Get a life
Jose Dalisay Jr., PhD
Address to the Graduating Class
UP Baguio, 23 April 2005
Former UP President (Francisco) Nemenzo - whom I was privileged to serve -
was frankly not too fond of the phrase "iskolar ng bayan" to describe the
UP student. We are all, of course, scholars of the people in this
university, in the technical sense that our studies are subsidized by the
sweat of the poor, whose hopes we bear upon our shoulders.
But the President's point was that scholarship remains a distinction to be
earned not merely by scoring well in an entrance examination, but by
adopting a lifelong attitude of critical inquiry and rational
judgment.This, sadly, is something that many of us lose upon our entry
into the University and our immersion in its life - not only its
intellectual and academic life, but also its social and professional life.
The curiosity ends, the magic fades, the writing dries up, and we retreat
to a cocoon - to a dimly lit room marked "Me & Myself" - there to spend
the rest of our career sulking over the next fellow's promotion and
so-and-so's research grant.
"Get a life" has been one of my lifelong mantras. I have always believed
that while a formal education is a wonderful thing, what I call an active
life - with all its serendipitous detours and little accidents - is even
better. It is a cliché by now to say that there are many things we can
never learn in school - but for those of us who are in school, it is even
more important to remember this.
Some of the best things happen when we step outside of our own lives and
begin to be engaged in those of others. Often, the answers to our own
problems lie in others, and in their larger predicaments. While
involvement in a great cause can also create its own kind of blindness to
everything else, I believe that, at least once in our lives, we should
embrace a passion larger than ourselves; even the disillusionment that
often follows can be very instructive, and will bring us one step closer
to wisdom.
One of the best ideas I ever heard came from a friend whom I used to play
billiards with until the wee hours of the morning: "Everyone," he said
while cleaning up the balls on the table, "should be entitled to make at
least one big mistake."
I would not have been the writer I became if I had chosen the safe path
and stayed where I was supposed to be. It took me two years to finish my
MFA, and only three to finish my PhD. But before that, it took me 14 years
to get my AB.
At 12 - like your chancellor - I entered the Philippine Science High
School. As my parents never tired of telling anyone who cared to listen
(and even those who didn't), I was the entrance-exam topnotcher of my
batch, No. 1 of about 6,000 examinees. However, what my parents didn't say
was that after my first year in Science High, I was going to be kicked out
- with a 1.0 in English and a 5.0 in Math.
What happened? Well, you might say that I got a life. From the
grade-school nerd who read two books a day in our all-boys Catholic
school, I suddenly discovered girls, parties, and fun. What did I do? I
used my 1.0 in English to save my 5.0 in Math, by writing a letter of
appeal that began with "At the outset, let me say that I bear malice
toward none." I guess it worked, because they put me on probation for a
year, and I survived PSHS by the skin of my teeth.
At 16, I entered UP as an industrial engineering major - and promptly got
a 5.0 in Math 17, for too many absences - the bane of the arrogant Science
High graduate, even the perennial flunker like me who thought he already
knew more Math than he needed to know.
At 17, still a freshman, I quit college - over the tears of my mother,
whose fondest hope was for me to graduate from UP just like she did. I
wanted to join the revolution, like many of my comrades; at the same time
I was impatient to get a job.
At 18, I was working as a newspaper reporter covering hospital fires, US
embassy rallies, suicide cases, factory strikes, and typhoon relief
operations.I spent most of my 19th year in martial-law prison.
At 20, I was a husband and father.
At 26, I took my first foreign trip.
At 27, I learned how to drive - and went back to school.
At 30, I got my AB, and decided that what I wanted to do was to write and
teach for the rest of my life, so here I am.
I have been shot at, imprisoned, and worst of all, rejected by more
crushes than I care to remember. Aside from my abortive career in
journalism, I once worked as a cook-waiter-cashier-busboy-janitor, cutting
40 pounds of pork and chicken every day before turning them into someone's
dinner. Much earlier, I worked as a municipal employee, checking the
attendance of Metro Aides at seven in the morning, and then I studied
printmaking and sold my etchings cheaply by the dozen in Ermita.
Incidentally, it was at that printmaking shop that I met my wife June,
who's here with me today, and for whose patience with my colorful moods I
am forever grateful.
Some of these events have found their way to my writing; most of them have
not and never will. I believe that creative writing should generate its
own excitement, beyond whatever may have happened to the author in his or
her own life. But neither can I deny that my outlook has been influenced
by what I have seen out there, as bright, as indelible, and as disturbing
as fresh blood.
