The GUIDON Graduation Magazine 2019

PHOTO BY JASON T. MARIANO

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MICHELLE D. ABAD (AB COM ‘19)

ASSOCIATE EDITOR FRANCO M. LUNA (AB COM ‘19)

MANAGING EDITOR GABY N. BAIZAS (AB COM ‘19)

DESIGN EXECUTIVE EDITOR MAXINE R. GARCIA (BFA ID ‘19)

TIMELINE EDITOR

WRITERS

NIO B. ATRIGENIO

MICHELLE D. ABAD SHEILA T. ADVINCULA MARK ANASTACIO ANGELICA S. ANDAYA NIO B. ATRIGENIO GABY N. BAIZAS MAXINE A. BUENAVENTURA KAYLA T. CADENAS NIKA D. CRISOSTOMO CARLOS H. CRUZ JAYVEE A. DEL ROSARIO ISABELLA FELICIANO MAXINE R. GARCIA LUISA C. JOCSON FRANCO M. LUNA LUIS M. MILLARES PATRICE V. MIRANDA CARLITO O. MORTEL CELINE D. NATIVIDAD AGA OLYMPIA ENZO PASTOR BELLA R. PEREZ-RUBIO TONICHI REGALADO CHINO D. REYES MARTINA R. ROCES NICOLA E. ROXAS BEA P. SANTIANO MICA A. TOLENTINO THEA UNSON CJ S. VILLAESTER

TRIBUTES EDITOR FRANCO M. LUNA LEADERS & ADVOCATES EDITOR GABY N. BAIZAS GENIUSES EDITOR MAXINE A. BUENAVENTURA ATHLETES EDITOR CHINO D. REYES ARTISTS & PERFORMERS EDITOR JAYVEE A. DEL ROSARIO NARRATIVES EDITOR ISABELLA R. PEREZ-RUBIO MENTORS EDITOR CARLOS H. CRUZ STAFF & ADMINISTRATORS EDITOR ANGELICA S. ANDAYA PHOTOS EDITOR JOSHUA TAN GRAPHIC DESIGN EDITORS NICOLA E. ROXAS AND MAXINE R. GARCIA

PHOTOGRAPHERS MARK ANASTACIO ZACH GARCIA RALPH LIM AGA OLYMPIA JEFF PASCUAL REENA C. PINEDA JOSHUA TAN MIGUEL TARROSA IZZA ZAMORANOS

A message from the editor MICHELLE D. ABAD AB COMMUNICATION ‘19 FOR MANY of us, we were asked to take a leap of faith or a challenge to discover unexplored territory four or five years ago under the roof of the Ateneo College Covered Courts.

Some of us have stayed at the Ateneo for a little longer. Today, we have the opportunity to ask each other just how that went.

The person next to you might tell you how she could have made honors if not for that one professor, but that she loved every moment of that class. On your other side, your batchmate might be delighted that you asked, and will proceed to tell you how he found God in Ateneo. Regardless of the unique stories you may hear, and those you may tell them in return, all roads have led to this moment, at this very place.

Congratulations, fellow graduates, for making it here!

So this must be it, the point when we start to go “down from the hill” that we must have heard of probably a hundred times throughout our stay in Ateneo. College was always meant to be temporary, and we were constantly reminded to build a foundation from our studies and school activities to go towards avenues that would better our communities and our nation.

Anxiety and uncertainty towards the future are not new things to the 6

Atenean (oral exams have probably tested our character in this regard one way or the other). Your TnTs way back in OrSem asked your block how you were feeling after two days together for the opening of college, and common sentiments likely included a mix of nervousness and excitement. Nearing graduation, you were probably asked numerous times by friends and family what your plans would be after this day, to which you may have responded in joyful future arrangements or a resentful oh no, this question again.

Whether you relate more to the former or latter, it is alright to embrace the pace you’re at.

Our paths, however, are not set in a vacuum. Throughout our stay in the University, we have faced issues and trials that have stemmed from the local, communal, and national situation that we happen to be in.

What is the Atenean to do in such an erratic social landscape? Within just four years, we witnessed lives lost in a state-endorsed war on drugs, the deflection of accountability from those who live in impunity for crimes against persons and society, and the dwindling regard for human dignity irrespective of social class.

Just recently, we were empowered to cast our votes to help change our social reality in the 2019 Midterm Elections. Although the results may

have been to the dismay of many of us, the Atenean value of magis reminds us that there is still room to hope and try again.

Although we are now challenged to go down from this hill, in this Graduation Magazine, we celebrate the journey that has gone by. Filled in this magazine are stories of passion, grit, empowerment, and humanity.

The people featured here shared with us few of many remarkable stories of how the Atenean, in all its cliché, blooms in adversity. We learn from them how magis is embodied in resilience and how cura personalis ensues in the lives they touched and served. As there are different fields this magazine touches upon, we are reminded that there is no singular interest or career path that leads to community development. From the sciences to the arts, from accredited organizations to small-scaled initiatives, the different fields come together and fall into each other in a unified act of nation building. Such a concept may seem intimidating and vague no matter how many times we have encountered it, but it is possible through the understanding that there is no superior greatness, and we are all included in this narrative of our nation moving forward.

There are not enough pages in this magazine to encapsulate all the

stories of our batch, so even after reading the narratives here, do go out and listen to more from your fellow batchmates. In asking and listening with open hearts, we can better understand this difficultto-navigate world together, and learn that there exist larger realities beyond Loyola that we must actively seek out and know.

What does going down from the hill mean in an individual context? Perhaps it entails first an understanding of our own place on the hill, and then making it a goal to find common ground with our community and the Other. We come together today only to separate again tomorrow—but may we seek comfort in how, although we experienced this hill individually differently, we descend from it together in a relentless common hope for a more loving world.

The Commencement Exercises allow for plenty of time to reflect on the past years. So sit back, maybe discern on that monobloc chair— you, seated next to your batchmates under covered courts, drenched in sweat, wearing virtually the same thing as everyone else. It’s all too oddly reminiscent of the very event that welcomed you here. Only today, you graduate.

Congratulations, Batch 2019! Padayon.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Timeline 8 Tributes 14 Leaders & Advocates 16 Geniuses 28 Athletes 38 Artists & Performers 48 Narratives 58 Mentors 66 Staff & Administration 80

TIMELINE

The evolving campus

BY CARLITO O. MORTEL YEAR AFTER year, certain parts of the Loyola Schools campus have consistently found themselves crowded with numerous construction workers and littered with building materials all over. The thud of hammering and the clanging of metals have become staples of the everyday routine of the student population. The past few years have brought many changes to the Loyola Schools campus in order to keep the University thriving. Every few months, the school goes through drastic changes and evolutions to address all kinds of needs that the students and the staff may require.

EVER-GROWING The most evident changes have been the renovations to and addition of buildings around campus, starting off with the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company-Convergent Technologies Center (PLDT-CTC) and John Gokongwei School of Management (JGSOM) buildings’ fourth and fifth floors. It’s hard to believe that only recently, the upper two floors that have become everyday classrooms for students didn’t exist just a few years ago. Now housing important fixtures such as the JGSOM departments atop its respective building and the Health Sciences’ lab on the fifth floor of CTC, the two extra floors have become a welcome addition for our ever-growing campus population.

A brand new inclusion to the campus is the Areté sitting in front of Leong Hall, which houses the Fine Arts program and the brand new kitchens used by the Restaurant 8

Entrepreneurship course partnered with the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu Institute.

The building is split between the Arts Wing and the George S.K. Ty Innovation Wing, with the former including the three-storey Ateneo Art Gallery which houses hundreds of pieces of modern art with numerous exhibits held throughout the year.

The Areté also sports three theatres, namely the Hyundai Hall, the Doreen Hernandez Blackbox Theatre, and the Ignacio B. Gimenez Ampitheatre, to provide more venues for showcasing

The past few years have brought many changes to the Loyola Schools campus in order to keep the University thriving.

Every few months, the school goes through drastic changes and evolutions to address all kinds of needs that the students and the staff may require. theatrical works inside the Ateneo.

With these, the Areté has cemented itself as the University’s creative hub and many are undoubtedly excited to see all the imaginative works that will emerge from it.

Other structural additions to the Ateneo that were put up in recent years include additional covered walkways, upgraded elevators in various buildings and the ‘Skywalk’ above the Science Education Complex (SEC) Walk. All these serve to make the Ateneo a more comfortable and

productive university, and more innovations can be expected in the years to come.

SAFETY FIRST The changes around campus don’t just revolve around making new rooms and buildings for productivity.

Innovations to the campus include making it a safer place for everybody here in the Ateneo.

The inclusion of all-gender restrooms was a milestone for the Loyola Schools Associate Dean for Student and Administrative Services in partnership with the Sanggunian. This was a response to the call for equality for transgender and non-binary students on campus, who continue to yearn for fair and inclusive treatment. With this, the University has made some of its Persons with Disabilities bathrooms into allgender bathrooms as well. Although there still exists much discussion about how the move to combine the two is potentially problematic, the creation of these bathrooms is still a telling sign of the Ateneo’s push for inclusivity and its efforts in hearing out student concerns.

Accessibility was also addressed in terms of the campus design. The number of ramps and elevators in the University has increased dramatically to make the campus an easier place to navigate and traverse for physically disabled students.

Most buildings on campus with more than three floors now have an elevator installed in accordance to building laws.

In some cases, mechanical chair lifts have been added to help with vertical movement. This is especially helpful for the Social Sciences Building, which

is where the two-floor Office of Health Services can be found.

Accessibility was also addressed in terms of the campus design.

The number of ramps and elevators in the university has increased dramatically to make the campus an easier place to navigate and traverse for physically disabled students.

A NECESSARY COMPROMISE For many, the constant construction and maintenance activities on campus can be inconvenient. This was apparent especially during the expansion of CTC-SOM, where students and professors alike had to endure the persistent noise and physical obstructions. Frequent breakdowns that result in extended downtime for maintenance is also just as disruptive, as is the case with the Manuel V. Pangilinan-Center for Student Leadership (MVP) elevator.

However, it can be said that the big payoffs of such changes make up for the minor frustrations. The campus has changed immensely over the course of a few years, and all these innovations are for future Ateneans to feel comfortable and safe, and to foster a better learning environment for all. There remains no doubt that more changes will continue to be ushered in as the years pass to make the Loyola Schools campus the best it can be.

TIMELINE

Mary, for you

BY FRANCO M. LUNA IN COUNTLESS opinion and feature pieces, 2018 was dubbed the “Year of the Woman” by a number of international media outlets, from The New York Times to Vox. And rightly so, for the year would go on to be characterized by a number of political victories the world over that may very well have changed the course of history for women. The #MeToo movement, for instance, uncovered the filth of sexual harassment festering everywhere in the Western world from the indie rock scene to the Republican party.

MEN AND WOMEN AND OTHERS Thus, as #MeToo continued to pick up steam online and overseas, so too did the Loyola Schools student body unearth a certain awareness of its own backwardness in the realm of gender. In the same spirit behind the aforecited online movement, students took to social media to expose those reportedly guilty of sexual misconduct, with recipients including fellow students and members of the university faculty alike. This spirit was perhaps one of disempowerment and dissatisfaction with existing systems, or the lack thereof, put in place to protect the rights of those victimized.

Despite the school releasing detailed procedures on handling sexual harassment cases in late 2017, one shocking, and perhaps overdue realization was that faculty members were themselves not exceptions of this behavior.

One concern raised on the ADMU Freedom Wall Facebook page spoke

ILLUSTRATION BY SAM WONG FROM THE GUIDON'S JAN-FEB PRINT ISSUE

of harassment at the hands of a professor, which also sparked outrage among the student body. A later post published on the same platform narrated an anonymous student’s experience of being sexually abused on campus, prompting the university administration to launch an investigation on the matter.

More than the existing concerns regarding administrative systems, one thing was made evident once the smoke cleared: that the culture surrounding sexual harassment and gender issues needed to change.

Thus, the Ateneo demonstrated a new and empowered resolve against misogyny, homophobia, and all that which rendered the other as a non-equal.

CONTEMPLATIVE ACTION Even the Ateneo Senior High School saw more than its fair share of this: In November 2017, a student decried her own experiences of sexual misconduct and her perceived lack of support from school administrators. The Office of Social Concern and Involvement, too, came under fire in 2018 for what the student concerned felt was a lack of swift action regarding allegations of sexual mistreatment during an immersion activity for the National Service Training Program, or NSTP. Ignorance of how to properly tackle such cases manifested everywhere, from reactions online to the 2016 edition of the Loyola Schools Student Handbook, to the Anti-Sexual Harassment Act of 1995.

ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLA E. ROXAS FROM THE GUIDON'S NOV-DEC PRINT ISSUE

The latter presented a restricted and limited definition of sexual harassment as “committed by an employer, employee, manager, supervisor, agent of the employer, teacher, instructor, professor, coach, trainor, or any other person who, having authority, influence or moral ascendancy over another in a work or training or education environment.”

The Student Handbook, on the other hand, failed to specify what constitutes as sexual misconduct.

CONSCIOUSNESS EXAMINED A nd while discussions online were not always so easily sustained, what this brazen outroar seemingly bequeathed was the collective consciousness that this problem would not be solved in silence and complicit y.

Thus, the Ateneo demonstrated a new and empowered resolve against misogyny, homophobia, and all that which rendered the other as a non-equal.

The Sanggunian this year formed the Commissions on Anti-Sexual Misconduct and Violence and on Gender Equality, with the latter going on to host the University’s historic first university-wide pride march for its students who were members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community. The two commissions allow for easier and more direct communication between victims and their concerned offices.

The creation of a gender policy technical working group was also mandated to craft policies in dealing with cases relating to gender and sexual misconduct.

Among the initiatives launched in the past year include the opening of gender-neutral restrooms that serve also as restrooms for Persons

With Disabilities. An LS Gender Hub serving as an office for addressing cases of sexual misconduct is also set to launch in the first semester of academic year 2019-2020.

FOR YOUR BLACK AND BLUE There remains a myriad of cases left untold and unwritten, as there are naturally still reluctant and disempowered victims. Rape culture, the stigma against the LGBT community, and misogyny are all still very much present in Loyola Heights: In November, The GUIDON wrote that “a culture of silence still very clearly permeates the ‘safe space’ Ateneo has so proudly built for itself in the name of cura personalis.”

