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.
Monday, February 05, 2007
DILEMMAS AND DECISIONS
Call it a dilemma, the feeling as if the world is full of choices and yet you can’t decide. Call it a deadlock, the final moment when you have to decide but failed to do so. Call it a tragedy, a decision wrongly made. It is horrible.
Today’s world is an avenue of choices. Every stop is a matter decision. Every corner is another road that takes you to another route, another destination which you should take but failed to do so or should never but did so because you are not sure. You are lost. The world is full of possibilities, yet not all are good. For teenagers like me, these are realities which we have to face and live with everyday. Every moment of our lives is a matter of choice, and a wrong decision may mean a lot.
I remembered one summer when I was about 5 years old. In our province, like any other province in the country during hot seasons, rice paddies are dry. What were left in the fields were withered knee-high rice stalks on the scorched earth, making the plains an attractive and excellent playground for barrio kids like me. The dried paddies are perfect for kite flying, hide and seek, taya, and even for bullying around with my amigos. Playing under the sun during those days was like heaven for me, until one day I was not permitted by my mom to go out and play because of my asthma. My mom was not my problem though – for it was my aunt who was so strict.
One afternoon before sending me to sleep (I really hated sleeping during afternoons), my aunt told me to never set foot outside the house. I hesitantly said yes and forced myself to bed, knowing that she was sitting beside me and observing. After minutes of pretending to be asleep, I felt her left my side and heard her footsteps going upstairs. Alas! She went to her room to take a nap thinking I was already in dreamland. An opportunity came to me to escape to my ‘playground’, but that moment turned out to be a dilemma.
I was caught between obedience and the desire for fun. If I obey my aunt, I would be stuck in the house the entire afternoon in boredom; but if disobey, I would have fun the entire afternoon in the fields. I chose the latter. I did have a great time, but when I went home, I was severely punished. Imagine a child crying his lungs out, kneeling on salt. That was a lesson still vivid in my mind, and so was the horror of making a wrong decision.
During another summer when I was 10, a basketball clinic was held in our city. I haven’t yet learned playing basketball then, so I asked my mom if I could join – and she said no because I had asthma and I was fat. Helpless for she was never convinced, I obeyed. All my friends joined and learned how to play basketball very well. Until now, I still haven’t learned how to play the game. All I can do is dribble and shoot, and that’s all.
Looking back through these memories makes me realize that I was once punished for I disobeyed and lost an opportunity to learn for I obeyed. It compels me to think of how many decisions I have wrongly made and how much I have learned from them. It gives me fear thinking that I still have not learned; and now that I’m older, wrong decisions may spell disaster to my life.
Life now for me is more demanding and choices that I am faced with are more profound than whether to have fun or get bored alone. It is now more of whether you do what you ought to do or not. It is now more of a responsibility. Now obedience is no longer a matter of punishment and permissions, but a matter of will and generosity.
Now is the time when I have to make decisions that will change my life in a way that they will become my life. I have to decide on things fast and quickly, for my days are already counted before facing the ultimate end of everything. And when that very moment comes, I hope that I will never account to God for not living a life He wanted me to live.
As for my aunt, she now has her own family, happily living a life she willfully chose. And my mom, because of her love and self-giving, has taught me to give my best in whatever I aspire to do and in things I need to do – and it’s a whole lot better than learning basketball.
And now, it’s my turn to decide on important things – quickly and surely!
* Written on January 2004 at about 11 pm. The following day was a major exam and I was cramming. Thank God I still got a high mark.
Today’s world is an avenue of choices. Every stop is a matter decision. Every corner is another road that takes you to another route, another destination which you should take but failed to do so or should never but did so because you are not sure. You are lost. The world is full of possibilities, yet not all are good. For teenagers like me, these are realities which we have to face and live with everyday. Every moment of our lives is a matter of choice, and a wrong decision may mean a lot.
