Finding Hope [Entry No. 1]

No matter how hard I strive academically, I always see myself falling down the hill and crash into hopelessness. I’ve always tried to make my family proud with my little victories — a certificate and medal for being an ROTC officer, a community outreach that I participated in or even just passing an engineering major subject. Looking back to all the decisions that I’ve made; I realize that not everything was planned out and not everything was a coincidence. It all happened because I decided to continue and there was no turning back. Yes, I may have had a lot of wrong decisions but eventually all of them led to where I am right now. I couldn’t be prouder. It made me stronger and I realized that losing means learning. Failures are a part of growing up, we fail because we reached our limit and that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try again.

I have learned a lot not just inside the four walls of our classroom, I learned from the people I met as I walked in the halls of Silliman, I learned from the communities that we have interacted, I learned from the circle of friends that I have been with, I learned from the mistakes that I have done, I learned from the followers and the leaders who never stopped mentoring me and I learned to never stop dreaming and to always look at the future positively.

In my (almost) 6 years in college, I got a series of letter grades and questioned my intellectual capability, I was insecure and depressed but eventually bounced back. Without the help of my friends, my mentors, my fraternal brothers and sisters, the people that I met along the way, my colleagues, my girlfriend and my family I will not be the person I am today. I’m looking forward to the next chapter of my college life in leading our academic organization for my one last ‘hunat’, my final hurrah.

I may have failed a couple of times, but I learned.