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Monday, March 27, 2006
Editorial: Crossover artists
WHERE do they go after the giddiness of graduation?
Surviving the final stretch of requirements but not yet completing the final break from campus, Kara Mae Muga Noveda, 20, is, in equal parts, weary, flippant, somber and brash about what awaits her and others beyond graduation.
The Mass Communication senior at the University of the Philippines in the Visayas Cebu College (UPVCC) is cleaning out a bag of chicharon at home during a mid-morning break from her duties as an associate producer and segment host of a morning TV talk show. She’ll report back to the newsroom right after the evening newscast to join a team trawling the city for news until nearly midnight.
Right now, the girl is waiting for a call from her partner Jane so they can finalize their thesis. She prints out her resume and toys with a change of blouse, wondering aloud what will make a stronger impression on prospective employers.
Kara and mates want to try out a job fair being held that day in school. Told that there’s a lot of demand for preschool teachers and call center agents, she mutters that their group is just curious to see who gets the most number of responses to their queries.
To sleep and recover the Circadian rhythm disrupted since someone invented research. To work or, if not as lucky, to hold down a day job and save to be able to do the real work later.
Such self-perceived “shallow preoccupations” are like light showing through cracks. Batch 2006, the generation presumed lost to nursing and overseas work, is in the throes of something besides a fever for the mighty dollar.
Middle-class mantra
Life after college is for dealing with “economic realities.”
According to Kara, it’s not only the “careeristas (career-focused)” like Narsh and Celeste who realize this.
“(Survival) is a middle-class thing,” Kara sums up for her MassCom group, which is a microcosm of the subcultures in UP: Jane and the tibaks (campus activists); HiFis (hysterical friends) like cartwheel expert Tiff and altered native sound chick Chai; and optimistic spiritualists like Shiela and Lai who pray for their lost heathen souls.
Although no batch mate plans to work abroad or-the ultimate treachery-take up nursing as a second course, Kara and friends are not averse to a call center stint. A six-month contract is a compromise acceptable because of the money and the brevity (“I didn’t get a UP education only to take calls in a freaking center.”)
Take a job, work later. The ideal post-college scenario seems to be a continuation of old patterns started as undergraduates. While working for a cum laude and editing the student publication for two terms, Kara contributed a column and features for Sun.Star Cebu, as well as wrote on assignment for a tourist magazine. Three other mates, Neil, Sheen and Celeste, are also newspaper correspondents.
What challenges their batch is not just paying their way but keeping their soul. As the only female vocalist in the Muziklaban-winning band of Balde ni Allan, Chai will have to learn in future how to graft a copywriting job to her lifestyle as naturally as she strums a bass guitar and wields a rain stick.
Crossing
Kara believes that for having dipped their toes in industry work, her batch is not as bedeviled by insecurities as others wholly limited to the campus. Fieldwork has made them street-smart, a prerequisite for getting respect from industry members who reserve their lowest opinion for bookish IQs.
“We invest in ourselves. That is my batch’s leverage.”
According to Kara, they can provide what the market wants: multi-tasking, “non-linear,” dynamic work relations, ethical decision-making, people skills, sense of humor.
She is less certain if the outside world can be as accommodating of their dreams to “give back to the country” by engaging in journalism, non-government work, culture and art.
Unemployment holds no specter that can compare with what happened to a well-respected mentor. Used to the UP culture that students carry out their own research, the doctoral candidate suffered intense shock when he had to reproduce copies of a reading assignment for undergraduates in a private university patronized by the wealthy.
When Kara’s batch held last year’s Primero Dos Filmfest showing their short film projects, they entitled this as “Tabok sa Dalan (cross the road).” According to her, the phrase has many layers. It can refer to the political excursions in UP life; the crossover of different streams of art and culture; the risks attendant to experiments; crossroads where life decisions are made.
For Batch ’06, the burlesque of art is also known as life.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (March 27, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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