I remembered one summer when I was about 5 years old. In our province, like any other province in the country during hot seasons, rice paddies are dry. What were left in the fields were withered knee-high rice stalks on the scorched earth, making the plains an attractive and excellent playground for barrio kids like me. The dried paddies are perfect for kite flying, hide and seek, taya, and even for bullying around with my amigos. Playing under the sun during those days was like heaven for me, until one day I was not permitted by my mom to go out and play because of my asthma. My mom was not my problem though – for it was my aunt who was so strict.
One afternoon before sending me to sleep (I really hated sleeping during afternoons), my aunt told me to never set foot outside the house. I hesitantly said yes and forced myself to bed, knowing that she was sitting beside me and observing. After minutes of pretending to be asleep, I felt her left my side and heard her footsteps going upstairs. Alas! She went to her room to take a nap thinking I was already in dreamland. An opportunity came to me to escape to my ‘playground’, but that moment turned out to be a dilemma.
I was caught between obedience and the desire for fun. If I obey my aunt, I would be stuck in the house the entire afternoon in boredom; but if disobey, I would have fun the entire afternoon in the fields. I chose the latter. I did have a great time, but when I went home, I was severely punished. Imagine a child crying his lungs out, kneeling on salt. That was a lesson still vivid in my mind, and so was the horror of making a wrong decision.
During another summer when I was 10, a basketball clinic was held in our city. I haven’t yet learned playing basketball then, so I asked my mom if I could join – and she said no because I had asthma and I was fat. Helpless for she was never convinced, I obeyed. All my friends joined and learned how to play basketball very well. Until now, I still haven’t learned how to play the game. All I can do is dribble and shoot, and that’s all.
Looking back through these memories makes me realize that I was once punished for I disobeyed and lost an opportunity to learn for I obeyed. It compels me to think of how many decisions I have wrongly made and how much I have learned from them. It gives me fear thinking that I still have not learned; and now that I’m older, wrong decisions may spell disaster to my life.
Life now for me is more demanding and choices that I am faced with are more profound than whether to have fun or get bored alone. It is now more of whether you do what you ought to do or not. It is now more of a responsibility. Now obedience is no longer a matter of punishment and permissions, but a matter of will and generosity.
Now is the time when I have to make decisions that will change my life in a way that they will become my life. I have to decide on things fast and quickly, for my days are already counted before facing the ultimate end of everything. And when that very moment comes, I hope that I will never account to God for not living a life He wanted me to live.
As for my aunt, she now has her own family, happily living a life she willfully chose. And my mom, because of her love and self-giving, has taught me to give my best in whatever I aspire to do and in things I need to do – and it’s a whole lot better than learning basketball.
And now, it’s my turn to decide on important things – quickly and surely!
* Written on January 2004 at about 11 pm. The following day was a major exam and I was cramming. Thank God I still got a high mark.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
NAZARENO
Just a while ago I took the LRT going to La Salle. Sitting in front of me was an old woman of around 70 years of age, wearing a loose white shirt, a faded pair of jeans, and an almost worn-out bakya. She tucked her black bag close to her left shoulder as more people from the next station came in. In her right hand, I noticed a white towel which she folded such that I could only read a single word printed on it: Nazareno. Then I knew where she was heading - to Quiapo where, today, thousands of devotees pay homage to the miraculous image of Jesus the Nazarene.
Seeing these people risk their safety in a sea of devotees in order to touch the image is very edifying. Lola's courage, with her advanced age and deteriorating physical health, is even more moving.
Seeing these people risk their safety in a sea of devotees in order to touch the image is very edifying. Lola's courage, with her advanced age and deteriorating physical health, is even more moving.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
THAI COUP
The coup that happened in Thailand yesterday was rather swift and peaceful, breaking the reputation of the country that suffered bloody coups in the past.
Will the same thing happen in the Philippines? Observers say that it is unlikely since GMA is in control with the military, for the moment.
But what I do hope is that our politicians will stop bickering among themselves and start doing things relevant to the country.
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