Pre-graduation: The coming of the storm

YUP - it's that time of year again. Same gosh darn story every single year too. School goes out, caps go on, smiles go up, diplomas are given, hands are shook, and soon enough, it's mortgage time! Somewhere before the reception of one's first mortgage comes the gradual realization that all those years of grade school, high school, college, what-have-you, did NOTHING to prepare you for the real world. Well, close to nothing. You did learn how to read, write, solve for polynomials and... oh right. Normal people don't use polynomials. Well that is, unless their jobs are math-based or they like building and testing hang-gliders for some reason.

Anyway, let's get to the point. It's graduation time for fourth and fifth (maybe sixth?) year students all over the region. They're not quite there yet - this is the time on a student's calendar where dates are encircled in red with profanities scribbled on them directed at the deadlines for thesis submissions, and possibly at the teachers who gave those deadlines. Being a graduating student myself, I am pleased to say that I and my thesis team are totally and completely unprepared for what's about to happen during our thesis presentation. But this article's not about us, it's about the rest of us.

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They're scared. Very scared. The following days will determine the course of their lives - if their grades in this semester falter then they'll face more than a little hardship trying to get them back up in the next one. You know, the FINAL one - the one where they (or, we, rather) actually graduate.

I'd dare to compare these few months to the first few years of 2003's Iraq War - from the Iraqi point of view. Baghdad Bob, the Minister of Information, was yelling at the Republican Guard to "Git up and fight!" but that didn't stop them from dying and surrendering by the thousands. In our case, failure is "death", and withdrawal or shifting (a questionable decision in one's final year) would be surrender. Just like the 2003 Iraq War, the really bad stuff only happened in the beginning - Naval bombardments and tank pushes for the Iraqis, thesis reports and finals from hell for the students. It would be less and less of a clear fight and more of series of mad skirmishes later on - Iraqis using guerilla tactics against coalition forces compared to pure thesis at the latter part of the second semester. All in all, it could all turn out well in the end - coalition forces possibly withdrawing from Iraq by 2011, and our actual graduation in the same year!

Aside from the understandable fear most students have, others have mixed emotions. Oh, the usual ones are there, missing one's old classmates, anxiety and fear of the real world, sheer unbelief that years of mental torture in the guise of learning are finally over... that sort of thing. But others are thinking big. For example, there could be one guy who wants to immediately set up his own Internet cafe, another one who might make a road trip to every single business establishment along the road and distribute copies of his resume like fliers, others who'll go straight to Cebu and apply for a company named Bigfoot - and then the guy who might want to break a world record straight from graduation (Ambitious? Yes. Impossible? Maybe.) But these are just dreams yet - the real challenge is getting to where the graduates can make those dreams realities. Trudge that muddy road before surveying what's on the end of it. You never know - you might slip and never get up again. (Michael Valderrama)