Finding my way again…and again

Right after taking the UP College Admission Test (UPCAT) in 1990, I made a pact with myself: If I were to fail the exam, I would take it as a sign that I was
not meant to pursue higher formal education. And that, instead, I am to happily be on my way to learning from the only place that, to me, could rival UP on the excitement scale—the “real” (a.k.a. “working”) world.

It may have seemed like a radical decision for a high school student, but for me, it only seemed natural, given the feelings I had nurtured towards UP for years.

The university first took hold of my imagination early in my adolescent years as I saw old pictures of my mom as a young, pretty UP student in the 1960s. She was in teensy miniskirts that reached up to her butt, a cheeky grin on her face, hamming it up with friends and looking like she was having the time of her life. I became very curious about the school that gave me a completely different picture of my otherwise proper, ladylike, conventional mother — the French-speaking, American Field Scholar student activist who made Molotov bombs and was chased down University Avenue by the Metrocom. Like a person’s first great love, the university seemed to have brought out the bold, fearless, astig aspect of my mom. For this reason, UP held an intensely romantic, almost mythical aura for me. I decided it was The One. I certainly wasn’t going to settle.

I joined the UP Mountaineers almost as a test of how far I could handle the notoriously rigorous application process (five-, 10-, 15-kilometer runs under time pressure; a battery of written and practical exams; climbs of escalating difficulty). I was inducted that summer at the summit of Mindoro’s Mt. Halcon, otherwise known as the “Macho Mountain”, and felt like I grew balls.

I joined the women’s football team, I attended my first and only rally ever — for a total log ban. I faced down a professor — m y first time to stand up to an authority figure who was not one of my parents. I survived a sexual assault by a stranger as I walked from my freshman dorm to the Arts and Sciences building early one morning. Instead of being cowed and avoiding that path after that incident (which, to my mind, would have been a victory for the attacker), I continued to take the same route to class but now holding an uncapped Pilot pen and seriously looking forward to stabbing the next pervert who came near me.

In UP, I knew exactly who I was. And who I was in that school was someone I really liked and respected.      

It seems fitting then that later on, as a wage-earner assailed by self-doubt and annoying existential questions (“Is this what my life is about?” “What do I really, really want?”), I would find reprieve in the place that first showed me my possibilities.  When the otherwise manageable undercurrent of indecision, confusion, and fear would swell into a great wave, carrying me and then slamming me down on the shores of some desert island, I would be left with no other choice but to take stock of my situation. During these times, I would pick myself up from my desert island of misery, skip work, and make my pilgrimage to UP, as though to get in touch once again with the bold, uncompromising, spirited girl that I seemed to have left there. And always, during the course of my short visit, the school would remind me of who I am.  

It doesn’t matter what I’d do in UP. I could be joining the late Sunday afternoon crowd brisk walking, jogging, biking, or skateboarding around the Academic Oval; sharing a slice of Devil’s Food Cake with an equally “lost and confused” alum friend or sibling at Chocolate Kiss Café; catching another wild stage performance by my never-say-die friend and iconic campus figure Romeo Lee; or just planting myself on one of the benches scattered around the campus like the village grouch, scowling at the carefree students who walked by, and relishing my cynical old-timer mode as I muttered disdainfully, “Bagets.” The answers may not come to me at that point, but the memories of my four fabulous years in UP would crowd around me like old, solid cheerleading friends.

The crippling doubts and fears would be replaced by an unshakeable confidence that, as that unofficial UP Humanities professor Bob Marley sagely sang, “Everything’s gonna be alright.” Relax lang, the vibe around me seemed to say. Aabot din tayo diyan. You already know you got it in you to make it. 

And I would always trust that feeling. The strange, almost drug-induced powerful feeling that never once failed me the past 18 years since I first felt it.

Everything was gonna be alright.

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