I took my seat in the second row of the near-empty cinema, which didn’t bode well for American films playing regularly in Baliwag. I gathered after the first couple of scenes that the boys in the poster were students in high school who wore uniforms like me, though mine was a short-sleeved button-down, while theirs was a jacket and tie, which made them look like they would become businessmen someday. They also lived in their school instead of going home, a concept that was alien to me though not entirely unpleasant.

The older man in the poster turned out to be Mr. Keating, the boys’ English teacher, a charming figure who taught his students that poetry was the source for humankind’s deepest feelings and insights. There was a scene where he read a line from a poem by Robert Frost that we had gone through in my English class, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” Watching Mr. Keating explain how the poet encourages the reader not to follow everyone else’s path, it occurred to me that my classes only focused on making sure we understood the literal meaning of what we read. I had never been asked to interpret a poem, much less expand on what it meant for me personally.

As I sat alone in the dark, I watched as Neil, Mr. Keating’s most promising student, wrestled with his desire to act in a Shakespeare play called A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while his father wanted him to focus on getting accepted to Harvard and becoming a doctor. I’d heard passing references to Harvard as the best school in America—it had been a clue on Jeopardy!, and UP Diliman, the most prestigious state school in our country, called itself “The Harvard of the Philippines.” Though that movie was the first time Harvard took concrete shape in my mind, as a university that countless students over many generations had aspired to attend. But Neil wanted to make decisions for himself, so he defied his father and did the play anyway.

I gasped when Neil’s father unexpectedly entered the theater just as Puck began his first speech. But Neil turned out to be masterful in his role, so much so that I understood him. I understood Shakespeare! I understood that Puck was a fairy in the woods who delighted in bringing lovers together, and that he traveled with a gang of other fairies.