This post doesn't really belong in My College Blog, but for some reason I wanted to share it. In any case, this blog will be used for remembering things anyway, once I get old and tired.
Remembering Art School refers to this one summer in the early 2000's when my brother and I took an art class at the local 'museum'. I put quotation marks there because I'm not really sure if it is a museum despite the fact that it is called 'Museo ning Angeles' (trans. Museum of Angeles, my hometown) because I never really bothered with the works of art found in that dingy old building. But anyway, I'm not here to argue the purpose of that building, I'm here to reminisce that one day in "Art School", as I used to call it, that I was a total badass.
Memories often get distorted as time passes by so I can't guarantee that I was the sole instigator of this epic day in Art School, but I'm pretty sure I was one of the ringleaders. But first let me explain (or remind my future self) of what Art School was like. The first day of Art School was what I know now to be called a diagnostic test. We were asked to draw anything we wanted using crayons on a piece of black paper. I was about seven or eight (it was around Grade 2) so naturally... I copied what my brother was doing. We weren't very artistic to begin with (not saying that I am now, though I'd love to be) so we just drew your run-of-the-mill mountains and trees type. Oddly enough considering I copied off him, he got placed in the Green level (which was either the 3rd or 4th, not quite sure whether Blue was 4th) while I was placed in the Yellow (2nd) level. But I suspected it was merely because of the age range--either I'd be too young for the other Greens, or my brother'd be too old for the Yellows. But anyway...
The Red (1st) and Yellow levels were on the ground floor while Green and Blue were upstairs (which supported my theory of the age-thing, since younger kids were normally discouraged from climbing stairs back in those days--what?). The class was nice enough, I wasn't the painfully-shy-bordering-on-neurotic-introvert that I am now so I made a friend or two. I even got close to this one girl whose name I'd forgotten long ago, and shared a crush on this singer guy whose name is probably JC.
Anyway, back to my badass story. I'm usually a rule follower, and I never, ever disrespect my elders unless they give me reason to (case in point: Spagz). But for this one day, I simply disregarded the rules--not that there was a specific rule about it--and blatantly ignored the cries of our instructors. I was unstoppable, uncontrollable. I unleashed an inner beast that triggered the unleashing of other inner beasts. It was mad.
Are you wondering what I had done yet? I'd hate to sound anticlimactic but all I did was start some sort of paper fight with the Reds next door. We were connected by wooden double doors, and for some reason it felt fun and cool to throw crumpled up pieces of art paper at the little munchkins behind them. Of course, young and artistically challenged as they were, the Reds retaliated and it snowballed into one screaming, paper-throwing ordeal for our instructors. They shouldn't have given us all that much paper.
It was all rather exciting. I recall the feeling was akin to the Battle of Helm's Deep in LOTR, with the wooden doors being swung open to risk a well-aimed throw at a screaming Red, being shut again against the flurry of papers and crayons. My sharpest memory in all of that was when the doors swung open and I aimlessly through a ball of newspaper and it hit one of the female instructors. For a fleeting moment I looked at her with what I can imagine was a sheepish, guilty smirk before running back to reload.
Unfortunately, I don't remember how that ended. All I know is that we eventually got tired, as kids usually do after having their short attention spans highly stimulated. I'm sure we all helped with the clean up, because our instructors asked us to. And I remember nobody getting in trouble, unless they spoke to my parents behind my back in which case, all was well because my parents never said anything to me.
While writing this I thought something interesting. Why is it that we, the Yellows, felt so inclined to think that the Reds were our 'enemy'? I mean, for all intents and purposes of a paper fight (or war, rather) we could have done it between ourselves. You can chalk it up to arbitrary behavior, but what comes to mind is the idea that if you deliberately segregate people into groups, they will tend to form some sort of 'loyalty' to their group, if not 'hostility' toward others. I'm sure there are tons of studies on this but now is not the time to be researching about them. It is 11:44PM and I am ready to go to bed.
Good night!
