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Saturday, April 09, 2005
Sienes: Calling back yesterday
By Cris G. Sienes
Different Strokes
IT HAS been said that the mind of a young man grows into knowledge, that of an old man into memories. Now that I'm standing tiptoe looking into the threshold of my twilight years, a face, a picture, a scene, a letter, or even just a moment of aloneness always evokes a montage of bittersweet memories.
So it was with the letter that former city councilor and fellow Atenean Luz C. Ilagan sent me recently, which I featured in a previous column.
It was like a voice crying out from beyond the darkness of almost 40 years, calling back yesterday and taking me back to my happy teaching days at the Ateneo de Davao college department.
Truth to tell, I never applied for a part-time teaching position before at the Ateneo de Davao College department.
I was already happy and contented with my job as classroom teacher, Prefect of Discipline/Assistant Principal and, during the time of the Asian Institute of Management-trained Fr. Ernesto Carretero, as concurrent administrative assistant, personnel administrator, and campus and physical plant director of the Ateneo de Davao High School.
In a manner of speaking, I was "shanghaied" to teach at the college department. Here's how it happened: One day our high school principal told me: "Cris, the college department urgently needs a philosophy teacher. You've been picked for the job."
"But, Father," I replied, "I'm an English major, not a philosophy major." "We know that," came the reply.
"But we also know that you were a philosophy gold medalist when you graduated. So you're it. Help your alma mater. Go there and teach!"
Sama sa usa ka piso nga nahumod (like a wet chick) I dutifully went to the college department to teach part-time. There I was not only asked to teach philosophy but also European history, a subject which I liked because it renewed my acquaintance with such great minds as Schopenhauer, Hegel, Huxley, Nietzsche, Haeckel, Comte, Marx, Engels, Darwin, Luther, Stuart Mill and others.
I had so many students in college, but unlike my high school students many of whom remain very close to me even now and always take me out for an evening of songs, food, and drinks, I fondly remember only one of my college students... no, make that two--Micmic Olea, who is a municipal councilor in Baganga, Davao
Oriental, and former Davao City Councilor and now Davao Oriental first district Congresswoman Corazon N. Malanyaon.
I kept on meeting and coordinating with Micmic Olea during my many trips to Baganga for the Office of the President for Mindanao. I also keep on bumping into Cora Malanyaon. The reason why I always remember her fondly is because whenever we find ourselves in a gathering, she would always brag to the group:
"Ask Mr. Sienes who was the brightest in his philosophy and European history classes at the Ateneo de Davao." Indeed she was.
One other thing that I fondly remember during my teaching stint at the Ateneo de Davao college department was being caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between the high school department and the college department. The high school department wanted to send me to a high level seminar for administrators at the Ateneo de Manila University.
The college department wanted me to represent the Ateneo de Davao at the summer-long prestigious Fourth American Studies Seminar at the University of the Philippines. Then Rector Fr. Federico Escaler intervened, so I ended up at the UP seminar.
All the participants to the Fourth American Studies Seminar were chosen on the basis of academic excellence. As valedictorian of College Class '64 of the Ateneo de Davao, I easily made it. So I found myself tangling with the country's academic elite, the cream of the crop, so to speak, under Fullbright professors.
It was an all-expense-paid seminar, we were given six MA units for our attendance, and we were paid daily.
So we were assured of money for shopping after the seminar. We also had banquets with the American ambassador and other American Embassy and UP VIPs.
Sometimes we held classes at plush Quezon City eateries while enjoying scrumptious meals courtesy of our American Fullbright professors.
It was a very exciting and challenging seminar, but also a horrifying one. One night, left alone by my two board mates who were out for a night of fun, I found myself dealing with the ghost of a foreign student who, we were told later, had committed suicide in our room at the UP International Center.
When the ghost would not leave me alone, I left the room and slept with a Japanese student several doors away. From that time on, I made it a point not to sleep in our haunted room at the UP International Center and always went home to Santa Ana in Manila.
I returned to Davao City in time for the opening of classes. But when I reported to the college department, I was shocked because all my loads were removed. So were the loads of all other part-time instructors at the college department.
After forcing me to teach when I didn't want to after successfully representing the school at the grueling Fourth American Studies Seminar, the college department unceremoniously booted me out.
It was reportedly the policy of the new Dean of Studies, a certain Fr. Rice, to boot out all part-time instructors at the college department.
Fr. Rice was himself replaced before long. When I heard about it, you bet I said: "Da, gabaan ka lagi!"
Point to ponder: "Youth having passed, there is nothing to lose but memory. Cherishing the past without regrets and viewing the future without misgivings, we wait, then, for the nightfall when one may rest and call it a life." (George E. Macdonald: Fifty years of Freethought)
(April 9, 2005 issue)
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