Heading into the coming academic year, the individual futures of these initiatives remain largely uncertain.

What is sure, however, is that the wheels are definitely turning; and for a worn and tired student populace that has always deserved better, it’s a start.

Thus, the departing members of the Loyola Schools community, particularly the allies that constituted Batch 2019, are assured that their efforts were not in vain after all. In the fight for gender equality, the cry along Katipunan Avenue is clear: #AteneoToo.

...the year would go on to be characterized by a number of political victories the world over that may very well have changed the course of history for women.

9

Peace and disquiet

TIMELINE

BY FRANCO M. LUNA

ILLUSTRATION BY SAM WONG FROM THE GUIDON'S OCTOBER PRINT ISSUE

ON NOVEMBER 24, 2018, a post was published on the ADMU Freedom Wall Facebook page from an anonymous girl claiming to have been raped on campus. This followed a post published on September 30 that revealed a long history of alleged sexual harassment at the hands of a member of the university faculty.

What resulted was an outcry that shook the student body’s collective consciousness to its core. The aforementioned posts quickly went viral and saw throes of students and faculty members alike expressing their outrage online. Both stories were prompted investigations from university administration and were also broken on a number of local news websites, including Rappler, The Philippine Star, and Interaksyon.

When all was said and done, it seemed there was a palpable shift in both the online sphere and in student culture. In the months following the creation of the Freedom Wall page and the publication of the aforementioned post, the oncedisempowered student body brazenly made its voice heard time and time again with a newfound zeal on a number of matters as controversial issues garnered campus-wide attention.

UNFREEDOM WALL The posts were two examples among many of anonymous posts galvanizing immediate reactions from a volatile and increasingly critical student populace. Rampant discussion on the problem of sexual harassment was sparked, ultimately revealing the identities of other reportedly guilty professors.

In the aftermath of this, it was clear that the men and women of Loyola were no longer the indifferent, apathetic, 10

ivory tower elitists they were so often touted to be.

Freedom Wall was launched after the ADMU Rantbox, an offshoot of the now-defunct Ateneo de Manila Secret Files page. All three pages offered their users something perhaps craved by many for expressing their thoughts online: the safety net of anonymity.

A dark side of the Freedom Wall page, however, was made evident with every other post published on it. The luxury of anonymity quickly came to mean that for every light, insightful, or thoughtprovoking publication on the page existed a dozen other toxic expressions of homophobia, misogyny, racism, school-related elitism, and worst, classism, in a complete contradiction of its “Speak your mind, but be kind” motto. Such posts would often devolve into verbal tussles stained with hate speech rather quickly, and it did not help that the page’s readership grew to reach students from other universities.

Outsiders considered the page and similar platforms to be festering with all the negative qualities stereotypically attributed to students of the University.

At times, they were right.

CURA IMPERSONALIS Besides the ostensibly impersonal approach of Freedom Wall, Ateneans throughout the year also took to Twitter to speak out on a myriad of sociopolitical issues. Allegations of sexual misconduct from fellow students, for instance, went viral numerous times, while champions of countless advocacies relied on the website to spread awareness. On the other hand, complaints on university facilities, including OBF WiFi access, parking lots, and AISIS, among other things are common on Twitter.

Much has been said about the efficacy of online platforms and the resulting callout culture they have bred. For others, sociopolitical outspokenness is a glaring indication of virtue signalling. Some argue that the limit of 280 characters completely stifles the potential for meaningful discourse.

However, what the existence of these posts indicated was a complete dissatisfaction with the existing avenues for students. Rarely, for instance, does one hear of a student file an official case or complaint with university administration these days, while ‘cancelling’ on social media remains to be something of a regular occurence.

Globally, this same discontentment was perhaps most concretized in the #MeToo movement, where survivors of sexual abuse publicly shared their experiences online in efforts to expose their attackers who had initially gotten away with their misconduct.

In the Loyola Schools, this outroar spawned among other things the Sabihin sa Sanggu (SSS) initiative, which saw the student government taking the initiative in establishing genuine communication with its constituents. As early as the beginning of the academic year, Sanggunian President Hya Bendaña had promised that the student council would actively seek out student concerns on social media.

In an interview with The GUIDON, then-Sanggunian Department of Administrative Affairs head Jb Bejarin who headed SSS said that the effort was established precisely because it was common practice for students to opt for informal platforms to voice out their concerns rather than come forward to the administration.

Yet, it’s plain to see the glaring flaws of the online medium: the abrasive and regressive politics of trial by Twitter, the lack of systematic and institutional processes, and the obvious problems posed by self-regulation, among other things, as posts on social media in general are typically reactive rather than constructive. For instance, when an Atenean student was “exposed”

on Twitter for allegations of sexual misconduct, questions of due process were raised amidst the deafening outroar.

A STEP TOWARDS EMPOWERMENT On the other hand, these avenues do afford the disempowered one last opportunity at seizing justice for themselves. In the case mentioned above, there were also those who reasoned that surely, the voices of those victimized must be given primacy in these situations. This begs many questions: Is the reputational damage of being publicly called out sufficiently justice on its own? Are student complaints on unofficial platforms valid?

And so for better or for worse, the University’s student body seemed much more comfortable with speaking out about certain issues this year, particularly on the platform of Freedom Wall. One could make the argument that certain topics were thrust into the community’s consciousness solely because of posts that went viral on these platforms.

While a lot can be said about the pros and cons of informal communication avenues, it can’t be denied that they did achieve results. In times when students feel disempowered to speak up, there is no denying these pages’ capacity to prompt discourse.

Thus, despite the valid apprehension towards these platforms, there exists a palpable hope that they can help trigger real change in the Loyola Schools community moving forward, as many voices both online and offline have so desperately cried for.

What resulted was an outcry that shook the student body’s collective consciousness to its core.

The aforementioned posts quickly went viral and saw throes of students and faculty members alike expressing their outrage online.

In tragedy and triumph

TIMELINE

BY NIO B. ATRIGENIO

NO ONE seems to love and hate Atenean culture more than Ateneans themselves.

And in a student body characterized by vastly different courses of study, sociopolitical views, hobbies, and interests, this divisiveness is hardly surprising.

However, in light of this fact, it is impressive to consider how the sense of community and togetherness within the Loyola Schools has manifested quite visibly and prominently in recent years.

From facing major controversies to showing support in high-stakes UAAP games, the student body’s capacity for collective action has been put on full display in the past year.

CONTROVERSY An unusually high number of controversies and unfortunate events shook the entire school community on many occasions, especially within the past year.

Sexual harassment, for instance, has been at the forefront of conversations all year long. While there are still debates about the moral and ethical repercussions of calling out sexual predators in the online space, the support given to the survivors has been formidable. Constant pressure from the Sanggunian and the rest of the student body has expedited the reevaluation of policies with regard to conducting oral exams and disciplinary measures.

On September 19, 2018, a student passed away after taking part in a test run organized by a university-accredited organization.

This unexpectedly resulted in an outpouring of support from the school community, not just through extending condolences to her family, but by

effecting policy changes as well. A factfinding team was put together to work towards stricter and more thorough measures to be put in place by both organizations and campus security.

This was to ensure that such events are sufficiently prepared for, if not prevented altogether.

More recently, the happenings around the Areté have also generated a variety of complications. Friction among faculty and students with regard to the usage of the facilities and physical space around the Areté is an ongoing concern, with a number of Fine Arts majors expressing their woes.

The invitation of Irene Marcos to the Areté Amphitheater launch also caused quite a stir. The Sanggunian and many other students expressed their indignation at this event, which spurred University President Jose Ramon Villarin, SJ to release a statement of apology and announce the voluntary resignation of then-Areté Executive Director Yael Buencamino.

The One Big Pride march held on March 15, 2019 was a considerable success. Aside from being a celebration of International Women’s Month and Zero Discrimination Day, it was also a call for the acceptance of and fair treatment toward the LGBTQIA+ community.

and combined efforts towards increasing campus inclusivity and making it a safer space for all.

The One Big Pride march held on March 15, 2019 was a considerable success. Aside from being a celebration of International Women’s Month and Zero Discrimination Day, it was also a call for the acceptance of and fair treatment toward the LGBTQIA+ community both inside and outside of the campus. Gender equality has always been a hot topic in the Ateneo, and the success of the Pride March marks another crucial step toward making the campus more gender-friendly.

Similarly, discussions and active efforts surrounding mental health have also been on an uptrend. Like gender issues, the mental health stigma is one that has been elevated to become a more serious cause for concern as a result of students being more vocal about the need for better support structures and facilities. The general openness that the students have exhibited toward this topic especially in the last few years has been apparent.

While not exempt from problems of its own, the Sanggunian has played an integral role in these developments.

Over the past year, the presence of the student government has become more evident than it has ever been, with it actively reaching out to students to hear out concerns and initiating forums, mobilizations, and other such initiatives when needed.

COMMUNITY These are just some snippets that underscore the fact that the student body can get past its divisiveness and show a strong sense of camaraderie.

While not exempt from problems of its own, the Sanggunian has played an integral role in these developments.

Over the past year, the presence of the student government has become more evident than it has ever been.

It doesn’t matter much whether this comes in the form of rallying for a common cause in the denouncing of the lowering of the minimal age of criminal responsibility, or even gathering for something as lighthearted as the Wakanda Run at the Red Brick Road.

One can choose to always be on the front lines, support from behind the scenes, or not take part in the action at all, and it will always have repercussions. For better or worse, all of our actions exhibit what the community stands for, and will also inevitably mold how things will be in the years to come.

Many will go on to become doctors, lawyers, artists, and businessmen, but we must bear in mind that we all come from the same flock. As we go on to navigate society at large and the problems that come along with it, we carry not just our personal intentions, but the ideals of the Ateneo as well.

Thus, more than our desire to foster a peaceful and progressive campus, the country’s ongoing dip into disunity and disorder calls for the formation of a stronger Atenean identity and sense of community. This may manifest differently from person to person, but with everything that has happened so far, we have made our stance known: There is no room for ignorance, animosity, and inaction in the Ateneo.

INCLUSIVITY On a brighter note, there have also been several progressive movements 11

TRIBUTES

Trisha Yap A TRIBUTE BY KAYLA T. CADENAS I REMEMBER Trisha in the sunlight that peaks through the canopy of trees towering over Ateneo’s Katipunan campus. It’s a light that paints Ateneo gorgeously–that makes it look almost as good as the photos online. Ateneo was Trisha’s dream school. It wasn’t mine.

Trisha and I met during the first semester of our freshman year. We were classmates for the easiest, most straight-forward PE the University had to offer: Running. Twice a week our runs would start at the Covered Courts, go down to the Loyola School of Theology, back up to Fr. Masterson Drive, then past Gesu and the dorms, until we returned to Cov Courts, out of breath and diligently timed by our professor. We were allowed to bring music on our runs, but Trisha and I did something else: We talked. As we circled the roundabout by LST, she told me about her older sisters and the boyfriends they were dating and which boy she liked more. As we passed Xavier Hall, I told her about the cute boy in 14

ILLUSTRATIONS BY CARMELA B. MASIGLAT

my Filipino class and how I had never been on a date before. Sometimes as we crossed Fr. Masterson Drive we talked about how homesickness hurt more than we thought it would; how it felt like we were always yearning for something and that probably our other college friends were sick of hearing about our hometowns.

I told her one day that I wanted to leave Ateneo. We were sitting in Cov Courts trying to catch our breath. She asked me why. I said I hated Ateneo.

I had only come because my parents went on dates along Katipunan in the 90s and used to look over at gated Ateneo’s campus and say, that one day, they would have a kid that would graduate an Atenean. My being here had nothing to do with what I wanted since what I had wanted was to go to a university back home. Trisha said she got what I was saying, and that I should try looking up transfer requirements for that school. She said maybe I could transfer for the second semester.

For the next few sessions, I talked Trisha’s ear off about leaving Manila, hating Ateneo, and the cultural

differences that made fitting in too hard. She nodded and sympathised and told me she got what I was saying, but then one day she said: “Maybe you should stay.” This confused me. Hadn’t I been telling her all the reasons why I couldn’t stay?

Hadn’t she said she got what I was saying? But I remember all Trisha did was laugh at my expression and then said, again, “Stay.”

“Why?” I asked her.

I remember her smiling when she told me this: “Maybe it won’t be that bad.”

She meant college. We were freshmen in our first semester judging the entire university experience based on two months of being students.

She had a point but I was stubborn and argumentative, and she was the opposite so she changed the subject.

I didn’t leave the Ateneo. My parents wouldn’t let me. Instead I went to class every day and twice a week, I went down to Cov Courts and went running with Trisha. At the beginning of the course, our professor had promised us that we

would run the entirety of campus; that we would run circles around the very buildings that, for the next four years, would become our entire world.

I see Trisha in the buildings that Ateneo made my entire world.

Sometimes at Kostka, when the wind blows just right and the Acacia trees brush their branches against the classroom, I think of the relief Trisha and I would feel at any kind of breeze that would hit us as we ran across campus. The wind encouraged us as we jogged along: we could do it, we were close, it wasn’t that bad.

In the end, she was right. It wasn’t that bad. College put as through the ringer, pushed us, and transformed us so we came out as new people, hopefully for the better. With Ateneo closing its chapter in my life, I won’t have Ateneo’s Acacia trees to remind me of her, which is fine.

I’m always thinking of her. But most of all I think of her in times when I need hope, of her laughing at me as she told me to stay, to recognise that sometimes life wasn’t that bad.

TRIBUTES

Fed Magtabog A TRIBUTE BY JAMES MIANO THERE IS something to be said in how lives are tangled up with one another. I used to think that it was clutter, constricting; all the things we do affect someone else. Now I see it more as remembrance, ensuring our mutual immortality within one another. I don’t know how to write a piece about someone who will never get to read it, but maybe that is the point to be made here.