EDITED (March 12, 2014, originally published December 18, 2013): Coincidentally, the last topic in Philosophy class was this exact thought! Note to future self: look up Amartya Sen's "Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny", this is what you learned in class! Basically, it talks about cultural identity and how we form a cultural affinity with those of similar culture, simultaneously including and excluding ourselves from certain groups. Violence (exemplified by that paper war I claimed to have started) arises when people ignore the fact that we are all multicultural, and focus instead on a singular identity (read: stereotype) that is different from ours. Anyway, it's 10:40PM so don't think about it too much.
The Blog about my life as an Atenean.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Thursday, October 24, 2013
'SMEG status' post + my insight on SMEG
NOTE TO SELF: Edit this douchey post haha.
While most of my batch mates are Tweeting or posting on Facebook a status that exclaims their recent success at surviving and conquering the Sure M.E. Graduate (SMEG) semester, I find myself writing a blog post instead. I'm not the type of person who posts a status on Facebook (at least not since I can remember) so my SMEG message goes out relatively unnoticed.
So... SMEG. Because of my uncanny ability to switch my memories on and off, the weight of 5 semesters does (or did) not burden me so I feel no more comfortable than I was a few weeks or months ago. But comparatively speaking, I am definitely more comfortable than I was two years ago. I'm pretty sure if I travel back in time and be able to re-experience the emotions of the first few weeks of my ME academic life, I would be singing an entirely different tune. But there might be another reason why I don't feel ecstatic tonight... (Hint: I'm foreshadowing what the post is about)
In case you didn't understand that previous paragraph, it simply said that I don't feel any different. And the reason why is that as you inch closer and closer to SMEG sem, it already becomes more and more a reality. In contrast to other events, when the closer you get to it the more anxious you feel. In the case of SMEG sem, the farther you are from it, the more likely the possibility of you getting kicked out. That is why the mortality rate in first year may have been higher than that in second year*, and it's not because the higher I go the harder I work, but because the higher I go, the more accustomed I am to the ME way of life, and "passing" becomes something normal. Failing (unwillingly) now becomes quite difficult.
*(I don't have the proper statistics for that, so you may choose not to believe in my claim but I do have this fact: our block got cut in half after the first semester--not year but semester. Accounting 20/35 may have a greater pull though I didn't feel it.)
Another reason this means very little to me now is the realization that nothing really changes. Yes, we are no longer restricted to the 2 D's rule, or the 2.5 QPI rule but that is, again, because getting higher-than-that grades is the norm. It's not like we're going, "Oh, thank heavens, we can now get all the D's we want" (no pun intended but I guess it turned out that way) because (1) that's not being magis, and (2) grades still mean something. The only thing that's gone is the abstract "pressure" to maintain those grade requirements; nothing has actually changed with regard to the grades we're aiming to get.
I don't want to downplay the effect of passing SMEG sem for others. I understand, even if I can't relate to, the other people who have worked hard and cried over this. And I especially don't want to downplay this moment for those who weren't able to get this far. I've had friends who got out of the program in first and second year. If my post is offensive to them, let it be said straight out that to offend them is not my intention.
I, too, felt the heartache of worrying about my grades. I don't anymore because of the norming effect I mentioned earlier and something else I will mention soon, but the point is I did worry in the early years especially with subjects that were too difficult for me to not care about. But I learned to not care about those grades. I developed a carefree attitude when it came to my grades so you should not compare my feelings about SMEG and the road to SMEG with others', especially with the grade conscious, and with those pressured by their parents (not saying that I am not).
Into my first weeks as a college student, grades were at the top of my list. No more acing tests based on 30 minutes of studying, I told myself, you can't pull off that shit in college. Hangouts with high school friends, I also said, could be placed on the back burner for now. Orgs were out of the question (it turned out not to be, but that's another story for another time). But obviously, something changed otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned my naive beginning. I can't pinpoint exactly when, but it most likely came alive with the angry emotions from when my college friends had to leave the ME program.
In my pathetic attempt to console them--which I'm not very good at to begin with, I suck at feelings--I turned to the negative aspects of ME. I unleashed a river of contempt for the program I was in, you could say I was a hypocrite. I complained about how pretentious it was, and how the teachers intentionally made it difficult when what they should be doing is teaching us. Majority of my claims were obviously incorrect, but I needed them to comfort myself more than others. From this anger, I brewed that carefree, devil-may-care attitude toward grades. I promised myself I wouldn't be too concerned about grades that I would get upset over not being "the perfect little ME student everyone wanted me to be". They tell you at the beginning that to stay in ME you have to be intensely competitive (it's actually the opposite, MEAns are intensely cooperative) but I chose not to be a part of the competition.
