Smart with a Heart

CEBU, Philippines - Jonathan Andro Pagayunan Tan is not your everyday, average boy genius. Having graduated magna cum laude from Silliman University just this year with a degree in Physics majoring in Computer Application, Jtan, as he is more popularly known in campus, is not just your average Jimmy Neutron. He is, more than anything, Jimmy Neutron with a heart considering that he is only one of two awardees from Region Seven in the prestigious Search for the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines.

Although Jtan graduated from a prestigious university, Jtan was not born to a comfortable life unlike many of his schoolmates. Despite having to work and study at the same time, he was one of the few students who earned a University Honors distinction with Scholarship Key. 

“I am a person who loves learning,” Jtan said as he reminisced the day when he was awarded as one of Silliman’s University Honors recipients. “Receiving this, my name was placed in the bronze tablet. This is something that someday when my future children would see, they will be proud of their father and hopefully they will be inspired to love learning and reach their goals and dreams someday.”

Jtan added, “For now, I hope that as the people who knew me would tell other youth that the name in that tablet was just a boy who sold kutsinta in their neighbourhood in order to have money for school but persisted in his dreams and ambitions in life and decided to make them a reality. Not for popularity, but in the hope that I could influence other less fortunate kids that poverty is not enough to stop anyone from reaching his dreams.”

Jtan cites poverty as his life’s greatest challenge on his climb to the top.

“I was not born into an affluent family. Daring to dream big meant overcoming all the challenges in front of me just to reach the finish line. But being poor meant a lot more challenges compared to other fortunate kids out there. For me, it meant spending my weekends selling the delicacies my mother cooked across the neighbourhood in order to have enough baon to go to school. It meant looking for other means to be able to make my computerized assignments or project, for I do not have my own computer. It meant so much more for me to survive everyday and deciding to live everyday with a great dream in mind,” said the 21-year-old Gawad Kalinga Network Administrator and Technical Support.

Jtan, who served as the president of Ang Sandigan, a top socio-civic organization in Silliman, and of the Federation of Habitat Youth Organization, has dedicated much of his efforts in and outside of school towards empowering young people.

“I want to be able to help mold our youth to become responsible citizens of this country. I want them to understand and live the value of life beyond mere existence. To live for a reason bigger than themselves. For the less fortunate kids, I want to help them go to school. For the intellectually gifted, I want to challenge them to unleash their full potential,” he said. “I chose to fight for this particular advocacy because I saw how the less fortunate kids live. I have come to understand that every child, even the less fortunate, have that immense potential within them. That potential just needs to be released. Imagine if all young people would dream great dreams and decide to make those dreams come true, imagine how amazing our country could become.”

However, with the current state of our country, Jtan acknowledged that although this particular advocacy holds so much potential, it is also replete with challenges that more often than not, are enough to discourage the faint of heart.

“The poor kids are not provided with quality education. The less fortunate kids are forced to work instead of going to school. The intellectually gifted are often not understood because there are different from everyone else. They are not given the proper training that they need,” said Jtan as he contemplated on the bigness of the challenge that lay before him.

Jtan, who dreams of someday becoming the president of the Philippines, believes that it is the Filipinos’ pessimistic and generally hopeless attitude that is keeping our country from finally developing.

Having been honored as one of the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines, Jtan has, in a way, become a bayani, a role model and a hero to young people his age. 

“A bayani is someone who decides to continue to live not simply for themselves but for the family, the community, and their country… I believe in doing simple things extraordinarily,” said Jtan.

With so many things on his plate, people continue to wonder how Jtan has managed to juggle everything from academics to community work, to love life.

“There always will be 86,400 seconds a day and 604, 800 seconds a week. If you think about it, that is a lot of time you have. As they say, you can never manage time, but you could manage what you do within the time that you have,” he said with a quiet air of cleverness.

Indeed, Jonathan Andro Tan isn’t just all smarts—he’s definitely a hero with a heart.