Graduation

The 5-24 incident involving the American GI changed everything. It made our High School graduation one month later seem "unimportant". Other events also crept into our busy schedule during that last month of high school, making the graduation ceremony seem even more unimportant. Our attention was not at all focused on the formality of leaving High School. It is one event I do not remember at all. There were just too many other things to worry about, such as who would be able to enter college without taking the entrance examination. A very small number of students were allowed to enter certain colleges when a particular high school had a certain number of students who passed the entrance examination the year before. This was done to reward the high school who had more students passing the entrance exams. I was awarded to enter Cheng-Kung University, which was in Tainan, without taking the entrance exam. I was told that I had to make the decision right away so that the position could be given to someone else if I chose not to take it. Since Cheng-Kung University was a second rate university during that time, and it was not in Taipei so the expense would be higher, I made a quick decision to give up the "direct entrance" position and take the chance on passing the entrance exam so that I could enter National Taiwan University. Incidentally, there was a graduation exam too, but we all assumed that we were going to pass, no one paid much attention to it!