The Dusk or The Dawn? (Unedited)

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“Uie dong, graduating na ka noh?” some people asked this.

I would reply “Dili pa, next school year pa.”

“Ngano man?”

“Naulahi kog take sang subjects so extended ko ug one year.”

“Nganong naulahi man ka?”

There was a pause… and that was the end of my temper—most people really dug deep and the only way to stop them was to tell the naked truth.  So then, I would always reply, “Nabagsak man gud ko sa akong isa ka major na prerequisite for other higher majors and dili man siya makuha in any semester so I needed to wait for one year para makuha to siya na subject.  Napasa na nako to siya and now padayon sa nabilin.”

“Aie sayang eh.”

I really hate hearing “sayang”.  It does not sound compassionate to me—as if they’re saying that I’m wasting the efforts of my parents [which is not], though I get their point.

First is TIME.  A year is not a span of time one may wish to waste.  I mean, I may miss so many things in this added year.   Perhaps, within the year, I could have a job—earn my salary and go to the places I have never been to, eat the foods that I have not eaten, buy stuffs that I only see in malls, or simply, help my parents first thing.  Alternatively, of course, the basic, review and take the board exam.

Second is FINANCE.  I do not want to solve but I could imagine how much money I could save if I would graduate earlier. But because I’ll not, I will still pay for transportation, food, projects, photocopies, quizzes, handouts, and/or printouts—I’m talking of the marginal costs I will spend on the added year so tuition fees and miscellaneous during enrollment,  the SOPs of all the payments, are not included.  If I accumulate these expenses, I am sure the amount is really material.

Those are the “sayang” they are stressing me but my perspective is very different from theirs.  When I failed that major subject, I have found an opportunity to improve myself.  The added year, maybe, is a sign that I am not yet ready for the real world.  The things I mentioned above are the things that I might have… MIGHT have—dreams, illusions, and lies.  Those are very uncertain, and what’s certain now is that I am not prepared yet… this is the reality—this is FACT.  I may spend more for this added year but I’m sure this is worth spending—time and money.  I believe there are things I need to learn more and I hope this time I won’t miss any of it.

The advantage is that I have longer time to prepare for the future.  I have lesser subjects than others have in an easy schedule; I have time for everything, including procrastination, but this time, it must not be included it in my list.

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Many students want to graduate in time planned but I’m pretty sure not all of them deserve to graduate.  In fact, not all graduates pass the board exams.

The reason I think is that instructors solely rely on the very basic quantitative evaluation—the grading system, like 60% on this, 25% on that, so and so, and if you get 75% you pass, congrats! Duh.

Some instructors inspire their students by saying “Wala may bugo sa accounting, naa lang tamad.”  But obviously this is not true!  The proper statement is “Wala may tamad sa accounting, naa lang bugo.” People are born with different brain capacities.  There are persons who could endure a long duration of studying but still could hardly understand what they are reading; there are persons who understand the lessons at once and sleep as early as 9 pm; there are persons who could not understand the lessons and could not endure long readings and that makes them sleepy; and everything other than those—name the worse combinations of it.  Only few are the once who have the best combination.  Of course, I’m not saying that this is a valid excuse for the instructors to pass all of the students.  All I’m saying is that, students’ scores in quizzes do not precede them.  Grades do not evaluate how much we learn from the subjects we take—I do believe in that.  Grades are just a fragment of evaluating the students’ capacity to memorize and/or understand the lessons but never of the students’ capacity to blend and bend in changing standards of learning and of knowledge. There’s more to consider than grades alone like attitudes, confidence, paradigms, and personal relationships.  Students go to college to become better persons, humans, to prepare them in any profession they want, not to become robots who only know raw knowledge and facts and formulas.  

Furthermore, students really believe that having high grades will save them from the lashes of failure that may actually devastate anyone, even the fittest.  Some students do everything just to think how they can get good grades.  Blessed are the honest and diligent but admittedly, there are some who compare, cheat, and plagiarize just to satisfy their urge to survive.  As a result, after college, some of these people struggle in their jobs.  They oftentimes lack social disciplines, which is one of the very essential elements in workplaces.

Not everybody will find this article very useful.  Well, these are all my opinions… a past time perhaps.

I end this article with a question, what do you think you’ll become after college?