That is why today doesn't mean that much to me. It's how the rebel in me is saying, "Screw you, pretentious ME shadow people! I won't let your rules tell me how to live my life! I passed because I passed, not because of whatever effect you had on me." Those 'pretentious ME shadow people' don't refer to actual people. No, they are not my professors. No, he is not the ME Program Director. I deeply respect my professors and regard them as some of the most intelligent people in the country. I know they wouldn't treat anyone this way. These shadows are actually The They.
If you haven't taken Philosophy 101, or have but did not discuss Heidegger's Being and Time, you might not understand what I mean. But in simple terms, The They is similar to peer pressure, societal norms. Personified, The They is both everyone and no one, and are present in your everyday life. One key concept in Being and Time (at least how I understood it via my professor) is that The They constantly enforce a dictatorship over us, over our being. Our very being, subservient to The They, is not our own; our being is inauthentic.
So what my inner rebel is saying is that I got through SMEG sem unaffected by the threats and the pretentious propaganda. I didn't care for it when people would say a subject was difficult. I thought, "Who are you to tell me what's difficult for me? I wanna see for myself." Of course some of them were, but not because The They planted the idea, but because I did find them difficult. Some of them I actually found easy, and that wasn't because I studied harder since they said it would be difficult, but because I found it easy. The worst propaganda of them all, that I haven't yet 'defeated' is the one that says ME students are successful in the future. Our task now, is to prove that we are successful not only because we are ME students, but because we are.
My point is that after all this crazy SMEG stuff, I want people to realize that it really means nothing. It is not the manifestation of all your hard work, that would be you. I'm thankful for the kind of person SMEG sem and the road to SMEG have made me, but passing is not my reward. It is the difference between my present self and my first year self that shows my hard work. And the reason SMEG sem means nothing is because the difference will continue, i.e. I will still be developing, after or without that SMEG status.
For those in my position right now, what I'm saying is already a given. They realize this, too, but just want to celebrate. But this message is for those who aren't here yet, or who haven't made it here. Don't let prestige and promise ruin this life lesson: Reach for SMEG not for its name, but for its essence. Reach for that moment when excellence is the norm. But most importantly, at least for me, reach for it not because of anyone else telling you, or because of the promises you've been told, but because you want to.
Good night.
While most of my batch mates are Tweeting or posting on Facebook a status that exclaims their recent success at surviving and conquering the Sure M.E. Graduate (SMEG) semester, I find myself writing a blog post instead. I'm not the type of person who posts a status on Facebook (at least not since I can remember) so my SMEG message goes out relatively unnoticed.
So... SMEG. Because of my uncanny ability to switch my memories on and off, the weight of 5 semesters does (or did) not burden me so I feel no more comfortable than I was a few weeks or months ago. But comparatively speaking, I am definitely more comfortable than I was two years ago. I'm pretty sure if I travel back in time and be able to re-experience the emotions of the first few weeks of my ME academic life, I would be singing an entirely different tune. But there might be another reason why I don't feel ecstatic tonight... (Hint: I'm foreshadowing what the post is about)
In case you didn't understand that previous paragraph, it simply said that I don't feel any different. And the reason why is that as you inch closer and closer to SMEG sem, it already becomes more and more a reality. In contrast to other events, when the closer you get to it the more anxious you feel. In the case of SMEG sem, the farther you are from it, the more likely the possibility of you getting kicked out. That is why the mortality rate in first year may have been higher than that in second year*, and it's not because the higher I go the harder I work, but because the higher I go, the more accustomed I am to the ME way of life, and "passing" becomes something normal. Failing (unwillingly) now becomes quite difficult.
*(I don't have the proper statistics for that, so you may choose not to believe in my claim but I do have this fact: our block got cut in half after the first semester--not year but semester. Accounting 20/35 may have a greater pull though I didn't feel it.)