Hi Fed, your name’s on my book, as a way to keep your memory with me, and as a testament to your impact on someone else’s life: mine. You stopped me on the sidewalk near SM Blue in the middle of one of my self-deprecating rants and you remind me that I have so much to be grateful

for. I don’t know the full extent of what I can say, but you had your own battles to fight and you gave time to help with mine. As our friends can attest, I’m not good at written sentiments. I think it’s inadequate and you get a sense that there is too much to say and so silence is preferable. You were a poet, and the silences between what was spoken carried just as much meaning. Now all I will hear from you is silence, and I don’t know what to make of it. I have to say goodbye to a school this year and I had to say goodbye to you too. Maybe I’m making too much of a fuss over silences.

The last message I got from you was about how you were disappointed at my absences. Maybe I say the spaces between have meaning because there is so much distance between us. A

single sentence shout-out on my thesis won’t do justice to the time owed. I don’t think it’s a debt I know how to pay. At the very least, your silence will mean peace for you. Not for the rest of us, who like me, might be listening for their own voices in the quiet.

I have had my apprehensions about writing this, and now it seems my apprehension has become the center stage. There’s so much to talk about when it came to you, yet here I am being narcissistic. I was asked to get as many testimonies of your life, and the only one I got was my own. I have to say that this is inadequate. I do not wish to speak to a faceless audience who never knew you, to extol the virtues of your friendship and place the memory of you—already made peace with—into a pedestal that only

I seem to hold aloft. I didn’t know what you would have wanted written, all the secrets you would have chosen to go down with you. There are no guides to the place where you are now, not like how the myths would claim.

In writing this, I have decided that this is a goodbye letter to you, even if you would never read it. I speak honestly, and it is how our friendship was: honest, and in the privacy held by people trying to stay alive. I’d say we’re both bad at living, but that might be a joke made in bad taste. You always loved jokes made in bad taste.

For you, Fed, I will keep my peace and be silent; I know no other way to honor you more. Paalam, mag-ingat ka. I hope you see more of what God has painted.

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16

Leaders & Advocates 18

DASHA UY

23

ALEX CARANDANG

19

JANUS MACLANG

24

MAYAN ANTONIO

20

NIELS NABLE

25

DREW ILAGAN

21

THERESE BAUTISTA

26

HYA BENDAÑA

22

PAU JOQUIÑO

17

A WOMAN FOR OTHERS

Dasha Uy

BY GABY N. BAIZAS DASHA UY’S only goal for herself in her freshman year was to get out of the bubble she found herself stuck in when she was in high school. “Tahitahimik lang ako (I was quiet), I didn’t really stand out,” she says. “I wanted to get out of that bubble because I knew that there was so much more to the world than that small community.”

When she entered the University in 2013, she ran for a block representative position in the Sanggunian, as she figured it was a good start to learning new things and helping the Ateneo community. Little did she know she’d be able to boast about having five full years of Sanggu experience under her belt after she completed both her degrees in Diplomacy and International Relations and Communication.

Asked about the different roles she had during her stay in the Sanggunian, Dasha laughs and says, “I think I’ve done everything already!” After her term as block representative, she served as course representative, and later the school board liaison for the School of Social Sciences (SOSS). She also served as the chairperson for the Departments of the Secretariat and Public Relations before she decided to run for SOSS Representative. During her final year in the University, she served as a consultant for the Sanggunian’s Commission on AntiSexual Misconduct and Violence.

18

She says taking all these responsibilities came naturally to her, as she grew more confident in her capacity to serve the student body.

Dasha says she “knew the system inside [and] out”, after juggling different tasks that ranged from solving resolutions to heading task forces. “Eventually, I kind of got sucked in, and it was kind of like, ‘If I don’t do this job, who’s going to do it?’”

Most of Dasha’s work focused on gender equality, which included handling sexual harassment cases and pushing for more genderneutral facilities on campus. What drove her to work towards a more gender-sensitive University were her own personal experiences of feeling “disempowered” as a woman, as well as similar stories of students who approached her during her years in the Sanggunian.

“I knew down to my very core what it felt like,” she says. “I’m not saying that, to be a better advocate, you have to experience the hardship.

[You just] need to acknowledge your stake in the process.”

During her term as SOSS Representative, she lobbied for the first-ever Loyola Schools Anti-Sexual Misconduct Policy, after having to deal with a number of sexual misconduct cases with no clear protocols in place. “We can’t keep doing these things na, when [a case] comes up, everybody scrambles to find a way to figure it out, and to find a way to solve the problem,” she adds.

“You have to be prepared, otherwise, if you’re not prepared, it’s the people who are victims who will suffer.”

Dasha explains the initial proposal split into three parts—the AntiSexual Misconduct Policy, the Gender Policy, and the Gender Hub. The Gender Policy served as a more general framework for the University to work towards gender equality, and the Gender Hub was a physical office to be launched in August 2019 dedicated to addressing sexual misconduct and gender concerns. “It got a lot bigger than I thought it would be, and I’m really happy that it did. I definitely did not expect it when the first case was handed to me,” she says.

Apart from gender equality, Dasha has also advocated for mental health in the past. After hearing many stories of Ateneans suffering from mental health problems, she helped conceptualize the University’s first Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW). However, she mentions that her role in the first-ever MHAW was “minimal”, as she had to leave for Junior Term Abroad (JTA) the following semester.

She admits she had second thoughts about leaving for JTA so she could see MHAW push through, but she was thankful she got to pass the advocacy onto other people when she was away.

“Sometimes, being in leadership positions isn’t so much [being] there every step of the way to guide them,” she says. “It’s just to teach people na this advocacy or this idea is valuable because of whatever

reason. And then, eventually, if they start believing in it, then they can do stuff on their own, right?”

Given any leadership position, Dasha believes one needs to do two things—to believe in the things one pushes for, and to believe in oneself.

She believes that once a leader gets past the mental work that requires motivating oneself and going back to the people they serve, executing plans wouldn’t “really [be] hard to do.”

“You had a platform you ran on, and it’s like, what kind of rep or officer would you be if you came in, you were voted in, and then you don’t work, ‘di ba?” she says. “You promised to do these things. It’s a really big disservice if you don’t do it.”

Nevertheless, Dasha notices most Ateneans fail to lead ambitiously despite all the resources and opportunities handed to them. She feels that many Ateneans tend to forego overcoming their insecurities or their fear of failure when they want to push for something greater in their respective communities.

“I think it’s important for people to remember that they’re allowed to believe in things bigger than themselves,” she adds.

“They’re allowed to be just tools in a bigger process, and they’re allowed to plant seeds that they don’t necessarily see grow fully.

We have to dream big, otherwise, we’re not going to get anywhere.”

A LEADER WHO LISTENS

Janus Maclang

BY GABY N. BAIZAS HAILING FROM a small public high school in Bulacan as a first-generation Atenean in his family, Janus Maclang came into the University alone in his freshman year. “I felt very insecure because I was coming into this entire process alone. I didn’t know anyone, and siguro it really struck me that people knew each other here,” he says. “I felt deeply alone, [and] I felt that Manila was a different place.”

On his final undergraduate year, Janus is the program awardee for Political Science, the President of his home organization The Ateneo Assembly, as well as the Program Director of the 17th Congress of the Ateneo Student Leaders Assembly (ASLA).

Before going into the ASLA congress as a delegate in 2017, Janus admits to having a certain kind of arrogance, a need for validation, and a macro perspective of the world. He admits to formerly putting other people in boxes, and to seeing everything from a “formally political lens” with no regard for other perspectives. It was ASLA that helped him realize he “didn’t understand everything,” and that it requires an interdisciplinary approach to bring about social transformation.

Janus describes ASLA as a “curveball he never saw coming,” explaining that his mentors in Assembly encouraged him to apply.

He was accepted as a delegate in the

15th ASLA Congress in his sophomore year, where he says ASLA helped instill in him two things: a sense of selfawareness, and a sense of solidarity.

“When I was able to see and discern na I [was] alienating other people instead of actually encouraging them to [move] forward with socio-political advocacy and awareness, I realized I should come from a place of love and listening, and [should] understand that people understand the sociopolitical [on] their own terms without me constricting them,” he says.

His fellow ASLAns also taught him there was “value [in] the things [he] would say”, and that he could bring something new to the table back in his home organization. Janus started out in Assembly working on promotions, as he felt he “didn’t have much to add” when it came to heavier political discussions. However, he began to spring forward beginning sophomore year, as he took on bigger positions, having become more passionate about research and political education. He then went on to serve as the Vice President for Research, Advocacy, and Politicization in his junior year, ultimately deciding to run for President in his senior year.

“I feel like, as an organization, there needs to be a shift in our direction as to how we engage our politics in relation to [becoming] more listening and meeting people where they are. Given that, I ran on

a platform of creating an institution of human persons,” he says.

“I really wanted to better improve our structure internally, but at the same time, recognize the human person that’s within the members of the organization.”

Coming out of the ASLA congress, Janus says he learned to become a more effective listener who values being more kind and caring towards the people he leads. He describes the way he works with his orgmates as “a more adaptable leadership”, as he approaches problems together with his board in Assembly, instead of pinning the blame on one another. “[I was able to] instill that culture within our board of being understanding [and] being compassionate, as opposed to [a] somewhat toxic culture where there’s this sort of keeping score as to who’s doing what, what’s being missed, and whatnot,” he says.

Janus initially wanted to volunteer as a facilitator for the 16th ASLA Congress. However, he decided to apply for a core position instead, as it allowed him to have a more significant say in the program’s design. He then served as ASLA 16’s Alumni Lead, where he was introduced to technical and administrative work for the first time. Afterwards, several people felt he was a good fit for the top-knot Program Director for the 17th ASLA Congress, as he had the knack for both

project management and “meeting the delegates where they were.”

“I really saw this sense of desiring to grow and to become better for the advocacy that I want to pursue, and being in a community that has a shared passion for contributing to transforming society,” he says.

“I thought, this is a program that is worthy of being pushed forward, that is something that I want to pour my heart into, and I [would] like to think that ASLA 17 was very much successful.”

What Janus finds most fulfilling about ASLA is the great sense of community. He firmly believes in working through disagreements and understanding that everyone comes from a certain place, with their own set of beliefs and values.

He stresses the need to have difficult conversations to deal with difficult problems, which is why he’s always “made it a point to build bridges.”

“People will always hear me say this, but I really believe that it would take all of us,” he explains. “I’m a polsci major in a polsci home org, and that’s my world. Getting to see other people talk about their experience of environmental advocacy, of media, of journalism, of corporate sustainability and whatnot—it’s empowering in the sense that you feel and understand that you’re not alone in the process of transforming, of helping transform society for the better.”

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THE ENVIRONMENT’S ADVOCATE

Niels Nable

BY GABY N. BAIZAS BACK WHEN this year’s Sanggunian Vice President entered the University, environmental advocate Niels Nable had a different idea of what he wanted to do with his career. He was first accepted into the University’s management economics program, as he initially wanted to serve in the corporate sector after graduation.

After realizing that corporate life wasn’t for him, Niels decided he wanted to shift into a science-related course. Having come from a science high school, he felt this shift was natural; however, he didn’t yet have a clear career path for himself. He ultimately decided to shift into the environmental science (ES) program after his freshman year, as he wanted to tackle a combination of all branches of science.

He was also inspired to shift into the program after he read an article on Rappler that featured “unpopular” course offerings in different universities.

“Na-feature yung environmental science program of Ateneo [in the article], and then sabi ko, ‘Oh, maybe I can shift to this course,’ kasi ayun nga, growing industry siya, because people are getting more environmentally conscious,” he says.

Niels shares he had a “quarter-life crisis” about shifting into ES when he started questioning his motives for shifting and feeling it was “high time” to do something with his course 20

that would have an impact on others.

It was only until after he noticed the lack of environmental discourse in the University when he realized how crucial it was to forward his advocacy in the Loyola Schools community.

“Ateneo has produced a lot of activists, political leaders, and development leaders, but, parang wala pa tayong masyadong leaders and advocates pagdating sa environment,” he says.

(Ateneo has produced a lot of activists, political leaders, and development leaders, but, it seems like we don’t have a lot of leaders and advocates when it comes to the env ironment.)

When he served as course representative in the Sanggunian, he proposed holding the first-ever Ateneo Global Climate Change Week (AGCCW), after visiting a website that encouraged universities to hold such programs. He felt that Ateneans didn’t talk about climate change enough, and he wanted to bring about environmental awareness by pushing for a project specifically geared toward that issue. Niels was granted the budget by the School of Science and Engineering Sanggunian, and he became AGCCW’s first project head in 2017.

Niels had to mobilize a large team of 60 members for AGCCW, which included the organizing team as well as Climate Justice Ambassadors. The

core team was composed entirely of his friends, and ambassadors were selected after completing a thorough application process. Niels wanted to make sure his ambassadors did more than just change their profile pictures and share promotional materials online, and he required applicants to accomplish forms and attend seminars beforehand.

“I wanted to train them talaga about climate change awareness, and I wanted them to know the science behind climate change [and] the politics behind climate action and skepticism,” he explains. “I wanted them to embody our advocacy very well, and it’s not limited to just marketing strategies.”

Apart from training his team, Niels also initially struggled with contacting high-profile environmental leaders to serve as guest speakers, along with getting students to attend his events. After coordinating with several home departments, faculty members, and student organizations, all of AGCCW’s events from Monday to Friday were greeted by a full house.

Since the first AGCCW, Niels’s extent of involvement has been limited to consultative purposes, and to being a guest speaker for an ambassador training workshop. For future installments of AGCCW, he hopes future organizing committees branch out to the humanities, the

social sciences, and businesses in working towards climate action.

“I don’t want the project to be limited to what my vision was when I started it. I want people to set the direction for the project itself,” he shares.

Niels explains that Ateneo introduced him to a more holistic kind of leadership, and believes environmental issues should not be seen as separate from the sociopolitical issues many Filipinos face today.

“I want [Ateneans] to know that the political sphere, the social sphere, and the economic sphere are not isolated from the environmental sphere. Every time, when we talk about EJKs, when we talk about labor issues, LGBT rights, parang, we see them as separate issues. Pero it’s better to look at it in a more holistic way,” he says. “Leaders should have this holistic perspective in dealing and addressing problems in our society, and [should] not just get stuck at one.”

Niels hopes other Atenean leaders follow the same interdisciplinary approach, and hopes they don’t limit themselves to their respective areas.

“I hope [they become active] in being engaged and involved in their communities, and [they don’t get isolated in their] individual careers, because right now, the world needs leaders and advocates more than ever before.”

