From frustrations to new achievements

Expansion of the National College dr.Ioan Mesota Brasov

I completed my primary and secondary schooling in my native Râșnov. Although we also had a fairly good high school in Râșnov, on the threshold of the ninth grade there was a small migration of students to Brașov. In Brasov there are, among other high schools, two national colleges, "Șaguna" and "Meșotă", historical and rival. Together with other colleagues from my generation, I stopped at "Meșotă". At that time it was called "Liceul nr.3" and it was run by Professor Georgescu, who, taking advantage of the fact that he was the husband of the county school inspector, formed a group of very good teachers. Among them was the Romanian language teacher Ioan Goia, the one with whom I became closest, me, thus becoming active in the editorial staff of the school magazine "Licăriri", which Professor Goia was editing. I was also a colleague of the future politician Dan Mircea Popescu. Our school functioned in a new building, a three-storey, double tract, bar type. Apart from an open-air handball train, it had no adjacent facilities. We had no gymnasium, no other room for meetings-festivals, for school Olympiads, or for example a room to invite the other editorial collectives of the school magazines. In this context, we always used to go to our rivals from "Șaguna", which had all the normal facilities of a high school. In the generous entrance hall they have a stained-glass window painted by the Vincenț sisters, Sanda Vincenț I was to meet not many years later as a university assistant in our group of the visiting professor Virgil Nițulescu.

When I was invited to join the initiative to enlarge the High School in order to meet the need for classrooms for the now morning operation of the National High School, my first thought was to have a hall dedicated to festivities, in addition to the gymnasium that had been built in the meantime.

Out of managing the frustrations of student life, the first version of the project had from the outset, ample entrance hall, meeting spaces, generous library, bright corridors, covered spaces for outdoor recreation. The open space in the courtyard and the town planning regulations forced us to restrict our wishes as much as possible.

Thus the entrance hall preceded by a wide portico is extended to the basement with an amphitheater, the staircase to the floors is realized as a greenhouse with plants and wide landings, and the corridors full of color (decorative graffiti painted by my former student Lucian Sandu-Milea).

During the construction site I was on the lookout for masons, Ioana Ardelean, my assistant from the university, was doing a follow-up service from time to time, Horia Reit, a former student of mine, was active on the site, apart from supervising the waterproofing, he made the glazing and the aprons in galvanized sheet metal.