Another reason this means very little to me now is the realization that nothing really changes. Yes, we are no longer restricted to the 2 D's rule, or the 2.5 QPI rule but that is, again, because getting higher-than-that grades is the norm. It's not like we're going, "Oh, thank heavens, we can now get all the D's we want" (no pun intended but I guess it turned out that way) because (1) that's not being magis, and (2) grades still mean something. The only thing that's gone is the abstract "pressure" to maintain those grade requirements; nothing has actually changed with regard to the grades we're aiming to get.
I don't want to downplay the effect of passing SMEG sem for others. I understand, even if I can't relate to, the other people who have worked hard and cried over this. And I especially don't want to downplay this moment for those who weren't able to get this far. I've had friends who got out of the program in first and second year. If my post is offensive to them, let it be said straight out that to offend them is not my intention.
I, too, felt the heartache of worrying about my grades. I don't anymore because of the norming effect I mentioned earlier and something else I will mention soon, but the point is I did worry in the early years especially with subjects that were too difficult for me to not care about. But I learned to not care about those grades. I developed a carefree attitude when it came to my grades so you should not compare my feelings about SMEG and the road to SMEG with others', especially with the grade conscious, and with those pressured by their parents (not saying that I am not).
Into my first weeks as a college student, grades were at the top of my list. No more acing tests based on 30 minutes of studying, I told myself, you can't pull off that shit in college. Hangouts with high school friends, I also said, could be placed on the back burner for now. Orgs were out of the question (it turned out not to be, but that's another story for another time). But obviously, something changed otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned my naive beginning. I can't pinpoint exactly when, but it most likely came alive with the angry emotions from when my college friends had to leave the ME program.
In my pathetic attempt to console them--which I'm not very good at to begin with, I suck at feelings--I turned to the negative aspects of ME. I unleashed a river of contempt for the program I was in, you could say I was a hypocrite. I complained about how pretentious it was, and how the teachers intentionally made it difficult when what they should be doing is teaching us. Majority of my claims were obviously incorrect, but I needed them to comfort myself more than others. From this anger, I brewed that carefree, devil-may-care attitude toward grades. I promised myself I wouldn't be too concerned about grades that I would get upset over not being "the perfect little ME student everyone wanted me to be". They tell you at the beginning that to stay in ME you have to be intensely competitive (it's actually the opposite, MEAns are intensely cooperative) but I chose not to be a part of the competition.
That is why today doesn't mean that much to me. It's how the rebel in me is saying, "Screw you, pretentious ME shadow people! I won't let your rules tell me how to live my life! I passed because I passed, not because of whatever effect you had on me." Those 'pretentious ME shadow people' don't refer to actual people. No, they are not my professors. No, he is not the ME Program Director. I deeply respect my professors and regard them as some of the most intelligent people in the country. I know they wouldn't treat anyone this way. These shadows are actually The They.
If you haven't taken Philosophy 101, or have but did not discuss Heidegger's Being and Time, you might not understand what I mean. But in simple terms, The They is similar to peer pressure, societal norms. Personified, The They is both everyone and no one, and are present in your everyday life. One key concept in Being and Time (at least how I understood it via my professor) is that The They constantly enforce a dictatorship over us, over our being. Our very being, subservient to The They, is not our own; our being is inauthentic.
So what my inner rebel is saying is that I got through SMEG sem unaffected by the threats and the pretentious propaganda. I didn't care for it when people would say a subject was difficult. I thought, "Who are you to tell me what's difficult for me? I wanna see for myself." Of course some of them were, but not because The They planted the idea, but because I did find them difficult. Some of them I actually found easy, and that wasn't because I studied harder since they said it would be difficult, but because I found it easy. The worst propaganda of them all, that I haven't yet 'defeated' is the one that says ME students are successful in the future. Our task now, is to prove that we are successful not only because we are ME students, but because we are.
My point is that after all this crazy SMEG stuff, I want people to realize that it really means nothing. It is not the manifestation of all your hard work, that would be you. I'm thankful for the kind of person SMEG sem and the road to SMEG have made me, but passing is not my reward. It is the difference between my present self and my first year self that shows my hard work. And the reason SMEG sem means nothing is because the difference will continue, i.e. I will still be developing, after or without that SMEG status.