DISCOVERING THE LIGHT

Therese Bautista

BY CJ S. VILLAESTER MANAGEMENT INFORMATION systems major Therese “Debs” Bautista’s experience in Lights for Hope (LFH) was a journey of discoveries—both about herself and how to cater to the marginalized.

While she took on many leadership roles when she was in high school, Debs had a hard time finding her place in the college setting. She tried joining different organizations early on, but felt that nothing seemed to clicked for her, even experiencing rejection from one org. This journey of discovering herself eventually led her to LFH, where she went on to serve for the next three years.

Debs’ search for an org she could call home started in freshman year.

She joined a number of different orgs, one of which rejected her. She tried to apply to the same org in the following year, and she was rejected once more.

On the same day she was informed about her rejection in her second year, LFH released promotional materials for their subcore applications. Debs tried joining LFH during freshman year, but was ultimately unable to push through with her application due to prior commitments. As the rejection from the previous org was still fresh, she decided to give LFH another shot. “I joined LFH just to prove to myself na I can be accepted into something,”

she says. In the same year, she was accepted into LFH’s Facilitators Committee Subcore.

Little did Debs know the impact of joining the committee would have on her. Many things about the community inspired her to continue to serve—from witnessing the different facilitators train for LFH, to seeing the kids’ smiles, to bonding with fellow committee members. Here, she found a home in the University.

After serving as a member of the facilitators committee, she became the Materials and Secretariat Deputy in her junior year. She caps off her last year in Ateneo as the Lead Student Coordinator of LFH. However, it wasn’t the easiest of paths for Debs. She describes LFH as “the one in hottest waters” among the three big events in Ateneo—the other two being OrSem and Blue Roast. She mentions how LFH received its share of backlash two years ago, where some critics felt the event was only “self-gratifying” for Ateneans—how it was more about the volunteers’ gratification in the experience of ‘helping’ instead of the kids’ benefit.

And so, the pressure was on to make LFH better and for people to see its value. “[Just] one mistake, [and] you can destroy the reputation of the project,” she says.

Debs shares she used the criticism to ground her team in their whys, and

used this as motivation to improve LFH. “We were reminded to always have the kids as the center of the project,” she says. “This helped us have the mindset that LFH, as a project and as an advocacy, should always improve each year. One of the challenges is really [to think about] how to further improve LFH, and how not to let the pressure get to you.”

What helped her move forward is seeing the people around her— the people she serves with and, of course, the kids. “What helped me pull through that is that, hindi talaga ako mag-isa (I’m truly not alone).” She turns to her core team when she needs to be reminded on why she continues to serve for LFH, as she knows she is working with a group of people fighting for their same passion to help the kids.

Debs believes that the core values of LFH—love, service, and hope— is something that every Atenean should always embody. She sees these through the interactions between the volunteers and kids during LFH— students get to build friendships with the kids and fellow volunteers, and get to understand each other a little bit deeper. “Even in the smallest things, na, in our everyday lives, sana mapakita na there’s always love, and there’s always ways for us to serve, and there’s always hope, even at times na, like, we feel na sobrang hirap na ng life.”

(Even in the smallest things in our everyday lives, I hope we can show that there’s always love, and there’s always ways for us to serve, and there’s always hope, even at times we feel that life gets overwhelming.)

In this fight for the kids, Debs realized that she was not alone. She sees that the passion she has for reaching out to them is shared among the people she works with - the core team, the subcore, and the volunteers. “’Yun talaga yung, why I keep fighting for these kids—they have big dreams in life, and as college students, medyo na-expose na tayo to the cruelties of the world,” she says.

“Doon ko na-realize na it’s really important to keep the hope alive in our kids, na even though ma-expose sila to the cruelties, hindi mawawala yung fire within them to stay hopeful, to stay kind, and to keep on dreaming talaga na anything’s possible for them.”

(That’s really why I keep fighting for these kids—they have big dreams in life, and as college students, we’ve already been exposed to the cruelties of the world. That’s where I realized that it’s really important to keep the hope alive in our kids, that even though they get exposed to the cruelties, the fire within them to stay hopeful, to stay kind, and to keep on dreaming that anything’s possible for them doesn’t burn out.)

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THE CONNECTOR

Pau Joquiño

BY CJ S. VILLAESTER

CONNECTING WITH people is something management engineering major Pau Joquiño finds particularly important; he sees himself as someone forward-facing and very externaldriven, and he does his best to connect people to each other. If you want to pursue something in science, business, or the environment, there’s a chance he might know someone. For this management engineering major, it all boils down to looking for people ready to help.

When it comes to his advocacy, he sees that education is something important for people, in a sense that it connects students to opportunities that would help them grow. This started through his experiences in YouthHack Manila and Integrating Science in the Philippines (ISIP). YouthHack is an organization dedicated to engaging and forming students interested in the start-up industry, while ISIP was a small initiative co-founded by Pau and his friends to promote science education in the country. Pau wanted to reach out and make these groups known, as well as connect them to more opportunities.

Pau started out as a member in YouthHack. He was attracted to how the org was able to reach the masses in a relatively short period of time. “[YouthHack] made me interested in finding a link between my experience as a science high school student and entrepreneurship,” he says.

What started out as an opportunity to connect with people and provide opportunities eventually became something he wanted to pursue. “I 22

sort of developed that skill, parang networking, to reach out to people, because it was my approach,” he says. “I wanted to proceed working with [YouthHack]; it sort of became something I was good at.”

Together with YouthHack’s founder and its other members, Pau tried to pursue more projects and invite more people to the organization, which in turn helped them create brands for themselves. It wasn’t long until he was put in charge of Human Resources, before eventually becoming Vice President for Community Development. His job in the org was very external-driven.

“I just tried to grow like, mga chapters for YouthHack in Metro Manila,” he says.

After some time, his connections in YouthHack later led him to other ventures. One of his orgmates in ASES Manila became interested in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Health Hackathons, which are events where people of different backgrounds and disciplines focus on addressing medical needs.

Pau was invited to help organize their own version of the event, and he was attracted by the thought of having students in the medical field work with developers and designers. In 2016, Pau and a few friends organized HealthHacks PH and held the event for two years, before passing it on to a group of medical students.

Pau was also a co-founder of ISIP, a small group initiative that started between him and his dormmates. ISIP was inspired by a science camp held

IMAGES PROVIDED BY THE INTERVIEWEE

by the Department of Science and Technology for planning community development projects for high school students, as well as the Asia Pacific Young Leader Summit in Singapore, which tackled different global social issues and efforts to address them.

Pau was inspired to come up with science camp ideas for high school students, and he decided to tap two of his friends who were looking into producing YouTube videos and science magazines. “Me and my friends in the dorm, we wanted to improve science education in the Philippines, so we wanted to do something about it, and we each had our own interests,” he says. They also started releasing YouTube videos the following semester, along with holding science communication workshops.

Problems started to arise for ISIP in 2016 due to financial constraints and dwindling manpower. While they still held their science camps, it increasingly became difficult for them to maintain the project, both financially and logistically. Thus, the pressure to find sponsors for the project ultimately took its toll in 2017, and they decided to not push through with the science camp. Despite this, ISIP still tried to their workshops in partnership with different student orgs, and to release content on their YouTube channel. As of 2018, ISIP is no longer active.

However, Pau took these experiences in stride and saw them as learning points for himself to grow.

What helped him continue pursuing his advocacy despite these problems

was surrounding himself with the people who have the same mindset as him. He says he sees himself as idealistic, but he stresses seeing the importance of other people’s idealism.

“The key thing here isn’t that you’re idealistic, it’s that you have a lot of other idealistic people around you,” he says. “The ideas that you have, the conceptions that you have of what science should be in the Philippines, what the tech start-ups, what the ecosystems should be like in the Philippines—when a lot of people share the same view, the more inspired you are to do something about it.”

Pau also sees the connections one has with others as something that requires maintenance, and that helping one another is of utmost importance. “People can easily misunderstand, or you can misunderstand people, especially now, with social media. What I realized is that there are things, perhaps, that I’m not really good at,” he says. “If I really want to do something, [if] I really want to continue with the work I’ve been doing—I can’t do it alone.”

One important lesson Pau had to learn was to connect with the present. He expounds on this, saying, “I realized [being present] was what was missing pala. I was always worried about the future.”

“I was always worried about what I would leave behind, which essentially aren’t real things. They’re just your conceptions of the past and the future. What really matters is now,” he finishes.

A RADICAL LOVE

IMAGE PROVIDED BY INTERVIEWEE

BY MICA A. TOLENTINO “TODAY, I am going to tell you about a love story,” declares Alex Carandang, uttering these words with conviction as she recounts her story of finding love. In her zeal, it’s easy to see that Alex strongly embodies the Atenean concept of magis, particularly with how she strives to make the most out of her college education. The graduating super senior entered the University under the psychology program and is now completing a second degree along with two minors.

“I was never really satisfied with psych, and that’s when I realized that I wanted to do more,” she explains.

She expresses her gratitude for her core classes, as she feels they allowed her to deeply appreciate the intricacies of the human person, and specifically the importance of mental health. It was through these classes that Alex decided to revisit her love for writing and spoken word as well, prompting her to minor in English literature. Along with this, she decided to pursue a minor in history, too, as she still felt that something was missing.

In her third year in the University, she pursued her second degree in development studies, which allowed her to realize the path she wanted to pursue for the rest of her life.

From then on, she completely fell in love, moved in love, and breathed love with the advocacy that she dreamt of fighting for: education.

This advocacy was perhaps one that was sparked by experience. In the sixth grade, Alex’s grandmother or abuelita

Alex Carandang took her in, as living with her mother, became distressing and unhealthy for the young Alex. She thus lived with her grandparents for three years until she had to return to her family, with whom she lived in a tiny apartment and who barely had the finances to sustain them. Because her family didn’t have the means to pay for her tuition, Alex had to be put in a public school, and had to leave the comfortable life that she had grown accustomed to. Alex, with full confidence, describes her time in public school as the moment she experienced God for the first time.

Alex carefully narrates her beloved abuelita’s story with wonder, explaining that it was her who played a huge role in forming the person she is today. She’s bright-eyed as she looks back on the days she had spent with the woman who she says made her greatest experience of love possible.

“I saw God in all of my schoolmates.

Despite their difficult conditions, those kids never once stopped believing and working for their future.

They just kept going. Jesus did exactly that—the cross did not scare Him,” she says.

Since then, she felt that she was called for to work for quality public education in the country.

Alex reflects on how her development studies major allowed her to realize what education truly stands for. “My professor, Sir Leland [Dela Cruz], asked: ‘What do you think it means to educate someone? Now, what do you think it means to build schools… to put teachers or students in schools?’ Then, I realized those

were two completely different things,” she says.

While she’s dreamt of becoming a public school teacher for the longest time, Alex admits that she is currently reevaluating where God is calling her. When she initially hoped to work for the Department of Education, she considered serving for the Jesuit Volunteers Program or for Teach for the Philippines. Now, she is considering working for Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan, the socio-political apostolate of the Society of Jesus in the Philippines, where she can educate communities about the political climate of the country.

“At the core of what I believe in is to educate people, because when we educate people, [we] allow them to become more fully human,” she says. She passionately recalls her reflection on how human she was, and the human’s natural pursuit of understanding who and what they can become.

Alex also claims her faith is an integral part of her journey of growth and leadership. She currently serves as the Vice President for SocioPolitical Affairs in Youth for Christ – Ateneo (YFC-A), where she wanted to prioritize social action after the committee was inactive for a long time.

She wanted to make the organization aware of their social responsibilities and how they are relevant to their faith, even if she felt her orgmates were resistant to change. “I’m labeled as ‘radical’. [We] had to make changes in SocPol, and [there] was a feeling of despair when things [had] to adapt,

but a lot of people still [clung] onto tradition,” she says.

YFC-A started progressing and fulfilling its mission more effectively through Alex’s leadership efforts to ensure the community understood the need for faith in action. She grounds her mission in sharing herself to others through her advocacy, as an expression of her dedication to the God who allowed her abuelita to keep loving despite how difficult things were.

Her abuelita passed away in December 2015 after a long battle with cancer, a month after her own mother had also passed. “I realized the way God moved in my grandmother’s life, and I realized how inspiring it was. It allowed her to live a life that wasn’t necessarily pain-free, but faith-filled.

I realized I wanted to live my life like that—clinging onto a love that fully defined who she was and what she believed in,” she says.

Alex shares that the three things she believes people need to know about themselves is that they are loved, chosen, and worthy. She hopes to share the God-given grace she had herself received that allowed her to continue falling in love with life, despite the struggles she faced in the past.

“In a Christian sense, it’s such a wonderful experience to know that you are loved unconditionally in a world where there are so many conditions,” she finishes.

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SPEAKING IN VOLUMES

Mayan Antonio

BY MICA A. TOLENTINO OUTSPOKEN, BRAVE, and confident are just a few of the many qualities anyone would typically expect from one holding the title of leader. Life sciences major Mayan Antonio begs to differ, though, as she bluntly admits, “I am none of those.”

Mayan is a passionate student leader who celebrates and emphasizes the abundance of unique and interdisciplinary opportunities to make a difference in various communities. She made the most of her last year in the Ateneo by serving in five different organizations and student groups, currently serving as the Internals Vice President for The Pre-Medical Society of the Ateneo (PMSA), the Associate Vice President for Academic Development of Ateneo Biological Organization (BOx), a course representative for the Sanggunian, an online staffer for Heights Ateneo, and a facilitation lead for the 17th Congress of the Ateneo Student Leaders Assembly (ASLA).

One would think that anyone active in that many organizations and leadership positions would take pride, among other things, in their charisma.

Mayan, however, sees herself out of this norm. She confesses that she has always been introverted, easily shaken by fear and doubts when put in situations of pressure. She says that this was often a challenge she had to face as a leader who wanted to lobby for the communities that she wanted 24

to advocate for. “Nabibitawan ko na rin ‘yung mga gusto kong ipaglaban (I had let go of things I wanted to fight for),” she says as she ref lects on how this constant fear has been holding her back.

Fear took a great hold on her when she considered running for PMSA president in her junior year.

She initially planned to run for the position of secretary-general, but she changed her mind when she realized her vision was what the organization needed at the time.