If we are to abide by the Phi Kappa Phi motto to "let the love of learning
rule humanity," we should first ourselves be ruled by the love of learning
- learning from books, and learning beyond them. On the other side of the
equation, let me observe that there is, today, a nascent but disturbing
strain of anti-intellectualism in Philippine politics and society. The
vulgar _____expression of this sentiment has taken the form of the
suggestion that we can dispense with brains and education when it comes to
our national leadership, because they have done us no good, anyway.
It is easy to see how this perception came about, and how its
attractiveness derives from its being at least partially true. Many of our
people feel betrayed by their best and brightest - the edukado, as we are
called in our barangays - because we are too easily bought out by the
powers that be. Marcos and Estrada had probably the best Cabinets in our
political history, well-stocked with prestigious PhDs from places like
Oxford and Stanford; but in the end, even they could do nothing against
their President and his excesses.
For us UP graduates, the seductions of power will always be there. Power
and wealth are also very interesting games to play, and few play them
better than UP grads - the power side more than the wealth, as I suspect
that Ateneans and La Sallites are better at making money than we are.
But even these can put you out of touch. I have friends in Malacañang and
Makati who seem to have lost all sense of life, thought, and feeling on
the street, beyond what their own commissioned surveys tell them. Worse,
they seem to have lost touch with their old, honest, self-critical selves.
They forgot all about Sophocles and poetry and mystery and music you can't
buy at the record store.
To be a UP student, faculty member, and alumnus is to be burdened but also
ennobled by a unique mission - not just the mission of serving the people,
which is in itself not unique, and which is also reflected, for example,
in the Atenean concept of being a "man for others." Rather, to my mind,
our mission is to lead and to be led by reason - by independent,
scientific, and secular reason, rather than by politicians, priests,
shamans, bankers, or generals.
You are UP because you can think and speak for yourselves, by your own
wits and on your own two feet, and you can do so no matter what the rest
of the people in the room may be thinking. You are UP because no one can
tell you to shut up, if you have something sensible and vital to say. You
are UP because you dread not the poverty of material comforts but the
poverty of the mind. And you are UP because you care about something as
abstract and sometimes as treacherous as the idea of "nation", even if it
kills you.
Sometimes, long after UP, we forget these things and become just like
everybody else; I certainly have. Even so, I suspect that that
forgetfulness is laced with guilt - the guilt of knowing that you were,
and could yet become, somebody better. And you cannot even argue that you
did not know, because today, I just told you so.
Address to the Graduating Class
UP Baguio, 23 April 2005
Former UP President (Francisco) Nemenzo - whom I was privileged to serve -
was frankly not too fond of the phrase "iskolar ng bayan" to describe the
UP student. We are all, of course, scholars of the people in this
university, in the technical sense that our studies are subsidized by the
sweat of the poor, whose hopes we bear upon our shoulders.
But the President's point was that scholarship remains a distinction to be
earned not merely by scoring well in an entrance examination, but by
adopting a lifelong attitude of critical inquiry and rational
judgment.This, sadly, is something that many of us lose upon our entry
into the University and our immersion in its life - not only its
intellectual and academic life, but also its social and professional life.
The curiosity ends, the magic fades, the writing dries up, and we retreat
to a cocoon - to a dimly lit room marked "Me & Myself" - there to spend
the rest of our career sulking over the next fellow's promotion and
so-and-so's research grant.
"Get a life" has been one of my lifelong mantras. I have always believed
that while a formal education is a wonderful thing, what I call an active
life - with all its serendipitous detours and little accidents - is even
better. It is a cliché by now to say that there are many things we can
never learn in school - but for those of us who are in school, it is even
more important to remember this.
Some of the best things happen when we step outside of our own lives and
begin to be engaged in those of others. Often, the answers to our own
problems lie in others, and in their larger predicaments. While
involvement in a great cause can also create its own kind of blindness to
everything else, I believe that, at least once in our lives, we should
embrace a passion larger than ourselves; even the disillusionment that
often follows can be very instructive, and will bring us one step closer
to wisdom.
One of the best ideas I ever heard came from a friend whom I used to play
billiards with until the wee hours of the morning: "Everyone," he said
while cleaning up the balls on the table, "should be entitled to make at
least one big mistake."
I would not have been the writer I became if I had chosen the safe path
and stayed where I was supposed to be. It took me two years to finish my
MFA, and only three to finish my PhD. But before that, it took me 14 years
to get my AB.
At 12 - like your chancellor - I entered the Philippine Science High
School. As my parents never tired of telling anyone who cared to listen
(and even those who didn't), I was the entrance-exam topnotcher of my
batch, No. 1 of about 6,000 examinees. However, what my parents didn't say
was that after my first year in Science High, I was going to be kicked out
- with a 1.0 in English and a 5.0 in Math.
