Ernest Ventura

Professor Freedman

English 101

29 June 2004

Don’t Quit!

What a journey it has been. It all started during my first week in high school. A group of boys were strolling around, familiarizing themselves with the new grounds they’re in when a stranger crossed their path and surprisingly said, “ Hey, I want you all in the headquarters at one today.” I was one of them and he was the school’s scoutmaster. He introduced himself and discussed scouting. It didn’t take him half an hour to persuade everyone to join. Exemption from Physical Education classes and Citizen Army Training (mandatory for high school students prior to graduation in the Philippines) sounded good to me and made me decide to become a member of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines. That was how my scouting career began.

1997: Our first task was about various kinds of knots and lashings. I’ve been actively involved in almost every scouting activity. The first time the troop went out of town was on September of that year at Poblacion, Passi, not too distant away from the city where we spent our weekend and trekked fifteen long kilometers all over a place of ruthless struggle for survival. It wasn’t fun. Not because fifteen kilometers is exhausting but because I almost fell down the cliff and died. I was thinking about abdicating after that.

“When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit --
Rest if you must, but don't you quit!”

1998: I didn’t. The group went south to Guimaras, an island about fifteen minutes by pump boat away from the city. It was for a short twenty-five-kilometer odyssey. We were to walk our way to the beach. Half of the hikers managed to endure the road (I was one of them) and half gave up halfway and rode the jeepney instead. Everybody realized different things from that experience. What I learned was that an average walk is about five kilometers per hour. As we get closer to the sandy strip of shore, I was telling myself “I am never going to stride this long again. Never ever!” That was a leg-breaking activity I couldn’t even believe I participated.

“Success is failure turned inside out!

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt

And you never can tell how close you are

It may be near when it seems so far
so stick to the fight when you are hardest hit!
Its when things seem worst that you mustn't quit!”**

1999: We traveled East to San Joaquin, a faraway town close to the mountainous province of Antique for our survival and rank advancement camp. We cooked our food by the aid of natural resources including bamboo stick to steam our rice. Luckily, the scoutmasters didn’t make us rub stones or woods to produce fire. They trained us basic first aid and water survival. My comrade spared my life from drowning. Thank God I’m alive! I gained all the badges needed and passed the board of review for the venturer scout rank.

2000: My most unforgettable camping was when our school delineated Western Visayas in the Millennium Camp at Canlaon City, which is two hours by water plus three hours by land away. There we witnessed the real view of the eminent Mount Canlaon. We needed to evacuate and move our campsite indoor due to a high-intensity typhoon. We enhanced our scouting skills in the field of fire emergency survival and mountain climbing. I almost fell down the ground while singing the Philippine National Anthem on the opening flag ceremony. I got drunk and messed myself one night. “ I swear not to drink again anymore”, as I swore liquor the next morning sitting beside the swimming pool with my head still spinning. I found out that alcohol doesn’t taste any better than milk. In one-week time, many things happened, good and bad, and those are things that made it memorable. I became an Eagle Scout.

2001: Scouting made a significant influence in building my character and shaping my personality. Boy scouting has taught me things that I can’t get at home, school or church… I graduated from high school and was recognized as one of the Boy Scouts of the year. That was how my scouting career concluded!

Ooops… Cut that last sentence. “Once a scout is always a scout.”+ I may never wear my type A uniform again in my life but as long as I subsist, the spirit of scouting will be in my heart. Each day, I live according to the Scout oath and law.

“May the Great, Great Scoutmaster of all true scouts be with us ‘til we meet again.”++

Quoted Phrases:

*First stanza of the poem “Don’t Quit”, author anonymous

**Last stanza of the poem “Don’t Quit”, author anonymous

+Scout Slogan

++Scout Benediction