When Mayan approached her mentors from PMSA and the Sanggunian for help, they posed a question that empowered her to be brave and to take the risk: “Kapag may kaya ka o meron kang gustong mangyari, will you let that fear move you (When there is something you can do or something you want to happen, will you let that fear move you)?”

Initially, Mayan viewed leadership roles as mere opportunities for selfgrowth and personal fulfillment.

However, stepping out of her comfort zone as well as pursuing a presidential position in her junior year eventually strengthened her heart for service. Immersing herself in medical missions and interacting with people from different backgrounds reconfigured her mindset as a leader. “[Leadership] is not just about doing well in the [technical] side, but also in relating with others,

interacting with others… The humane side of the whole thing,” she says.

In one of her medical missions, Mayan recalls feeling moved as she looked at the children in the community, bright-eyed and filled with wonder, when she taught them the basic protocols of first aid. It was then that she realized how such simple acts of service could create significant impacts in the lives of those in the rural areas, which allowed her to recognize the need for better services and facilities.

“Naramdaman ko na mayroong pangangailangan (I felt that there is a need),” she says. “[The realization] spilled over when I started volunteering for other orgs.”

After graduation, Mayan says she hopes to serve the communities in the rural areas, as she feels it is these people who are often neglected and unrecognized. She aims to break the common notion of healthcare being limited to the walls of a hospital room, and she hopes to let people know that practicing medicine goes beyond the clinical setting.

“Medicine can go different ways, pero I really want to serve communities mainly in rural areas—‘yung mga wala talagang natatanggap na health services [or] health centers.

Maraming doktor sa Pilipinas at maraming nangangarap [na] maging doktor, pero admittedly, a lot of them go into the private sector. They [serve] those na may kaya,” she says.

(Medicine can go different ways, but I really want to serve communities mainly in rural areas—those that really do not receive health services or health centers. There are many doctors in the Philippines and many who aspire to be, but admittedly, a lot of them go into the private sector.

They serve those who can afford quality healthcare.)

Throughout her stay in the University, Mayan proves that silence is capable of speaking volumes.

With the help of her mentors and her organizations, she has created an impact in the lives of the people she has served. Despite her introversion and shyness, her passion to serve her communities reverberated across the lives of the families, the organizations, and the future student leaders she’s interacted with.

Mayan hopes that those who are still navigating their way through the Ateneo will keep their heart strong and will hold on tight to their passions.

“You’re not alone. Rest assured, you’ll be able to find your circle one day. You’ll realize that every [experience] is intertwined,” she says.

“I’m shy, pero [marami] akong nakilalang taong nag-share ng stories at nakwentuhan ko rin at the same time. Baon ko sila; [they are] part of the experience (I’m shy, but I’ve met many people who have shared their stories with me. I take these with me; they are part of the experience),” she finishes.

CREATING OPPORTUNITIES FOR OTHERS

Drew Ilagan

BY BEA P. SANTIANO BEYOND THE excitement and fun that comes with the Freshman Orientation Seminar (OrSem), it takes a lot of preparation and hundreds of volunteers to make the event happen. Take OrSem: Tayâ Co-Chair Drew Ilagan, for instance, who has been an OrSem volunteer for all of the four years he spent as an undergraduate in the Ateneo.

Having applied to three different universities with three different courses, Drew went to Ateneo feeling quite lost and unsure if he made the right decision to enroll in the University under the computer engineering program. However, his doubts dissipated once he attended OrSem: Tuklas back in 2014. “The event made me feel [that] I made a good decision, and I shouldn’t be worried about choosing Ateneo, choosing this course,” he says.

Drew first volunteered to be part of the Talks and Tours (TnT) Committee in his sophomore year. “I started out as a TnT [because] during my OrSem, my TnTs were really a big factor on how my perception of going to Ateneo changed,” he says in a mix of English and Filipino.

“I loved that experience and I wanted to share that, [and to] make

other people experience that as well.

So I thought, ‘I should try to volunteer as TnT’, and that’s where I started.”

He later became the finance officer for the TnT core in his junior year, and eventually the Code of Internal Procedures lead of the TnT core in his fourth year. Finally, he became the Co-Chair of OrSem on his last year as a volunteer, which he describes as “the one experience that tied everything together.”

What Drew is most proud of when it comes to OrSem is seeing that people continue to volunteer, giving way for people to pass on the different roles to. He believes OrSem is all about giving back and passing such a culture onto the next generation of Ateneans, and he is proud that many freshmen are motivated to volunteer for upcoming OrSems.

“That’s what’s beautiful [about it].

At the start of their journey, they’re already introduced to this culture na magbibigay lang na walang kapalit and just trusting na yung effort na binigay mo for that would actually result [in] something beautiful in the future, in the long run. It won’t be immediate, but it’s going to turn into something.”

(That’s what’s beautiful. At the start of their journey, they’re already introduced to this culture that gives

without receiving anything in return, and just trusting that the effort you give for that would actually result [in] something beautiful in the future, in the long run. It won’t be immediate, but it’s going to turn into something.)

After all the years he has been a part of OrSem, he says that his favorite part is seeing how all the hard work of the volunteers pay off during the event itself. Receiving feedback on people’s OrSem experiences gives him joy knowing that they were able to deliver to the best of their abilities.

He sees this through the smiles of the freshmen in OrSem, the online posts of freshmen and volunteers alike, and the formal evaluations filled up by people after the event.

“My favorite part is seeing how that expectation of ours to give the best OrSem experience to the freshmen and also to the volunteers materializes into actual tweets, feedback, facial expressions, [what they say in evaluations]…that’s my favorite part, kasi alam ko na we were able to deliver (Because I know we were able to deliver),” he says. “There is actual basis that it really happened, and this is how it materializes.”

In all of these leadership experiences, Drew aims to create opportunities for other people

“to learn, to grow as a leader, [and] to grow as a volunteer.”

He shares that he enjoys seeing people grow, which is also what drives him as a leader. Through the opportunities given to the people he leads, he is able to witness their growths as well. He admits that their growth may not be seen right away, but he continues to give because he believes that investing in people is always worth it.

“Nage-enjoy talaga ako when I’m able to see other people grow. As a leader ‘yun ‘yung nagd-drive sa akin, when I get to see people, [na] may natutunan sila from what they did, ‘di lang na they were just utilized para mameet yung end goal ng project,” he says.

(I really enjoy seeing other people grow. As a leader, that’s what motivates me, when I get to see that people learn from what they did, and were not just utilized to meet the end goal of the project.)

From his experiences as a leader, he goes back to the root of what leadership means to him: service. “That position isn’t about other people serving you, but you serving them so they can learn, grow, [and] contribute,” he finishes.

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SOLIDARITY, STRENGTH, AND SERVICE

Hya Bendaña

BY BEA P. SANTIANO STRENGTH IS evident in people who are still able to live a life of service for others despite unfavorable circumstances, and Sanggunian President Hyacenth Bendaña is no exception. Hailing from the province of Albay, the management economics major and Batch 2019 Valedictorian did not let the many difficulties she had to overcome crush her spirit, and instead allowed these to make her even stronger.

Hya comes from very humble beginnings, and describes her current situation as a “miracle.” As the daughter of a jeepney driver, she saw the distressing situations in different communities they passed by as she served as her father’s kundoktor.

She witnessed how violent things could be when policemen urged street vendors to leave in order to reduce traffic, and how this would sometimes lead to riots.

“Na-witness ko [ang] mga tindero sa tiangge sa gilid ng mga kalsada at palengke na pinapaalis ng mga pulis dahil nakakadulot [ng] trapiko. Naaalala ko may isang instance na talagang riot, away, at bugbugan ang meron sa kalsada dahil natapakan ang mga paninda at ayaw umalis ng mga manininda.

Dahas ang labanan sa gilid ng kalsada,” she says.

(I witnessed how the vendors on the side of the roads and markets were asked to leave by the police because they were causing traffic. I 26

remember one instance where there was a riot because the products being sold were stepped on and they didn’t want to leave. Violence seems to be the contention in the streets.)

Hya also joined her father in the frontlines mobilizing for matters involving jeepney fare prices, among other things. This consequently opened her eyes to the reality of poverty, and she recounts that she was already socio-politically active at a young age.

She says that poverty has never “slapped her in the face” as hard as when she interacted with different people from several marginalized communities. “It’s these personal encounters that made me realize how frustrating the world is, how disturbed I should be,” she imparts.

Hya shares the story of Noy, a boy she used to tutor. They were the same age at the time. While Hya was already a high school freshman when she started tutoring him, Noy was still in the first grade, and was taking it for the third time. Although there were many times when Noy wanted to quit school and start working instead, Hya persevered to help him pass Grade 1.

“Noong time na yun, every year kong tinuturuan si Noy kasi gusto ko talagang maka-move on siya ng Grade 1. Feeling ko ‘yun ‘yung hindi alam ng mga tao, especially when you’re poor—that you have the capability to change your life,” she says.

(During that time, I taught Noy every year because I really wanted him to move on from Grade 1. I feel like that is what most people don’t know, especially when you’re poor—that you have the capability to change your life.)

While she grew up focusing on her education, Hya admits she shifted from the mindset of individuality to solidarity when she was in high school.

While she managed to finish with top honors in her school, she also ensured that everyone in her batch graduated by making reviewers and by offering to tutor them. Even before college, Hya was already looking out for people, making sure no one gets left behind.

“My attention went to things that [were] more important—it went to helping, responding to disasters, to making sure that everyone has something,” she says.

Hya joined the Sanggunian in her first year in the Ateneo, and she had been an active member ever since. She ran for a block representative position in her freshman year, and she became the chairperson of the Department of Finance in her sophomore year.

In her junior year, though, she took a break from taking high positions in school, although initially running for School of Social Sciences (SOSS) representative.

Instead, Hya focused on external engagements and social programs, such as participating in the Coalition of Ateneans of Indigenous

Peoples which she had joined in her first year.

Finally, she decided to run for Sanggunian President in her fourth and final year, as she knew that there were more pressing matters in the University that needed to be addressed and revisited.

“I’ve been in the Sanggunian for four years already. You know the problems inside, and you know that Sanggunian has so much potential, [and] for the past three years, ‘di siya nae-exhaust,” she says. “Gusto kong tumakbo, kasi gusto kong i-exhaust yung potential na iyon. Pakiramdam ko, ang daming mga problemang hindi sufficiently naa-address, because it also takes people whose advocacies are different to make the system work.”

(I’ve been in the Sanggunian for four years already. You know the problems inside, and you know that Sanggunian has so much potential, [and] for the past three years, it hasn’t been exhausted. I wanted to run because I wanted to exhaust that potential. I felt like there were many problems that were not sufficiently addressed because it also takes people whose advocacies are different to make the system work.)

Since Hya’s term started, the Sanggunian established a number of commissions to address the different needs of the Loyola Schools community. These commissions focus on gender equality, anti-sexual misconduct, and mental health. For

the Commission on Gender Equality, Hya stresses how establishing this was a “big thing” as it’s difficult to lobby for a policy. While it typically takes five years to lobby for a policy, it only took the Sanggunian one year before the LS Gender Policy was passed.

With the Commission on AntiSexual Misconduct and Violence also formalized under her belt, she also co-founded Hilab, Hilom, Halinhan (Rise, Recover, Reform) with former SOSS Representative Dasha Uy, a capacity-building program designed to equip universities to respond and prevent cases of sexual harassment.

Upon the program’s implementation in the Ateneo, it has encouraged the reporting of sexual violence, and institutionalized psycho-emotional

and administrative support for survivors. It got into the Top 3 of the Public Recital of the Future Bridging Leaders Program by the Asian Institute of Management, securing funding for the national rollout of Ateneo’s gender initiatives to other universities in the country.

As for the Commission on Mental Health, they are currently lobbying for the Mental Health Policy, the first mental health policy among Philippine universities. Alongside the 2019 General Elections, there was also a plebiscite to reallocate Php 1 million from the Sanggunian fund to mental health subsidies. The final turnout yielded a positive vote.

Amidst all her accomplishments during her term, Hya believes her

biggest legacy is leaving people inside and outside the Sanggunian who understand these issues, and who can continue the different efforts they started. “The conversation will not stop, the pressure will not stop. I think that’s my biggest legacy, it’s really keeping the continuity,” she says.

“Not just inside the Sanggunian, but also the students, like the freshmen who already know the importance of these issues.”

By the end of her term, Hya’s aim was to create a Sanggunian responsive to both internal and national needs, and a Sanggunian that’s more visible and relatable. She personally responded to questions about the Sanggunian, and attended the events they hosted such as the One Big Pride

and Mental Health Awareness Week.

Anyone who knows her can vouch that her passion and love is rooted in something deep—her personal experiences, her encounters with the poor, and the injustices she sees that need to be addressed.

“Minsan kasama sa pagmamahal ang magalit, kasi kung hindi ka marunong magalit sa lahat ng mga kawalan ng hustisya sa lipunan, nagmamahal ka nga ba talaga?”

(Sometimes, being angry is part of loving, because if you don’t know how to be angry amid the lack of justice in society, are you truly loving?)

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28

Geniuses 30

BRIAN TAN

33

CARL NEBRES

31

RYAN MOLEN

34

NICOLE SEAN CHIANG

32

BEE LEUNG

35

MIKA GO TIONG

THE MACHINE

Brian Tan

BY LUIS M. MILLARES AND LUISA C. JOCSON WHEN IT comes to getting things done, Brian Tan is the man for the job. Running for cum laude in BS Management, major in Information Technology Entrepreneurship (ITE), Brian’s passion for productivity has led him to an impressive slate. Not only is he a merit scholar, but he was also appointed President of the Asia Pacific Student Entrepreneurship Society’s Manila chapter (ASES) in just his freshman year. Lining his resume are his many internships and pet projects, such as developing and creating a number of applications which include HangTime, Heron Chat, and Vesto among others.

Brian grew up in what he called a “typical Chinese” household that valued academics. Being the youngest in the family with two successful older siblings, he got a good idea of achievement early on. All the way from grade school to high school, Brian’s world revolved around getting good grades. “I thought it was the meaning of success,” he shares.

As a child, he had a jumble of interests: competing in math tilts, poring over brain teasers, and playing basketball, football, and video games. By sixth grade, he picked up his design skills on Adobe Photoshop, a foreshadowing of his future line of work. He would later on graduate as one of his high school batch’s valedictorians.