For those in my position right now, what I'm saying is already a given. They realize this, too, but just want to celebrate. But this message is for those who aren't here yet, or who haven't made it here. Don't let prestige and promise ruin this life lesson: Reach for SMEG not for its name, but for its essence. Reach for that moment when excellence is the norm. But most importantly, at least for me, reach for it not because of anyone else telling you, or because of the promises you've been told, but because you want to.
Good night.
Friday, September 13, 2013
A Moment of Giddiness
Forgive me for getting my hopes up.
There is obviously nothing behind it... but daaaamn that got me flustered.
There is obviously nothing behind it... but daaaamn that got me flustered.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
On Kids and Gender Neutrality
I went to the mall today to shop for my niece's and nephew's birthday presents, which means I spent a lot of time walking around Toys R Us. My nephew is turning one tomorrow and I, know nothing about babies, thought it would be nice to get him this Fisher Price truck (he apparently likes trucks) that has a moveable arm that can scoop up sand and rocks. It is a very cool toy if you ask me.
But yeah, my nephew is 12 months old. My parents told me not to get the awesome toy for him. Now I know what you're thinking--they have age indicators on the boxes! The toy is for 1.5 to 4 year-old children, so obviously he couldn't have played with that. Pick a toy in his age range! But what I'm thinking is, he's going to be that age someday anyway! Why not get him a sustainable toy that he can enjoy for years to come rather than something that he'll grow out of immediately?
But apparently everyone else doesn't think that way--at least when it comes to babies. Never mind that they grow really quickly, just get them something for their age that they can't even understand at their current age, or even remember liking when they grow older. Case in point: at the back of Toys R Us were these CAT trucks of varying sizes. Exactly the same design but in different sizes. My parents told me to get the tiny one because my nephew was tiny, too. I'm going like, (in my head of course) "I wanna get the big one so he can enjoy it until he's 7!"
Let's imagine both scenarios here.
Scenario A: I get him what I want, the big Fisher Price truck.
Useful life: a good 5-6 years more.
Enjoyment: 4 stars. Being a one year old, he can sit on it and get rolled around. Pretty fun stuff. Now, as he gets older he gets more fun out of its features. You see, his dad owns beachfront property so he could not only ride the truck through the sand like a boss, but since the truck is big enough he can actually dig up sand using the shovel thing!
Scenario B: I get him the tiny truck.
Useful life: already pushing it with 3 years.
Enjoyment: ??? because he's a 1-year old. He likes anything colorful that moves. When he gets older he'll always just have this tiny, decorative truck that he doesn't even remember playing with.
I'm no expert in infant psychology myself, but I think that's a pretty well-reasoned argument. But my well- reasoned argument came to no use anyway because we ended up getting him a Little Tikes Play 'n Scoot Pirate Ship which is an even more awesome toy, but the point is that it was also for non-one-year-olds! So basically I got what I wanted but not the toy I wanted to give. My ego is forcing me to say: I thought of getting the nice pirate toy, too, but it wasn't a truck so the subject was moot.
While going through this toy shopping craze, I was getting a funny feeling. We were at the Little Tikes section of Toys R Us, near those playhouses and I was imagining kids laughing and playing, opening the doors and jumping out from behind the windows. The pictures of kids on the boxes doing exactly that did nothing to stop my imagination. I told myself that someday, I'm going to buy all of these cool toys and put them in a room dedicated entirely to my kids' enjoyment and fun-learning, a playroom basically.
I must say, thinking about kids is really something. You get all warm and cozy on the inside. A huge, unstoppable smile creeps over your face. You feel light, and all the stress just flies out of your brain and get replaces by images of a happy family laughing and hugging while having a picnic. I don't want to blame my being a female for these occasional thoughts. I'm pretty sure guys think about this stuff, too.
For the rest of the day, I couldn't help but be exposed to thoughts of kids because my mom and I looked for my niece's gift, a pair of ballet flats. My niece just loves anything pink or purple but fashion dictated I get her the ruby ones. In the process of locating those tiny shoes we saw other tiny things (okay, maybe not so tiny, she is turning three after all) like dresses and skirts. Now, if you know me at all you'd know that dresses and skirts are not my thing. I'm a jeans and shirt kind of girl. But when you think of children, girls especially, you automatically dress them up in cutesy clothes because they're pretty and girly.
