I just got back from Davao a few days ago from a student council congress. I’m not yet in a mood to write exhaustively about the KASAMA sa UP (Katipunan ng mga Sangguniang Mag-aaral sa UP) Congress, plus I won’t be home for another two days, so I’ll just leave you with some photos of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 (NAIA 3).
Our last final exam is over! By the fourth hour of our marathon written exam in Constitutional Law 1, I was so drained and my right hand was already really exhausted from all the writing, I just ranted off my last answer without much prudence in citing provisions. I barely cared anymore. I wanted it done and over with.
I won’t be online for the next few days! I shall blog again when I come back to Manila. See you all!
Our final examinations in Constitutional Law 1 is divided into two parts. The first part is an oral exam, where we would be asked, individually, to answer a handful of random-picked questions by reciting, in verbatim as much as possible, the proper provision from the Constitution. That meant we had to memorize the entire Constitution. The second part of our final exam is a five-hour written test.
The oral part was set for today. When I got to school in time for the exam, I was secretly hoping by one way or another, I would get a few extra hours to study more. I’m a hopeless crammer like that. To my disbelief, after two hours of waiting for our professor, our class president announced that the professor forgot all about our oral exams today, or that he claims that there was a misunderstanding in the schedule. So we all agreed to have it re-set for tomorrow, together with the five-hour written exam.
Tags: academics, Constitution, law blockmates, UP Law
I’m now struggling to memorize the constitution for our last final examinations this Thursday and Friday. I’m done with Persons & Family Relations (Civil Law), Legal Method (Statutory Construction), and Criminal Law 1. And for more, I even had to take a Political Science 14 final exam last Monday.
Last Saturday, my blockmates and I went out for lunch after our Criminal Law 1 final examinations. It was as if we didn’t have any more examinations left. Well, there were four days before the next one, so we thought it wouldn’t hurt if we would eat, drink and be merry for one afternoon.
Tags: academics, law blockmates, UP Law
I almost always forget October 20. Eight years ago today I published my first blog entry. From that day on, I’ve been blogging and recording my thoughts and my life in general. Most of my entries back then are, obviously, not up right now. They’re tucked somewhere in the internet, and I’d rather not re-read through them because they’re utterly embarrassing. One day–actually, yesterday–I randomly clicked one entry for 2001 and to my surprise I was talking about my conservative Catholic ideals and my dislike for the what I called the hedonistic lifestyle of my high school classmates. Ha ha ha ha! It’s disgusting. I even mentioned names. Diary kung diary.
Blogging started off a lot of significant things for me. It would take me some time to make an exhaustive list, which I unfortunately don’t have much of at the moment. Needless to say, it was through my blog that I got to know a lot of people, moreso the other way around. Blogging definitely played a big part in my life. It played not just a passive role on being a medium where my I recorded my transformation from a being conservative and naive high school freshman in Ateneo to the opinionated law student that I am now in UP, and all else in between, but an active role in getting me into where I am right now.
Here’s to more years of blogging for me! In four years I would have been blogging for half of my life, would you imagine.
Tags: anniversary, blogging
As a freshman, your first final examinations in law school can really make you think about your commitment to studying the law. I’ve never experienced an end-of-semester final exam season this exhausting and stressful. Long hours of reading, series of sleepless nights, prolonged isolation from your non-law school friends and other activities really makes you ask yourself if it’s all worth it.
One night, I wanted to read all about the global economic crises and other collateral local issues but alas I had to read about how estranged spouses should settle the dissolution of their conjugal properties. The other day I wanted to go with my colleagues in the student council to this dialogue with the university president but I had to read about how adopted children can rescind their adoption.
Tags: academics, examinations, UP Law
[This is my simple contribution to Blog Action Day 2008.]
The most prevalent idea being perpetuated by mass media and other traditional establishments with regards to how poverty could be solved is the notion that it’s all up to the individual’s hard work and perseverance. Nasa sipag at tiyaga lang ‘yan. Kayod lang nang kayod. Mag-trabaho lang nang mag-trabaho. Dadating din ang asenso.
To reinforce this idea, it’s not seldom that we are made witnesses to countless life stories of individuals who rose from poverty rags-to-riches style. Just this weekend, over ABS-CBN, we are made audience to TV biographies of the country’s business tycoons and how they achieved their status through “hard work” and how they return to the poor their riches through humanitarian efforts and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) projects.
This, however, is the reality: anumang sipag at tiyaga ang gawin ng malawak na sektor ng manggagawa, karamihan sa kanila ay hindi talaga aasenso. Not in a prevailing order that thrives on the cycle of inequality that it perpetuates. The success stories we are being made to witness and admire are mere exceptions rather than the norm. Surely, if it’s all up to sipag at tiyaga, then most of our employees, workers and farmers, whom we pride to be hard-working, should be experiencing economic security. Don’t you ever wonder why such is not the case? After all, who benefits the most from the hard work of workers? We are simply being made to pin our hopes and be content with the way things are done and not strive or fight for something better.
Indeed, when it is not coupled with genuine reforms and changes in the core orientation of our economies and in how our governments are run, mere sipag at tiyaga will never be enough to lift the vast majority Filipinos, and even the rest of the world’s poor, out of poverty.
Tags: Bloggers' Kapihan, blogging, capitalism, economic crises, economy, poverty, workers
This is less than two days from now, but I hope I could encourage some of you to participate in this endeavor.
On October 15, Wednesday, we in Bloggers Kapihan invite Filipino bloggers to participate in Blog Action Day 2008 by taking a stand on poverty.
Poverty is a reality that we cannot deny. We see it everyday. Many live with and in it 24/7. The imperative now is to change this situation. The Blog Action Day 2008 is an opportunity to get poverty out from under the rug where the government has consigned it. We hope that through this renewed focus on poverty, it will be a new start to better understand and not hide it, to offer real solutions not fake ones, to salve the poor people’s wounds and not give them dole-outs. If you want to join Blog Action Day 2008, there are a number of things you can do. Read on.
Tags: Bloggers' Kapihan, blogging, poverty
