Yet Another Blog

First day of school. I wasn't really expecting anything; in fact I hadn't even realized a few days back that I'd be going back to school.. Or, well, not really back. Yeah, back in the sense that I'm studying again but it's not really back because it's a new school, er, now a university, lol, new campus, new everything, really.. And oddly enough the only thing that's not new is my mom. Yup, I am now a student at the same university where my mom built--is still building--her career.

It's not like we haven't talked about it; we've talked about it a lot and I'm glad that she knows what this could mean for me. In school it's never difficult for me but I really don't want to be known as her daughter. It's too bad since our Class Cards require complete names; that is to say, last name, given name, middle name. (*Note: over here given name can mean one or more, hence "amanda isabel;" middle name meaing the mother's maiden name, and of course, last name, father's family name. Interesting how name formats vary across countries, eh?) And of course it's easy to say that we have either the same last name or middle name but not both. Well anyway my mom's colleagues--people I grew up knowing!-- know what to do. They've gone through it enough. And me, I don't have any plans of getting noticed that way.

Well I didn't run into my mom first day of college, and I went through the same thing other students did: orientation on my own, classroom hunting on my own... Making small talk here and there.

I didn't know about the orientation but I was thankful that I wasn't able to sleep (I was up at 4 am!) as my friend sent me an SMS asking where I was because Orientation was beginning in half an hour. (My first class today was at 11.30; his was at 7 am).

Orientation gave me a back ache and I personally thought that it was somewhat brainwashing. I mean, they had these thingies about being "iskolar ng bayan" (scholars of the Filipino people, as about 60% of our tuition fees come from taxes) and because of that we could not be passive regarding current issues. I agree with that, really, and besides that I'm pretty far from being passive about issues myself. They actually went so far as encouraging activism.

Let's get something straight here first: I am not against activism. But given the current "meaning", that is to say going so far as to call for the austing of the president, et al, I would not encourage it, especially not in fresh-from-high-school-and-innocence freshmen. I would definitely encourage being involved, as in, the oppposite of being apathetic, but I wouldn't go as far as activism. Considering that the immediate (and justifiable, really) stereotype with UP-ians as activists (breeding ground for nation destabilizers, as a high school teacher of mine put it), I don't want to stand out in that sense. Of course, doing it is another story.

Well anyway. After that was the University Student Council thingy, inviting us to sign up for their committees, etc..

And then came the classroom hunting. It wasn't too bad since I was fairly acquainted with the buildings and ran into a few people I knew (and a few who knew me but I didn't know them!) so my first class wasn't bad. No exams for that course-Psych10: Psychology for Everyday Life--, but no gloating over here; it'll all be papers.

I had a thirty minute break and I met up with my best friend Kyle and a few new friends he'd made, but had to go ahead of all of them because I had a PE class.

It was freaky. While I knew that the Human Kinetics building was all the way down, I had no idea what I was in for. The stairs were spiraling, and the steps were HUGE! Above all of that I just get this vibe that something's going to happen to me while I'm running to and fro (which I will be doing a lot), like I might break a bone or something. I couldn't help this clip in my head, one of me rolling against my will down those stairs. Human kinetics all right.


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The first day of my freshman year. It was kinda weird since, well, in high school I was somebody, someone everyone knew, and as a senior a lot of the younger people looked up to me and everything, et cetera et cetera, but of course it was far from that when I was a freshman. Back then I never really thought things would turn out the way they did for me. I still don't know how things will turn out for me in three or four years and even more so in six or eight (I plan to take law) but I suddenly realized, while waiting my Biology instructor collected middle name-containing class cards, that I still I am embracing my own greatness. No, not the one I found or made or built in high school. The one I built on in high school.

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