College is so expensive - that I just realized. (I know, I know, what a self-absorbed little brat I have been for not having considered that earlier.) In UST, on tuition alone, my mom spent P240,000. If you add that to all the allowances, the miscellaneous, the excessive foods, and all those days I never unplugged my television, and my laptop, my mom must've had superpowers that could turn leaves into peso bills.
I'm here, sitting in my office - when I should be reading Pacific Rims at the comfort of my own time, I am instead semi-palpitating on the after-thought, this sickening, revolting, after-thought that I've wasted a lot of good money in the past. Money that my mother earns from overworking. God, what a horrible daughter I must've been.
And what a horrible daughter I will be, if I insist on going to Graduate School next year. Four years of College costs just as much as one year of Post-Graduate studies, which, I wasn't surprised, also costs the same as a 5-day training course in the BBC. Yes, it's the BBC, I know. But how much are brands really worth?
They used to say opportunities. They told me that UST on my resume would translate to my dream job (provided that my talent comes at par). Well guess what, it fucking didn't. I've devoted some significant moping time trying to get my head around on the reality that is my non-existent, short-breathed, writing career. Or screw it, maybe I simply just can't write. Maybe I have been under the illusion that I can - maybe I'll accept that. But I know some of the best writers who (those not only touted by me but touted by people whose opinions matter) are also scraping for the dream job - whatever version of that theirs may be. I even know a friend, good writer, well-cultured, and studied Journalism in Wesfuckingleyan (the one in Ohio, not in Cabanatuan) - but even she was overlooked.
Money matters have been a major hold-up in this whole Master's degree thing. But the more that I ingest this screwed-up philosophy over the many tricks of job-grabbing, the more that I'm discouraged to shell off a major part of my family's already shelled-out fortune for an Education that may only come as good as mere bragging rights.
It's not as if I'm asking for the impossible. It's not as if every one of my Journ peers are held into the undergrade. Cos they're not. Have you ever come across a published article and thought, "Damn it, I could do that!", or even, "Mother***** I can do better than that." It's not a very often occasion (because half an hour I spend in Inquirer.net is tantamount to half a week of depression over their writing skills that could trump mine mercilessly - you can imagine my misery if I visit the more up-class online pubs) - but on the ones I do, I could almost cry.
But I can't say I wasn't warned. During my sophomore year, Christian Esguerra, Journalism Instructor and Senior Reporter for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, told the class that the odds were mean. I remember him saying, "only 10 people in this class will get to have a serious career in Journ........if you're lucky." I'll never forget that. In our junior year, Eros Atalia, Arts and Letters Filipino Instructor, Writer, and Author, said that the sun had fallen down on us. We were only a year into Graduation, it was then too late to drop out from the course, he said, was actually a curse. "Anong ginagawa niyo dito? Niloloko niyo lang mga sarili niyo," I can vividly remember his comic self saying, widening up his eyes to reveal a more serious look, trying to psych the class out, who were still smirking to what we thought was just a cruel joke. The worst he said was that we will never be able to pay our parents back, that we will forever remain indebted to them 'till the day we die, which meant that they've wasted their time funding us - which is now a fact, as you may have already noticed by the first sentences of this blog, that turned out to be personally true.
Ofcourse, at that moment, I was too high on my horse to listen. I was passionate, I was hungry, I was so fired up - I thought I could defy statistics. I thought I was "lucky" - and that was just months ago. It took five months for all that fuel to dry up because what remains in me right now is a pseudo-writer imprisoned to a London Grad School fantasy, and the warden of life is just outside my rail, ready to bully me. God what a sucky imagery, no wonder I wasn't hired.
I've made a lot of blogs like this in the past. But all of them ended with me saying that I'd never give up on writing, that this was my life. While that remains true, I am no longer sure. At the moment, I can afford to dream, to still think I could be "lucky", but when push comes to shove, I'll be forced to break up with the one thing that have made my heart flutter. Because it's also the one thing that have torn my heart desperately apart.
But until then, my future kids will have to accept they won't be going to college.
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