Five months have passed since my graduation and I still linger on the nostalgia of my life as a student. Why? Simply because I still don’t know how it feels to be a professional. I still don’t have work!
My last months in the University were very tense: papers, thesis, org activities, and not to mention, a litany of exams which I have to go through before the UP grants me the diploma as passport to the professional world. I survived all of those and even graduated with honors – something which I became really proud of and gave me the impression that I was among the highly in demand graduates of the country. But I was wrong all the while!
Job offers didn’t arrive on a silver platter. My kayabangan, which by the way is typical to some students of the premiere state university, got the better of me when I didn’t start looking for a prospective job months before graduation. I held the impression that companies will compete against one another in hiring me once they know I’m from UP. But it seems that the State University no longer rings a bell. Until now, only a few of the companies I applied to responded.
But in fairness on my part and to my alma mater, my case is more circumstantial rather than due to my incompetence (here goes the kayabangan again). The one and only job I applied to last April was in the National Institutes of Health in UP Manila. I expected immediate hiring because I believed they would not have any doubts on me since I’m UP graduate myself. But UP, as any other government institutions, is a multi-layered bureaucracy. My first interview was on June, my second on July, and my appointment approval by the UP president is still unknown (even the personnel processing my documents are themselves uncertain of how long it will take). For one, applicants accepted last May aren’t yet working up to press time.
So on July I started to look for a job elsewhere and outside the course I finished. Molecular biology and biotechnology graduates in the Philippines (there are only around 30 graduates each year and only from UP) end up in the academe teaching or doing research, medical schools, or graduate schools abroad. Since I didn’t like to teach, didn’t have plans of studying again (still got to earn!), and no longer intend to go to med school (enough of headaches!), my only option was to do research. But pursuing such a career in a Third World country is not at all financially rewarding, not to mention the perpetual process of applying for the job (certificate of eligibility, medical exams, computer exams, two month-long interviews: by the time you start working, your first salary is not even enough to pay what you spent for all these!) Thus, I didn’t have any choice but to cross boundaries and see what’s in store for me in the corporate world.
Thanks to the internet, job seekers now have their best friends: jobstreet.com, jobsDB.com, and a lot other job websites seeking to help desperate job hunters in this country of around two million people unemployed (count me in!). These sites are where major companies (except for a select few) advertise their job vacancies and accept applications from job seekers who create and deposit their resumes online.
Through these websites I applied in top companies as Nestle, Unilever, Abbott Laboratories, San Miguel Corporation, Procter&Gamble, and so on. But I only received replies from a few companies because most of the job vacancies are in finance and marketing totally unrelated to my course in college, but not at all alien to me.
Since high school, business and economics have been among my interests along with science. But thanks to Discovery Channel and The National Geographic, my penchant for science – specifically molecular biology and medicine – flourished while my liking for anything that has to do with money drowned into the depths of today’s scientific revolution.
Have I got any regrets then? None at all! Molecular biology has been very exciting for me. I never thought that I will be doing the same stuff as the scientists I saw in TV when I was a kid. The DNA, immunology, cloning, molecular genetics, PCR, ELISA: only a privileged few – at least in a country like ours – are given the chance to learn these in lectures and experiments that often involve very expensive gadgets and reagents. I also had excellent company around; the best professors and the brightest blockmates (we have four summa cum laudes in the batch!). Taking the course taught me discipline in my studies and making good use of my time.
During these days, how much I long for the day when I start working. As each day passes, I get more and more desperate; but something inside tells me that the right job for me is coming. This leaves me thinking when that job is coming, and what a lot of stress it gives me!
*Written sometime August of last year. Watch out for Part II.
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