I am not your hardcore ADMU alumnus. I don't have a Blue Eagles jacket. I don't own an OBF shirt. But this doesn't make me any less affected when I come across a genuine Ateneo diss. I am student no. 981216, feel my wrath. (Haha.)
During my fourth year in high school, a classmate who claimed to by psychic (didn't we all have one — a high school classmate with a third eye?) offered to read my palm. She told me I was going to be a lawyer, and that I was going to go to Ateneo for college. She, however, had nothing to do with my decision. I already wanted to study there, or UP. But as fate would have it, UP wouldn't have me. I refuse to believe that I wasn't smart enough for UP. I did pass, just not for the course I wanted. I contemplated on my second choice, but decided against it. Imagine me as a Fine Arts major. I'd have been heavily tattooed and with child by age 20. I needed structure. I needed... spanking. I figured creativity can be practiced 24 hours a day, beyond and within the walls of a classroom, anyway. And I liked the idea of studying in a school that would give me the kind of discipline that I needed. So I passed the ACET and never looked back.
A lot of people say Ateneans can be cult-like sometimes. I don't understand this, but maybe it comes from the fact that we were "brought up" by our school to believe that we are the so-called "cream of the crop"; maybe we seem the same to other people mainly because we all have that sometimes quiet, sometimes in-your-face, cocky, can-do swagger passed down from batch to batch without fail. You belong to the same community for four years, you're bound to catch the strain. That some drink blood and some O Negative, is the only difference. The cockiness does not come from wealth (I poor, but I'm happy). It comes from knowing that there is nothing that cannot be done, with the willingness and eagerness to learn.
I sound like a brochure, yes? I sound like a homily and a half, no? It's true though. But it must be stressed: when someone acts like he owns the world, it's not necessarily because he thinks he can buy it. He might just be wired to believe that the world is his for the taking.
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Here's the deal: education was overpriced in 1990, it will be overpriced in 2025. It's up to us to make it worth our parents' hard work. It doesn't matter what school you choose to attend — it's always going to be a huge expense. Going to a school like Ateneo can be a bit like paying for a famous last name, and while that sounds really bad, I'm sure many graduates of the school would agree. But we are not all punks coasting through college just for the heck of it. A lot of us actually earned our famous last name, you know.
Moral of the story: Stop reducing people into mere products of universities, canned and labeled accordingly and sent out into the real world to "reprezent". We're all just people. Besides, ask anyone, Ateneans would be the last to judge people by where they went to school. Ergo, ipso, facto, columbo, oreo: yun na!
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