I graduated from the University of the Philippines – Diliman, a fairly reputable school and most people only see it that way. What they don’t know is that I barely made it to graduation.
I entered the university with a BS BAA course, reputed to be the toughest quota program to get into (along with MBB). And you know, to be honest, I was a proud BS BAA student, wearing that badge with a smirk. But it hit me right in the face when I realized that I wasn’t fit for the program. I was not the studious type and although I liked numbers more than anything else, accounting was a different world for me. My parents who were rooting for me to become an accountant got frustrated as I shifted to BS BA course where management, marketing, and operations at least interested me. But still, I was a classic case of a bad student—barely passing, consistently late or absent, party-goer, happy-go-lucky, and one year delayed. If there’s any award I should have received at graduation, it’s for the student who dropped the most no. of subjects in college. I couldn’t even believe that I was not kicked out because there was a minimum GWA that my college required each student to maintain. How I was able to maintain it, I have no idea.
So looking back, I should say that I haven’t really graduated from UP—graduated in its core sense. It must have been just pure luck that I made it.