Since both his siblings took up Management Engineering in the University, he sought to break the streak in the family, although the ITE major says that pursuing a tech-related course only caught his attention in his senior year of high school.

30

“It was a mix of business, entrepreneurship, and technology,” he says of ITE. “Back then, I looked up to tech entrepreneurs. I met upper-batch ITE students who really introduced me further in the world of tech startups and that’s where I wanted to learn.”

Brian is perhaps most recognized for his involvement with HangTime, an app that allows students to design their schedules and compare them with those of their fellow students. In 2016, Brian, joined by his blockmate Mike del Castillo, joined a hackathon where the prompt was to create an app students needed. Brian’s role in the birth of HangTime revolved mostly around the pitching and ideation behind the application. The team finished second place in the contest and soon found themselves wanting to pursue developing the app even after the competition ended. By early 2017, HangTime was coming into fruition. During this time, Brian was busy designing and layouting the features in time for their launch in the second semester.

It was at that point that Brian introduced the possibility of schedule design and customization.

Initially, the team was hesitant. It took convincing, but this idea would later on be one of HangTime’s best defining features. “I gave [Mike] wireframes and designs and [he] finished the app in four or five days,” he says. The app was well-received after being advertised on Ateneo Trade, gaining around 2,400 users by its first week alone. As they say, the rest was history.

Brian describes himself as a creature who thrives in the work environment. “I generally like working

anyway, especially with things that I’m passionate about. It really helps working on things you’re interested in,” he says. His love for productivity digs deep as he utilizes his calendar, to-do-lists, and various productivity applications to juggle his priorities.

“Over the past four years, I’ve come up with a very thorough productivity system, ” he shares. “It’s my passion of sorts—how to be more productive and happy as well.”

In true machine fashion, Brian is all about optimization. He’s currently trying to get his phone use down to two hours a day and makes it a point to get six to seven hours of sleep, even if it means letting some tasks fall through in exchange.

Despite his immersive involvement with out-of-campus work, he’s still very much in tune with Atenean org culture. “I think org life for me was exploring my interests and getting the taste of knowing the type of people,” he says. Out of all the orgs he’d dabbled in, User Experience Society was the one that stuck. “It’s been really fulfilling. Org life really lets you give back to the Ateneo,” he says.

It’s not all about internships and stellar report cards for Brian, though.

He carries with him a life mission of “helping people at scale”.

“I looked up to people who helped people at scale—those who were entrepreneurs, content creators,” he explains. He also adopts an advocacy introduced to him by a friend called effective altruism—a movement of people “trying to figure out how to do the most good with their time and money.”

His proudest moment came from his time as the president of ASES, a position he says was very suddenly

handed to him. After helping out with a few of the organization’s projects, the president at the time approached him and asked, “Hey, Brian. Do you want to be president of the [org] next school year?’

“It wasn’t really an interview, they really wanted [me] to be the president of the organization,” he explains. It was in the first semester of his term where he was able to gather freshmen and organize an international entrepreneurship contest for startups.

Brian considers being able to recreate and build upon the work of the past ASES president as his proudest achievement. “I’m proud that the organization is still alive and others have succeeded me,” he says.

One might wonder what the future holds for a go-getter such as Brian.

There seems to be a million different things on the horizon, and although he admits he thinks a lot about the future, he says, “I haven’t really decided yet.

Definitely, I’d like to take a first job.

Not get into entrepreneurial mode yet.

I’m really interested in getting a job in User Experience design. I’ve done three internships in this field. That’s probably what my first job will be.”

He adds, “On the side, I hope to continue reading books that I’m interested in and help the local Effective Altruism Philippines team.

[Basically] trying to make an impact wherever I can.”

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Ryan Molen

BY MAXINE A. BUENAVENTURA “SCIENCE CAN’T paint a complete picture of how it is to deal with everyday life, [but] science can present the statistics [and] how it works,” Ryan Molen says. “Then, the human experience that can’t be quantified in numbers or figures—that’s where the humanities come in and help fill in the picture.” Graduating magna cum laude with a degree in Life Sciences and a minor in Creative Writing (CW), Ryan believes that the sciences and humanities can help fill in each other’s gaps.

“Each field is a language [that can be used] to articulate certain things about the world. And as with any language or as with any tool, that tool can’t do everything. Every language has a blind spot,” he reasons.

His love for the sciences started at a young age. “Ever since I was a child, I was inclined to pursue medicine,” Ryan says. He proceeded to do well in his science subjects throughout elementary and high school, and come college application season, it seemed like a natural field to end up pursuing.

At the same time, though, Ryan grew up enthralled by reading and writing. “I found it amazing that when I’m reading something out, [that] someone actually took the time to sit down, think about the story, and type it out,” he explains. As a child, Ryan wanted to see his own writing printed out and would enthuse himself by playing around with the WordArt settings on Microsoft Word.

“When you see something you enjoy, something [you find] great like writing a book—you want to participate in that [as well],” he says. “[De La Salle] Zobel didn’t really have much opportunities for [creative

writing],” he says of his alma mater.

“When I stepped into college, I saw that Heights Ateneo was a thing pala.

I’d see the call for submissions, and I was like ‘Oh, okay, why don’t I try it out?’ It was a semestral reminder for me to try out some writing, [to] try out submitting.”

Following his entry into the University’s literary folio as an English staffer in his freshman year, Ryan eventually became its Managing Editor for Finance in his fourth year.

With his experience, Ryan knows the blind spots of both fields pretty well given his four-year stay in the Ateneo. One of these spots of the sciences made itself known to him during a histology lesson back when he was in his third year, where the professor presented the case study of a patient who exhibited particular symptoms of a disease and proceeded to test the class on what questions they would ask in order to reach a diagnosis.

“We answered parang ‘anong nangyari sa sugat’, ‘how long has [the patient] been sick or coughing’, things like that. And then our prof told us na ‘you missed out on one thing: you missed out [on] asking [the patient] for her name, her age, family life, social life niya’.”

“People aren’t just a laundry list of the medical symptoms they [exhibit],” Ryan says. “It’s important, of course, to look at the facts. Wherever you go, try to go with a level, logical mind. But it’s also important to understand the human side of things.”

Ryan’s research is dedicated to the everyday experiences of people. He narrates that the idea behind his thesis, a study on the presence of potentially pathogenic bacteria in holy water fonts and its users from churches in the

diocese of Cubao, came to him after observing and elderly woman sneeze into her hands and dip them into the church fonts after. “Surprisingly, there’s studies like that in Germany, Austria, Spain that check if there are bacteria, and there are...ang argument ng thesis namin is [that] Germany, Austria, and Spain [are] European countries that don’t have much of a Catholic population. What more sa atin na we have a considerably larger Catholic population?”

For him, what is especially important is how ideas can be made more accessible and relatable to the everyday person. “I guess one principle behind it din, at least…[the] kind of research I’m interested in is [...] things that are grounded very much in [the] every day, [the] very real experiences that people know,” he explains. “I’m interested in topics that [...] make you think ‘oo nga, noh, may ganoon pala.’”

His desire to explore the everyday experience also manifests in his writing. The idea to take up a minor in CW came to him after he got into the Ateneo Heights Writers Workshop. After realizing that there was opportunity for him to learn more, Ryan turned towards the idea of minoring. “It’s a field that’s quite distant from Life Sciences, but for me, yun nga, I think there’s much to be learned from a field that you’re interested in, but it [also] departs quite far from your main field of study.”

His CW thesis, a compilation of short stories entitled Fault Lines, features four different stories taking place in the same universe. One of them is a story he had written for Heights’ annual project Kuwentong Pambata (KP). “For the past 10 years, Heights’ KP is an annual project where

Heights partners with a sector-based organization,” he explains. “One Atenean writer and one Atenean illustrator create a storybook for that [respective] sector.”

“In KP, there really was a conscious attempt to get to know the audience, to really contextualize it in [a way] that they would appreciate.” This continued on to his thesis, wherein Ryan wanted to write stories that were rooted in current events.

Another of the stories featured in Fault Lines, entitled “Divinations”, is set in the midst of the Duterte administration. Ryan weaves together Philippine folk tradition and beliefs with the problems of real life, tying in the administration’s crackdown on firecrackers. As the concerned barangay heavily relies on firecrackers to dispel evil spirits, it is evident where the influence of current occurrences and issues is able to trickle in.

Ryan is set to attend the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health in the coming months. While acknowledging that the workload would be entirely different compared to the one he experienced throughout his four years of undergraduate studies, Ryan regardless maintains the desire to continue writing. Should the opportunities present themselves, he would be open to writing for advocacies like he did for KP, as well as taking up a mentorship role for young and aspiring writers.

At the end of the day, his writing remains to be inspired by the familiar.

“The positive side is that in med school, I’m gonna meet a lot more people, I’m gonna interact with people from all over, from different walks of life, and perhaps that could give me more fuel or ammo to write some more.”

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WHEN ESSAYS MEET EXPERIMENTS

Bee Leung

BY JAYVEE DEL ROSARIO “AN ESSAY is a kind of experiment,” Gabrielle Leung, better known as Bee to her friends, says. “You throw in different things—they’re your data—and when you put them together and look, something new arises.” The physics major with a creative writing minor shows how the sciences and humanities intersect.

Hailing from a family of scientists in Baguio, Bee shares that she’s been passionate about the two fields ever since childhood. “My parents always encouraged my interest in both science and literature. [They] bought me whatever books I liked. When it came to toys there was a budget, but when it came to books bahala ka as long as I was going to read it,” Bee recounts.

“They were always supportive of intellectual pursuits,” she adds.

Indeed, more than scientists, Bee’s family is one of geniuses. Her parents are both doctors, her older brother is taking his doctorate in the University of Oxford, and her younger brother attends the Philippine Science High School’s (Pisay) Baguio campus.

It’s no surprise where Bee’s genius comes from. She mentions, “My family’s super nerdy too [like me]. We talk about nerdy stuff at dinner. We talk about stuff we’re interested in.”

Bee herself studied in Pisay before going to the Ateneo for college. Interestingly, she chose the Ateneo over the University of the Philippines—she passed and was offered scholarships for both— 32

specifically because she wanted to minor in Creative Writing.

The recipient of the Mulry Award and a Loyola Schools Award for the Arts in non-fiction and poetry, Bee shares that what sets her works apart is her background in science. “My [Creative Writing] thesis adviser, Martin Villanueva, always says that an essay is a meandering of the mind, an attempt to answer a question. It’s the same with science—an attempt at figuring something out,” she explains.

And Bee does a lot of figuring things out. Beyond her usual coursework, the program awardee for Physics has also been working at the Manila Observatory (MO) since she was a junior. “I work at the Air Quality Dynamics Laboratory. I look at the atmospheric composition in the West Philippine Sea,” she explains.

Bee likens her job to playing Sherlock Holmes. Among the questions she investigates are, “Who caused this pollution? Who made it go there?

Where is it going? And how is it going to impact the lives of communities?”

More recently, she started working with the Regional Climate Systems Laboratory, also in the MO, where she assists in climatology, studying long term trends and mapping climate patterns. “I use the data to figure out the hot and cold seasons in the Philippines,” she says, hoping to help agricultural workers by answering where and who are most at risk.

Bee integrates her scientific knowledge and experience into her written works. She explores

this relationship in her Creative Writing thesis where she tries to “meld science with literature.”

One of her essays, for instance, “Increasing Disorder”, talks about the life of Ludwig Boltzmann, a 18th-Century Austrian physicist and philosopher who studied thermodynamics. In it, she discusses Boltzmann’s life and eventual suicide.

“It’s sort of me trying to unpack all the layers behind that [and collating it] with Albert Camus’ myth of Sisyphus,” she says. “So [it’s] constellating different fields of knowledge into one piece and seeing what would happen if you let them intersect with each other.”

The title of her thesis chapbook itself is scientific. The arrow of time is firm and will not yield to your gaze references the second law of thermodynamics, which says that the entropy of the universe is always increasing. “The implication of that is time has a direction, forward. The universe is going from order to disorder.” Bee elaborates.

“I guess it relates to how I think about non-fiction. When we think about things that happened in the past, we’re trying to resurrect them to get back to the moment. But at the same time you can’t go back to them perfectly. So the act of writing about the past changes things about it.”

Bee credits her former editors in Heights Ateneo, where she would serve as English editor and later editor-in-chief, as her inspirations in writing. “I’m not the first one to intersect science and art or literature.

There are so many people at that intersection like Josh Uyheng and Reina Adriano, whose day job is science but whose passion is writing.

They showed me that it’s possible.”

In the future, she plans to continue pursuing her love for the two fields.

After graduating she will be working as a research assistant in the MO under Clean Energy Living Systems, a project funded by the European Union.

Bee explains, “We’re going to be quantifying the environmental impact of coal power plants in the hopes that by making their repercussions known, the government and other parties will do something about them.”

In the long term, Bee plans to go to graduate school abroad and study atmospheric science so she can apply her knowledge upon returning home to the Philippines. “I want to impact policy. So much research stays in journals. I want to do research that will make a difference in people’s lives.”

While Bee’s career may be heading toward science, she nonetheless hopes to continue her passion for literature. “I’m always going to be a writer. I’m always going to keep writing,” she declares.

“The Ateneo always talks about being interdisciplinary. Often, we get boxed up in a single field of study. But the more you know outside your box, the more you realize how arbitrary the boxes are in the first place. All knowledge makes how we see the world richer, and it can all be used to make the world a better place,” Bee concludes.

MAN FOR OTHERS

Carl Nebres

BY LUIS M. MILLARES “KUNG MERON kang alam tapos yung bagay na alam mo makakatulong sa ibang tao sa kahit anong paraan, dapat ibahagi mo siya (If you know something that could help other people in any way, you have to share it),” Carl Nebres says. As a student leader, writer, and an aspiring political scientist, service is what he is all about.

Carl is the definition of a man for others. Among his peers under the political science department, he stands as the only student in his batch taking a Masters in Public Management (MPM), a course centered on public service. His excellence as a student is undeniable as he was a candidate for Department Awardee of the political science department. He is both the Katuwang na Patnugot and Patnugot ng Sulatin at Saliksikan for Matanglawin Ateneo, of which he has been a member for four years.