What happened? Well, you might say that I got a life. From the
grade-school nerd who read two books a day in our all-boys Catholic
school, I suddenly discovered girls, parties, and fun. What did I do? I
used my 1.0 in English to save my 5.0 in Math, by writing a letter of
appeal that began with "At the outset, let me say that I bear malice
toward none." I guess it worked, because they put me on probation for a
year, and I survived PSHS by the skin of my teeth.
At 16, I entered UP as an industrial engineering major - and promptly got
a 5.0 in Math 17, for too many absences - the bane of the arrogant Science
High graduate, even the perennial flunker like me who thought he already
knew more Math than he needed to know.
At 17, still a freshman, I quit college - over the tears of my mother,
whose fondest hope was for me to graduate from UP just like she did. I
wanted to join the revolution, like many of my comrades; at the same time
I was impatient to get a job.
At 18, I was working as a newspaper reporter covering hospital fires, US
embassy rallies, suicide cases, factory strikes, and typhoon relief
operations.I spent most of my 19th year in martial-law prison.
At 20, I was a husband and father.
At 26, I took my first foreign trip.
At 27, I learned how to drive - and went back to school.
At 30, I got my AB, and decided that what I wanted to do was to write and
teach for the rest of my life, so here I am.
I have been shot at, imprisoned, and worst of all, rejected by more
crushes than I care to remember. Aside from my abortive career in
journalism, I once worked as a cook-waiter-cashier-busboy-janitor, cutting
40 pounds of pork and chicken every day before turning them into someone's
dinner. Much earlier, I worked as a municipal employee, checking the
attendance of Metro Aides at seven in the morning, and then I studied
printmaking and sold my etchings cheaply by the dozen in Ermita.
Incidentally, it was at that printmaking shop that I met my wife June,
who's here with me today, and for whose patience with my colorful moods I
am forever grateful.
Some of these events have found their way to my writing; most of them have
not and never will. I believe that creative writing should generate its
own excitement, beyond whatever may have happened to the author in his or
her own life. But neither can I deny that my outlook has been influenced
by what I have seen out there, as bright, as indelible, and as disturbing
as fresh blood.
If we are to abide by the Phi Kappa Phi motto to "let the love of learning
rule humanity," we should first ourselves be ruled by the love of learning
- learning from books, and learning beyond them. On the other side of the
equation, let me observe that there is, today, a nascent but disturbing
strain of anti-intellectualism in Philippine politics and society. The
vulgar _____expression of this sentiment has taken the form of the
suggestion that we can dispense with brains and education when it comes to
our national leadership, because they have done us no good, anyway.
It is easy to see how this perception came about, and how its
attractiveness derives from its being at least partially true. Many of our
people feel betrayed by their best and brightest - the edukado, as we are
called in our barangays - because we are too easily bought out by the
powers that be. Marcos and Estrada had probably the best Cabinets in our
political history, well-stocked with prestigious PhDs from places like
Oxford and Stanford; but in the end, even they could do nothing against
their President and his excesses.
For us UP graduates, the seductions of power will always be there. Power
and wealth are also very interesting games to play, and few play them
better than UP grads - the power side more than the wealth, as I suspect
that Ateneans and La Sallites are better at making money than we are.
But even these can put you out of touch. I have friends in Malacañang and
Makati who seem to have lost all sense of life, thought, and feeling on
the street, beyond what their own commissioned surveys tell them. Worse,
they seem to have lost touch with their old, honest, self-critical selves.
They forgot all about Sophocles and poetry and mystery and music you can't
buy at the record store.
To be a UP student, faculty member, and alumnus is to be burdened but also
ennobled by a unique mission - not just the mission of serving the people,
which is in itself not unique, and which is also reflected, for example,
in the Atenean concept of being a "man for others." Rather, to my mind,
our mission is to lead and to be led by reason - by independent,
scientific, and secular reason, rather than by politicians, priests,
shamans, bankers, or generals.
You are UP because you can think and speak for yourselves, by your own
wits and on your own two feet, and you can do so no matter what the rest
of the people in the room may be thinking. You are UP because no one can
tell you to shut up, if you have something sensible and vital to say. You
are UP because you dread not the poverty of material comforts but the
poverty of the mind. And you are UP because you care about something as
abstract and sometimes as treacherous as the idea of "nation", even if it
kills you.
Sometimes, long after UP, we forget these things and become just like
everybody else; I certainly have. Even so, I suspect that that
forgetfulness is laced with guilt - the guilt of knowing that you were,
and could yet become, somebody better. And you cannot even argue that you
did not know, because today, I just told you so.
posted by JD @ 1:33 AM