SPEAKING OF GIRLY
While I was at Toys R Us, I felt incredibly insulted by the fact that they labeled their toys by gender. I wanted to go over to the Gundam toys but I was still very conscious of the fact that the term 'Boys' Toys' was glaring at me. Okay, so maybe it wasn't labeled that way but the fact is they grouped toys according to gender.
Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with liking toys that come from "that side" of Toys R Us. Gundam was a TV show I watched as a kid, naturally I'd be attracted to the awesome toys that brought my imagination to life, wouldn't I? And as for Gundam being a show for boys--what, so you're saying robots are exclusive to boys? I won't go so feminist as to accuse society of thinking women aren't capable engineers of giant anthropomorphic Japanese killing machines but you get my point, right?
It's like philosophy. It's like David Foster Wallace's "This is Water". The more you look into gender stratifications, the more you see how pointless it is.
Perhaps the only time parents ought to be concerned about the toys their children are playing with is when they don't help their children's cognitive development or, at the very least, their happiness. But hold on, let's think about that--there are absolutely no such toys! The mere fact that they are toys eliminates any possibility of ruining of your children! So if your boy plays with a Barbie, or your girl is laying waste to Hoth with a Lego AT-AT you shouldn't be concerned. And if I want to go check out a Gundam, I shouldn't have to be concerned!
While gender neutral talks could span more topics outside children's toys, I must end my musings here. This week was a hell of a week I hope to forget, and writing about things that seem totally obvious but startlingly obscure feels really good.
I'll update soon.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
"Date an AIESECer."
I don't understand why this blog has more pageviews than my other, older blog. The most logical reason I could come up with is that perhaps there are more 'searchable' keywords in this blog, which makes sense considering the posts in the older blog consist mostly of images rather than text. By searchable keywords I mean things like Adventure Time. I don't think my posts about Ateneo are getting around because, based on Blogger statistics, I only have 2 pageviews from the Philippines.
This post is just to share a link to another blog post on Tumblr. Sorry, do they call them blogs? Posts? Well, anyway, it's from Tumblr. I can't give credit to the maker because I'm not really sure who she (or he) is. But in any case, I am sharing it here.
The post is called Date an AIESECer. It seems rather weird that, despite being my college blog, I haven't mentioned AIESEC as often as it has been in my college life. In fact, my entire college life at this point revolves around AIESEC. I've had many life-changing experiences with AIESEC, yet I haven't written much (if any at all) of them on my college blog. So as a way to sort of mend that, and to introduce you to my life as an AIESECer, here is a post about dating one.
And just to be clear, the whole theme of dating an AIESECer is not really the point. Try to see the values and behaviors of a typical AIESECer which, as evidenced by the number of shares and likes of this post, is something universal. AIESEC is an international organization, and it's nice to see that in all corners of the globe, AIESECers are all the same.
Enjoy reading!
P.S. A huge amount of praise from me to the author of Date an AIESECer! I hope that someday we get to meet.
This post is just to share a link to another blog post on Tumblr. Sorry, do they call them blogs? Posts? Well, anyway, it's from Tumblr. I can't give credit to the maker because I'm not really sure who she (or he) is. But in any case, I am sharing it here.
The post is called Date an AIESECer. It seems rather weird that, despite being my college blog, I haven't mentioned AIESEC as often as it has been in my college life. In fact, my entire college life at this point revolves around AIESEC. I've had many life-changing experiences with AIESEC, yet I haven't written much (if any at all) of them on my college blog. So as a way to sort of mend that, and to introduce you to my life as an AIESECer, here is a post about dating one.
And just to be clear, the whole theme of dating an AIESECer is not really the point. Try to see the values and behaviors of a typical AIESECer which, as evidenced by the number of shares and likes of this post, is something universal. AIESEC is an international organization, and it's nice to see that in all corners of the globe, AIESECers are all the same.
Enjoy reading!
P.S. A huge amount of praise from me to the author of Date an AIESECer! I hope that someday we get to meet.
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