His choice of program was in large part due to its service-oriented focus.

According to him, the MPM program is geared towards working in the government, non-governmental organizations, and social enterprises; all of which falls under his passion to serve the community.

“Kakaiba ‘yung course, ang haba ng pangalan so kinuha ko siya,” Carl explains. “Noong bri-nief ako [on the course], nagustuhan ko siya kasi yung course ng AB [Political Science] MPM, ito yung course na makakatulong sa personal life mo and sa life ng society ngayon.”

(The course was different because it had a long name. This is why I took it. When I was briefed [on the course], I liked it because AB [Political Science] MPM is the course that could help you in your personal life and the life of society today.)

“In [political science], more on theoretical siya. Ibibigay niya yung

basics ng political science. Pero ‘yung MPM, ibibigay niya ‘yung practical side. Pano mo siya magagamit, political systems, to improve your own political climate, kahit hindi malaki yung service,” he says.

(In [political science], it’s more theoretical. It will give you the basics of political science. But with MPM, it will give you the practical side. How you’ll use use political systems to improve your own political climate even if it’s not a grand service.)

Growing up, Carl didn’t get to experience being in a conventional family setup. He lived in a singleparent household, and for the most part, only had his sibling as his companion at home. “‘Yung ideal family, hindi ko siya nakuha. Hindi ibig sabihin na nagkulang yung childhood experience [ko].

Hindi siya makulay pero buo,” he says.

(I didn’t get the ideal family.

However, it doesn’t mean my childhood experience was lacking. It wasn’t colorful, but it was complete.)

He wasn’t the type to go out and play outdoors. Instead, he was content with reading, specifically taking an interest in studying history. “Kung hindi ako nag [political science], baka nag History ako or nag Filipino ako” (If I didn’t choose [political science], I would probably have chosen History or Filipino,) he shares.

Carl’s penchant for service has translated in his current positions with Matanglawin. His interest in writing manifested early on in his high school days when he was an essayist and as a news writer. In his high school’s publication, Carl served as the managing editor and as the editorin-chief in his junior and senior years respectively. For Carl, journalism’s truth-seeking goal coincides perfectly with his other-centered and serviceoriented attitude. “Mahalaga yung

katotohanan, mahalaga yung truth para sa akin. Nagagamit ko yung totoo, napapakinabangan mo yung katotohanan para sa ibang tao,” he says.

(The truth is important, it’s important to me. I can use the truth to help the people around me.)

Meanwhile, Carl attributes his success in the program with the experience he had as a student leader during his high school years. Having attended the Las Piñas Science High School, he served as the top section’s class president for three years. This challenged him to bring the best out of his classmates, and it served as an early training ground for Carl as a young leader doing his best to serve his community.

“If you are a person of authority or part ka of the org, may magagawa ka to improve your organization through your own leadership.” Carl says.

(If you are a person of authority, or if you’re part of the org, you can do something to improve your organization through your own leadership.)

As a student leader, Carl says his experiences in high school taught him the value of service, which mirrors his current program. He plans to further his skills and knowhow through MPM. “Baka time na to institutionalize yung idea of service na meron ako - improve it more, dagdagan pa yung alam ko about it (Maybe it’s time to institutionalize my idea of service - improve it more, increase my knowledge about it),” he says.

Throughout his four-year stay, Carl says that while he has yet to have a definite advocacy of his own, learning how to listen was one of his biggest takeaways. He shares that being around students from the same program exposed him to a bevy of advocacies and passionate people, where he learned about matters

such as “labor, education, land reform, [and] indigenous peoples.”

“Malaking bagay na natutunan ko yung skill ng listening. Mas fruitful palang makinig, kaysa magsalita.

May matutunan ka sa labas ng sarili mo at sa labas. Sa sobrang dami ng advocacy wala akong mapili,” he says.

(A big thing I learned was the skill of listening. I didn’t know that listening could be more fruitful compared to talking. You can learn something outside of yourself and from the outside. With all the advocacies out there, I couldn’t choose.)

Carl’s excellence in work ethic and academics has undoubtedly left a mark with the people he has encountered in school. To his surprise, some of his fellow political science students have walked up to him just to say that he inspires them to work and study hard.

“Yung pinaka-proud ako yung maka-influence ako ng ibang tao. Lalo na sa Political Science Department at sa Ateneo, sobrang daming taong magaling, competent, maraming tao na may capacities and competencies na kagaya ko,” he says.

(My proudest moment is being able to influence other people.

Especially in the Political Science Department and in Ateneo, where a lot of people are excellent, competent, a lot of people with capacities and competencies just like me.)

“Ginawa mo lang naman ‘yung kailangan mong gawin,” he says. “Yung influence, yung mark na mabibigay mo sa ibang tao, sa gaano kaliit na nagawa mo, yun yung hindi mawawala and yun yung pinaka-important.”

(I just did what I had to do. The influence, the mark that you could give to other people, no matter how small your actions, that will never fade and that’s the most important thing.)

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THE TALENT JUGGLER

Nicole Sean Chiang

BY TONICHI REGALADO NICOLE SEAN Chiang isn’t someone you can fit into a box.

Multi-faceted as evidenced in her involvement in various disciplines, she’s a genius in her own right.

As the President of the Ateneo Project for Asian and International Relations (APAIR), a manytime director for the Ateneo Blue Repertory (blueREP), a dedicated performer outside of campus, all while being set to graduate with a magna cum laude standing and the title of program awardee for Diplomacy and International Relations with Specialization in East and Southeast Asian Studies, Nicole is something of a phenomenon.

As APAIR President, she spent her remaining time in college trying to uplift her organization after initially going into the experience with little expectations.

“I joined APAIR when I was in second year because during my freshman year, a lot of upperclassmen were telling me not to join—they really kept discouraging me,” she says. “It was a word-of-mouth thing that got passed around among my batchmates, so [more concrete] reasons were pretty vague.”

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Nicole admits that she was almost persuaded to join another organization instead of what she would eventually become the president of. “Before I joined, I didn’t know much about APAIR. Generally, the org’s reputation was in the negative,” she says.

“Halfway [through] my freshman year, I realised I should do something about [it] since a lot of my blockmates and coursemates [thought] this way about this org,” she explains.

The popular opinion, at least for her, was that the internals of the organization were lacking. “We didn’t have a deep understanding of what was really wrong in terms of its systems, externals, etcetera; which is what also pushed me to join in the first place. It wasn’t a good org in general, and I wanted to change that.” Taking the reins in her senior year, Nicole also admitted to wanting to “at the very least, change people’s perception of the org.”

Nicole has always been quite ambitious; wanting to change things and take on more. Thus, her double life as a performer naturally permeated through her work ethic: Nicole has been the musical director for blueREP productions including Fame and The Addams Family.

“I started singing and joining performances and competitions since I was young,” she says, explaining that it was at the age of seven that she started.

At present, Nicole continues to engage in multiple outside performances. She is currently affiliated with Chorus Chinoy, a Filipino-Chinese show choir group.

Her true artistic loyalty, however, lies with blueREP. “I joined blueREP in first year and I stuck with it throughout [the years] because of the people, mainly.”

In blueREP, she was able to bloom into her role as a director providing input on the art that they so tirelessly put together. Asked what role she preferred between performer and director, Nicole says “I’m more of a performer definitely, I’ve taught in blueREP for two years, but overall I did prefer performing than teaching.

It’s more like being a musical director made me realize I like performing more than teaching.” Nicole applied for both director roles in Fame and Addams Family and it was a plain-sailing decision to give her the job. “I like both,” she says. “Directing and performing, but it does take more effort definitely to stage a production.”

She’s always been one to excel through her own effort and grit. With a magna cum laude standing and a candidacy for program awardee, it seems Nicole has another talent: juggling her myriad of responsibilities.

“A lot of people ask me this, and I honestly don’t even know the answer,” she says. “I can’t really operate with six hours of sleep so I usually sleep seven to eight hours, but the way I would describe it is ipon-ipon ‘yung sleep ko.”

Micromanagement also seems to be the name of the game for Nicole.

As a self-described “major planner,” she splits her time by the hour and seems to manage it quite well considering all of her responsibilities and callings. Even when asked of all her responsibilities, which one defines her, she couldn’t decide. “Maybe as a DipIR major, it’s so hard to say; it’s impossible for me to choose one.”

One thing still stand though, she handles all her roles with drive, grace, and the right amount of ambition. Moving forward, her ambition to continue juggling more remains true as she plans to go to law school—a fitting next step for someone who can seemingly do it all.

FIRESTARTER

Mika Go Tiong

BY LUISA C. JOCSON AND TONICHI REGALADO MIKA GO Tiong is an unassuming name on the lips of many. The management engineering senior is a natural go-getter, juggling her many advocacies and commitments, like being a merit scholar running for magna cum laude and taking on leadership positions in multiple organizations. Chances are you’re already aware of her work: From being one of the ‘super seven’ of Ateneo Consultants for Organization Development and Empowerment (CODE), to her involvement with the highly-anticipated Orientation Seminars (OrSem).

Mika started showing signs of her brilliance at an early age. “I really loved learning, so I was a very curious child. I always asked questions, [and] although I was also very quiet, I liked to observe things around me,” she recalls. Thus, the drive to excel had been ingrained as early as her preparatory years.

“I guess it comes with receiving your very first merit card even if you’re just in kinder,” she says. “That sort of fueled my competitive spirit, but also that pursuit for excellence.”

Unbeknownst to many of her peers, Mika’s childhood was filled with music. “I’m an only child, so I’m used to being alone with my parents. They indulge me for my love for music [because] I can’t stop singing at home. Growing up, music was a really huge part of my life.”

As a result, she was part of her high school’s theater organization as a performer. By senior year, a certain spark ignited within her after she experienced directing and managing a number of productions. “When I got to direct [or] be a manager, that was when I saw the value of things coming to life. And for me, that’s where everything that I am today came from. Maybe not in theater, but in making things come to life,” she says.

During her senior year of high school, Mika was faced with the question of what she wanted to pursue in the future. She says that her choice of school and course were never quite set in stone.

“For me, it was a matter of chance and gut feel [that] I [came to choose] Ateneo,” she says, sharing that she took it as a sign that her father was wearing a blue shirt on the day of her confirmation to Ateneo.

“One of the biggest factors [that] contributed to my decision to go to Ateneo was the formation I knew I would get here. I guess [being] driven by faith, I really valued that Ateneo had theology,” she adds.

Mika makes sure to involve herself in things that help her grow holistically. “Cognitively, I like to be challenged in different areas of my brain. So that’s why I have the academics down, then I have case competitions, which I think is the application of what I learn in class.

Also, pursuing different advocacies and organizations,” she says.

Mika is also a creature of productivity. “For me, I view my life as an operations schedule. Everything is calendared. But I think what’s important is to balance it with things that you love doing. I noticed the times when I am most unmotivated, it’s during a period where I don’t get to listen to music or play guitar.”

One of her most recognizable roles in college is her involvement with OrSem. Since her sophomore year, she’s been part of the whole shindig, culminating up until her recent tenure as Chairperson in OrSem: Tayâ.

Prior to her own OrSem when she was a freshman, she was able to meet a member of the Talks and Tours Core who eventually became one of the “greatest mentors” in her college life.

“He kept telling me, ‘You have to be excited for OrSem! It’s one of the biggest events in Ateneo.’ I came in

there with no expectations, but deep inside, I [expected] a lot because it seems so hyped. I remember when I saw my OrSem Chair giving a speech, I was like, I can’t believe an event as big as this was led by students, and I thought, ‘I want to be like her.’”

“But when I experienced my OrSem, I didn’t really like OrSem. My tours was so rushed, it was raining. I wanted to fix a lot of things in terms of operations, then when I became a volunteers subcore. That’s when I realized, it was more than just an event. It’s a culture. It’s a welloiled machine. Operationally, it can keep running, but there are a lot of intricacies to it. That’s why coming in as OrSem chair, that’s what I wanted to instill: a different kind of mindset.”

For the longest time, OrSem was quite comfortable recycling old routines. Not for Mika, however. She sought to make the changes she’d been thinking about since freshman year. “I wanted to bring in innovation this year. We experimented with a lot of things: new O-Idol format, new tours format. And I guess it all came together with the experimentation.

We had to keep ideating. There was a lot that had to be done. I’m really happy my team’s efforts were recognized.”

Despite the multiple schedule changes, modification to a one-day format, and other curveballs, Mika believes that there’s much more to the journey than meets the eye.

“One thing most people fail to notice is that there’s a mindset instilling portion in this whole OrSem journey,” she says. “A lot of it was not so much fixing the problems or finding solutions, but boosting the people’s morale, and helping them realize that they can come out of this as better leaders.”

OrSem itself isn’t always a one-track train either. Some freshmen become unwilling participants, not wanting to embrace the event produced by

blood, sweat, and tears. Mika herself even admits that she went through the same thing, but it’s all about outlook.

“OrSem is as much as you make it to be; you will get as much as you give.”

The same philosophy applies to her work at CODE as one of their super seven. “Prior to joining CODE, I was in positions where I really wanted to just make people grow. I couldn’t condense into a word until I had encountered youth empowerment through CODE.” Mika realized that her advocacy, helping others react their potential, was something worth fighting for. “I’ve seen how powerful our generation can be,” she says. “Seeing how these different age ranges within the youth with already having something they want to pursue is so uplifting.”

She’s a leader, that’s a given, but her advocacy of empowering ideas makes her something deeper. It gives her a role with depth: Mika is a firestarter. “Empowering ideas is something for me before wasn’t very noble actually because I thought you had to be at the forefront of change to create an impact,” she admits.

“I get to empower other people to create the change that they need, what they want to see in the world. I don’t think those people are actually given enough credit because a lot of people want to see first-hand impact.”

When asked what’s really next for the firestarter, she gets methodical.

“One of my personal advocacies and pursuits is to discover what it means to be human,” she surprisingly says.

“Yeah, it’s very philosophical but it was something that really struck me—I can’t just all be cerebral, I can’t all be opscheds and trackers and files.”

“I want to keep learning. I know it’s very vague but I want to keep learning and keep being curious,” she adamantly says. “I don’t know where I will end up—it used to scare me before but not as much now because the world is waiting for me to explore it.”

