IT IS that time again when social media is swarmed with photos of students in their graduation photos, and sometimes coupled with a lengthy essay about how they survived the school years that led them to graduate in the different levels of education.
Perhaps the most emotional of all, are those who graduated (or about to graduate) in college. We have read their stories online, sometimes unique stories are getting the attention of the media for everyone to be inspired of their experiences.
The people wanted to connect to these stories, maybe because some already experienced it during their younger years, or are still experiencing it now. Like these students, they want to succeed as well.
But after these lovely narratives, and sweet images of graduation and celebration, reality will smack us again as we face another chapter: adulthood, or what is expected of these legally-aged men and women needed to do, as what society and the system expected them to do, and also for their survival.
As graduates, it is expected they need to find a job. Had the curricula in learning institutions have been revolutionized, and maybe a privilege for their family lineage, they could have started or maintained their own businesses in different industries.
But the majority of these graduates come from the middle-class, and lucky a handful coming from poverty who survived through their wits and grits, thus, they are still at the mercy of employers who are looking for a promising worker who can do miraculous things, at the cost of the standard labor rate – or cheaper.
Some, if not most, will take flight overseas – contributing to the global workforce and the nation’s taxes through remittances. If they are “lucky” enough, they would find foreigners in countries who have a higher monetary value in exchange rates as compared to the Philippine Peso, and they will be the ones to save their families back home.
We are already aware of these stories, every year. This has become part of our culture, a legacy of the modern Filipino traditions.