This. First thing when I get my freedom back.
by Patricia Sy
There’s a reason why cliches become cliches – it’s because they’re so true there’s no better way to say it. Like when people discuss hard work and success, about how it becomes sweeter as you work harder.
Academic life is one area where we hate to talk about hard work. The word itself is stressing enough. But what about in the University of the Philippines? In UP, hard work isn’t the solution to needs but the answer to genuine desires. There’s more to UP than student activists and Greek organizations. UP is home to famous graduates, professors we take pride in, a challenge in operating mediocre facilities, and experiences that no other school can give.
The University of the Philippines is famous for being the center of academic excellence in the Philippines. To show evidence, it has produced notable graduates in the arts like National Artists Fernando Amorsolo and Lino Brocka, the first female chef of the White House Cristeta Comerford, and media personalities like Jessica Soho and Kim Atienza. Graduates also showed tenacity in economics like former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the CEO of GMA Network Felipe Gozon. In the field of science, we have child prodigy Mikaela Fudolig, National Scientists, Fe del Mundo and Paulo Campos, and historian Encarnacion Alzona. All of them world famous. And every year, UP produces graduates who go the distance in politics, science, the arts, or back to UP as educators of the next generation. We even fill the country’s political seats with UP graduates even though – I dare to say - some of them seem to have forgotten what the Oblation stood for.
The instructors in UP aren’t just ordinary too. UP only hires the best of the best: from national artists, cum laude graduates, board members of prestigious private companies, and ex-government officials. Nothing but the best for the best of the Philippine youth. Most of the professors may be old, boring, or strict, so much that students curse them anonymously in blogs, but we cannot deny that despite their old school teaching methods, their intelligence is still worthy of respect and admiration.
On the outside, our university looks like a haunted tourist spot – an abandoned-looking building with a forest for a garden. But the halls of UP resound a 100-year old history that defines who we are as represented by the Oblation. On the inside, you’ll find computers and other facilities aging along with our professor emeritus. While other schools take pride in their acquisition of new facilities to enrich the students’ learning experience, it’s more fascinating to see how UP students can be at par or even better in learning even without new technologies.
And even if students complain about sky high readings, daily essays, comm plans, and not just sleepless nights but sleepless weeks, they are rewarded not just with UNOs but also with life’s lessons, barkada nights, and eye bags that scream “UP AKO!” If anyone talks to a UP student, they won’t get Latin slogans and core values like others. The school isn’t about handsome UAAP athletes or memorized school hymns and prayers. UP doesn’t drill single ideologies to the minds of the student for them to believe and follow or be punished by whoever is above – mortal or divine. Not that UP has no ideals or values that wants its students to have, beyond the choice of what to wear to school or the classes you can skip; UP is just about freedom – to learn or refuse to learn, to realize what students need to do without being forced to, to study not because they need to but because they have questions that need answers. And to question not because they’re stupid but because they thirst for knowledge. In UP, hard work isn’t the solution to needs but the answer to genuine desires.
No matter where we go, we carry a maroon blood. We beam with pride at the mention of our university in a way that no other school would understand. we have our famous UP graduates, excellent instructors, technologically challenging school facilities, and experiences that no other school can give.
But in the end, all those years of learning and hard work will be put to test when we are faced with the decision of doing what is just good for us or selflessly good. When that moment comes, let us make Oble proud.
On the first day of class, a Literature professor had asked us to introduce ourselves to her by submitting a list of all the real books we had ever read in our 16-year lives. “Don’t tell me you were valedictorian, or an awardee this or awardee that,” she said rather crossly. “Don’t tell me you were editor-in-chief of your high school paper. Guess what—we all were. Now tell me the books you’ve read when nobody asked you to and I will judge how well-prepared you are for this class.
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| — | With Honor by Averill Pizzaro (via reserese) |
I think that if life separates us and we end up in totally different places, we’ll always remember when our paths aligned for this period of time and I’ll be thankful for that. and I hope that wherever you are, you’ll be thankful, too. and I think that’s the best we can wish for.
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| — | Josh (Philip Wang, ‘Strangers, again’) |
