always had a ball walking from classroom to classroom sampling all the good home-cooked dishes that mothers contributed each year and collecting little thank-you cards and flowers.

I laugh when I think about the bed-linen fashion contest my class organized one year as a little “event” for the party. The teachers were invited to be the judges.

Everyone had a blast trying to think of fashionable ways to “wear” bedsheets and pillow cases.

Thinking about the way things are in college, I sometimes wish we had a little time at the end of the year to celebrate the fact that we are free at last for the semester, and to thank the professors and teachers for their efforts and to have some fun with them.

Of course, it would be a hard thing to do with a student population like ours, as this is certainly no high school.

Also, there definitely isn’t the same cohesiveness there might be in high school — it would be rare to find even three people who went to the same classes all day, every day of the week, let alone a large group of people.

What I miss, I guess, is the few spare days at the end of the year where friends and classmates get together and just relax — yes, relax in school.

We should have the chance to not have to take lecture notes, and finally get a chance to know each other and talk about the semester, what we liked or disliked about it, and life in general.

But I guess we all have to leave high school behind, and while we enjoy the dynamism of a large and diverse student body, we pay for it by losing some of the cohesiveness and closeness of small groups.

And so as ISU prepares to empty itself once again, I take this opportunity to wish everyone good luck on their finals and job-searching and thank my professors for the support and new insight they have imparted.

Have a good summer!

Crispina Chong is a junior in journalism mass communication from Malaysia.