Crash course: Memoirs of a working student

MANILA, Philippines - It started when I was 19. Now I’m 21. The almost two years in between? Those are the ones that changed everything for, and in, me. While I’ve got considerably less to show for it than Adele — no chart-topping ballads to punctuate my age or avenge a broken heart (and still no one who’d actually pay to hear me sing) — I at least have this space and this article. Truth is, I spent the first two years of my college life in school, and the rest of it in an office in Port Area.

It was about doing everything for the first time. My first job interview somehow became my first day of internship, and though I had very little grasp of myself, or what I was supposed to do, I stayed anyway. The more I stalked potential story subjects (it was productive), and the more people I met, the more I felt withdrawn from what I actually was — a student. June rolled around and I decided I was going to stick it out.

For me, junior year was a daily exercise in multitasking and strategic cutting of classes, something I still haven’t mastered now that I’m a senior. It’s a singular endeavor — work and school — it was and it is tough. As the virtual Post-its fill up, I draw some Hollywood strength from the poster girl of efficient editorial assisting, Andy Sachs. What would she do?

The Training Wheels Are Off

And so comes the question of work-life-school balance: I don’t think I’ve got it down. I don’t know if I ever will. Something always gives, in my case. I know that when my grades are above decent I’m doing a crap job at work. And when I’m doing well at work, well, you get the inverse proportion.

I’d cut class to go to a shoot, and skip work to work on my thesis. It’s not the most ideal situation, and in a parallel universe one could only hope that I’d be a pro at it. But while I’m in this reality where I wallow in my work-life-school failures and the general instability of it all, the formula is this: wobbling and falling — with composure.

Bar none: Revenge’s Declan Porter works extra hard at his brother’s bar for some extra cash—to impress his heiress girlfriend.

At the eye of this tornado, I guess what I’ve truly learned isn’t balance. The throes of publishing ultimately committed me to commitment. Commitment to what you’ve done, what you’re doing and what you have to do. If you must, don’t sleep so you can pass that Theology orals. If you have to miss a night out so you can meet a deadline or make it to an early shoot the next day, then so be it.

A lot of days it’d feel like I was actually in a relationship. Naturally, it was the love-hate kind. There’d be times that I’d really, really hate going to school, though I’m aware of how much of that hostility’s misplaced. In times like these, I listen to the once-right arm of Miranda Priestly, Emily, instead. Say this like clockwork: I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.

Somewhere in between the dozens of errors I’ve made and the grand plans I hatched for myself, was an inkling of the difference between who I was versus how I should be. But Ethan Hawke said it best in Reality Bites: “The only thing you have to be at 23 is yourself.”

I’m not 23, but publishing’s hastened my learning curve. When reality bites, bite back. Bite harder. I’ve had to be a lot of different persons for a whole lot of people. Funny how the case of multiple identities was how I learned to just be myself and get emancipated from expectations. I never imagined that I’d end up being a working student, and to be working for as long as I have. But Port Area schooled me in ways college couldn’t. It’s an entirely different medium of instruction, but an education, nonetheless.