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38

Athletes 40

KIM ZULUETA

44

MADDIE MADAYAG

41

PAULO MACASAET

45

JANA HERNANDEZ

42

PATRICIA PAULO

46

JAYRAH ROCHA AND

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MAJA CONCIO

JULIAN ROXAS

OF RESILIENCE AND HUMILITY

Kim Zulueta

BY NIKA D. CRISOSTOMO ATENEO’S STAR sprinter, Kim Zulueta, made her way to Loyola Heights from Bacolod five years ago as a wide-eyed rookie about to embark on a journey full of setbacks and failures.

“Coming into Ateneo, I honestly did not know what to expect,” she recounts. “I just came here knowing that I would have the best years of my life in a new environment. I told myself I’d be more open and engage in new experiences.” Little did she know that the journey would be one of satisfaction and fulfillment, and one that would mold her into the person she is today—a person of resilience and humility.

Kim admits that her first year in Ateneo was especially difficult because she had to get used to being away from her family and not having a friend to run to at first. Being part of the team, however, afforded her a set of teammates and coaches who helped her feel comfortable away from home so that she could focus on her training.

With her new family providing support and encouragement, Kim trained harder than ever before.

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In her debut in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) Track and Field Tournament, the rookie made it to the 100m finals.

She would later go on to be one of the most cheered names in Ateneo Track and Field history.

The following year, Kim claimed her first UAAP medal as she placed third in the 100m dash–the biggest highlight of her illustrious career.

“From that moment on, I knew that I had the potential to make history for the Ateneo Track and Field Team,” she says. The bronze finish turned out to be just the first of many as the Bacolodnative continued to finish on the podium in her next three years with the Blue and White. Her impressive UAAP performances garnered many plaudits, with Kim representing the country as a member of the Philippine National Team as well.

Despite her numerous achievements, Kim admits that she faced many struggles along the way. It was in those days, however, that Kim built her strength of character. “There were times in the oval when I didn’t want to finish another rep of the workout

because of exhaustion,” she shares, “But every time that I would lie down, there was always something inside of me that told me to get up and do it one more time, and one more, and more, until the workout was done. Those were the times that made me tougher. I realize that, if there is one thing that I won’t do, it’s giving up.”

Regardless of a triumphant third year in the UAAP where she garnered two bronze medals, the trackster faced her toughest challenge and biggest disappointment yet. “I was not able to win the gold medal for the school.

It was the most heartbreaking event that happened in my UAAP career, but I made that failure into something that would help me learn from my mistakes, and make me become a stronger and better athlete.”

Having been assigned to lead the team as one of its two captains in her senior year, Kim was initially skeptical saying, “I never considered myself a leader because I felt that I had no leadership skills. However, my coach told me that being a leader does not necessarily mean that people should obey you, [it means] they should

just have someone to look up to, and someone to have respect in.”

After leading the team superbly as Co-Captain, Kim was handed the responsibility as the Team Captain in her final playing year in the team.

And through all the last reps, extra work, setbacks, and tears shed on the oval, Kim has found purpose in something bigger than herself.

“I believe everything happens for a reason, and that when God closes a door, best believe that He will open a whole new one in His own timing,” she says. “Trust in Him.” She has learned that though things may not always turn out the way she wants them to, they still turn out alright, and that it is facing the challenges along the way that has made her stronger.

As she leaves Ateneo behind, Kim parts with a few words: “Take a break when you need to. Be in the moment.

Remember names, remember faces, remember the people who were kind to you, and be kind to others as well.

Breathe, because things take time, but everything will eventually fall into place.”

EARNED, NOT GIVEN

Paulo Macasaet

BY ENZO PASTOR WITH THE first seed of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) Season 77 Baseball Tournament at stake in a critical match against archrivals the De La Salle University Green Archers, then-rookie Paulo Macasaet, found himself on the pitcher’s mound without any relief from the first to the last inning to lead his team to the crucial victory–his first complete game.

Fast forward to four years later in UAAP Season 81, Paulo Macasaet is now one of the Team Captains of the Ateneo Men’s Baseball team.

Paulo has bled Blue and White for years on, hailing from Ateneo High School. Initially moving around from position to position, he eventually made the pitcher’s mound his own during his second year in the UAAP Junior’s division. Since then, Ateneo’s ace pitcher has not looked back, spending countless hours dedicating himself to his craft and to his team.

The difficulty of juggling his responsibilities as both a management information systems student and as an athlete was offset

by Paulo’s sheer dedication to both.

The blue batter strived to finish tasks as soon as he was assigned them to keep his workload manageable and to give him the time to go to the gym and attend training sessions alongside his teammates. However, as classes became increasingly challenging and deadlines piled up, Paulo admitted it became challenging to juggle all his commitments.

“During my first year, it was really my habit to go [and do some] extra training,” he says. “I was still a rookie trying to earn my spot, so you could say I had the urgency to do that. As the years went by, all the academic requirements were piling up, [there were times that I couldn’t go.]”

Despite these struggles, Paulo reminded himself that his commitment to the grind was precisely what got him to where he is today. Having experienced his first championship with the last year of the three-peat team in Season 77, he says the biggest highlight of his tenure with the Ateneo Baseball Team was when they won the championship in Season 79 of the UAAP. “The feeling of getting back on top after not winning it all the previous season was a big morale booster.

[It was] a manifestation of our hard work [as a team] to get [the crown] back,” he shares.

On his fifth and final year as a blue batter, Paulo was handed the responsibility of leading the Ateneo Baseball Team alongside his brother, Javi Macasaet, and fellow graduating player, Radito Banzon. Though he never considered himself a vocal leader of the team, Paulo took his role very seriously, often offering his help to anyone who needed it in practice or in games.

Alongside his co-captains, the Ateneo Baseball Team Captain led the team to the UAAP Season 81 Men’s Baseball Finals, pushing the DLSU Green Archers to a decisive Game 3 after suffering a heartbreaking loss in Game 1. The Blue Eagles fell short, 9-11 in the tightly-contested game, but despite the loss, Paulo held his head up high as he ran his last lap around the bases.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of in the result because everyone saw and we all knew that we showed what we could do; we showed heart towards playing,” Paulo says.

Indeed, when the Blue Eagles were counted out by the rest of the league,

they stepped up to the plate and played their hearts out until the final inning of their final match.

Paulo’s baseball career with the Ateneo may have come to a close, but his sensational displays of skill for the past five years have afforded him the opportunity to take his talents to greater heights, as the gifted pitcher will be donning the colors of the Philippine flag as part of the National Team that will represent the countr y in the upcoming Southeast Asian Games.

As he bids farewell to the University, Paulo is deeply grateful to the Ateneo for giving him a chance to play for the Blue and White and to the rest of the community for showing their support for the team. He says that if there was one thing he would like his fellow graduating batchmates to know and be reminded of as they go down the hill, it is to always believe in yourself.

“Even though there are people better than you, always think of yourself first,” he finishes. “You can achieve anything as long as you put your heart into it and you really feel like you can overcome those obstacles.”

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UPSURGE

Patricia Paulo

BY SHEILA ADVINCULA TO CONTINUE pursuing her passion in the collegiate level, Patricia Paulo decided to take a second degree to compete in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) Fencing tournament for a fifth consecutive year. “It [was] a hard decision to make. I had to postpone working and enroll for another degree just to play,” shares the 22-year old.

Patricia always knew what she wanted. Inspired by the foil scene between Lindsay Lohan’s twin characters in The Parent Trap (1998), the Lady Eagle first started fencing at just nine years old, joining a fencing club in her grade school.

Despite excelling in her first two years, though, Patricia was forced to take a break from fencing when her club’s fencing coach left the country.

On her hiatus, Patricia’s penchant for action and excellence prodded her to explore other sports. “I tried volleyball, table tennis, and futsal,” she enumerates. Without an opportunity to continue her fencing, Patricia found herself playing for her high school volleyball team for two years and loving it as well.

In spite of her success as a volleyball player at the Immaculate Conception Academy (ICA) at 42

the time, Patricia still felt her true calling was fencing. And so instead of trying out for volleyball when applying to universities, Patricia chose the foil and epeé over the ball and started fencing in the last quarter of her senior year of high school.

Asked about her choice of sport, she said, “I like fencing because it’s unique. It’s not something everyone has experienced. It’s like physical chess: You really have to think whenever you fence.”

Patricia’s skills were remarkable despite her five-year break from the sport. The ICA alumna worked hard to refine her skills prior to joining the Ateneo Lady Eagles and it was not long before she was drafted in the Women’s Fencing roster for the 77th Season of the UAAP. “It was one of my best years as a fencer because I didn’t expect we would win. I played really well considering I was against the more experienced players in the league,” she recalls. In her first season with the Lady Eagles, the team placed third with three bronze medals, in spite of their lineup mostly consisting of rookies like herself.

As a student-athlete in Ateneo, Patricia found balancing academics and sports quite manageable because

she had already formed good study habits. “I didn’t really worry about my grades. Coming from high school where I was a student-athlete also, I got used to studying and training at the same time,” she shares. Regardless of the four-hour training three times a week, Patricia always found the time to attend to her school requirements.

For her, the biggest challenge was meeting the goals she set for herself, with Season 80 proving to be one of her most difficult challenges. By then a seasoned veteran, Patricia felt her performance on the mats was quite underwhelming. “I felt super bad because I got scared during my bouts. That’s why I wasn’t able to win a medal,” she admits.

By the end of last season’s fencing events, Patricia was on her last year as a management economics student.

Unsatisfied with her record, she considered pursuing a double major to be allowed to play for another year in the UAAP. “I really wanted to prove myself but I was still unsure.”

Patricia applied for her second major in BS Information Technology Entrepreneurship right on the deadline and a few days before her graduation in May. She admits that overwhelming support from her family, teammates, and coaches

helped her make the tough decision— one that she is ultimately grateful for.

With her hopes set on making the most of her decision to play an extra year, Patricia worked as hard as she could until the UAAP Fencing tournament, making time to train outside Ateneo as well.

“Aside from the training I had in Ateneo, I would also go to Ultra to train with the national team,” she says on the preparations for her upturn.

The Lady Eagle’s sacrifices paid off in the end as she went on to claim her first individual medal, a bronze in the Women’s Foil Individual event, and helped her team claim the gold in the Women’s Foil Team event. Her guidance as a veteran and contributions to the team were pivotal as the Ateneo Women’s Fencing Team claimed the gold overall to end University of the East’s 11-year domination.

As she bids a bittersweet farewell to collegiate fencing, Patricia imparts her biggest lesson: “Nothing really is impossible and if you really want something. You really have to strive your very best to be able to do it; you need to have no excuses to achieve the goal.”

CHOREOGRAPHING PASSIONS

Maja Concio

BY NICOLA E. ROXAS A BALLERINA and a contemporary dancer. An aspiring lawyer and an aspiring professional dancer. A student and an athlete. For Maja Concio, there is always room to be passionate about more than just one thing, and she thanks her career as a student-athlete with the Company of Ateneo Dancers (CADs) for that.

“CADs has always been a dream for most dancers,” Maja says as she recalls the time she joined CADs back in her freshman year. Having trained in ballet ever since she was a little girl, it was with CADs that she was able to widen her horizon and move onto contemporary dance, which she often refers to as “contemp.”

“There comes a point in your life where you think ‘wait lang, I’m not tall enough, I’m not flexible enough, I don’t have the proper body type,’” she shares. “So that’s where contemp came in for me.”

Because contemporary dance was something her dance instructors believed she excelled in aside from ballet, she took the chance and pursued it upon joining CADs. With contemporary dance, she is constantly encouraged to be even more creative.

She explains that “the technical, tiring, athletic aspect” of contemporary are what “makes it a very fulfilling genre and art to be a part of.”

When she’s not dancing with CADs, Maja can be found freelancing with Steps Dance Studio–a studio she has been dancing with since she was five years old. However, upon entering the Ateneo, she admits it has gotten harder for her to balance CADs and Steps along with her academics. “It’s hard to juggle; it’s hard if you’re dancing and having a full load, and it’s even harder if you’re dancing in more than one place. It’s really about choosing and being smart about your decisions,” she explains.

Because of this, she realized that there were some things she had to give up, and that had to be her time with Steps. Even if she had to focus on CADs and her academics more, she is still able to do a few shows and choreograph for Steps every now and then because of the relationship she has built with the Steps community over the years.

Being a student-athlete in the Ateneo often comes with the mindset that it is always one’s being a student over being an athlete, and Maja recalls

an instance in her earlier years with CADs when her seniors would skip training because of academics.

“For me,” she said, “you know you have to train as a student-athlete.”

Being given the opportunity to represent the Blue and White also comes with the responsibility of prioritizing which is more important between academics and training as well as striking a balance between the two, which Maja considers one of the biggest challenges that comes with being a student-athlete.

With her humanities tracks in philosophy and history, Maja hopes to pursue law school after graduating.

Yet, with dance becoming such an integral part of her life, she admits that it is sometimes difficult to balance and get her priorities straight. Knowing that she cannot work well at night, she would make sure to wake up earlier to finish her requirements so that she could give her undivided attention to her 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM training later in the day.

“Some people say it’s impossible, but it’s really possible as long as you make some sacrifices.” When it feels like she cannot take the pressure and her limbs are too tired to keep

on dancing, she reminds herself why she started in the first place.

“I love dancing, it’s as simple as that,” she says.

True to her course, which is interdisciplinary in nature, Maja believes that it is never an “or”, but an “and” in life. When she gave a talk about her course for the School of Humanities open house, she told the audience not to be boxed into a singular idea because it limits one from trying new things.

“In the process of trying to achieve one ‘or’, we miss out on so many opportunities. Keep saying ‘and’ and the world is your oyster,” she advises.

She never thought she would be able to incorporate dance into her thesis but because of this mentality, she was able to pursue both her passion for dance and her dream of being a lawyer.

“Yes, I’m still going to dance [after college]. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, I’ll figure it out […] I don’t think people should give up their passions because reality is telling them to grow up,” she confidently says.

43

NO CHALLENGE THAT CAN’T BE OVERCOME

Maddie Madayag

BY ENZO PASTOR ONE MAY say it was sweet serendipity when learning about how the talented middle blocker and team captain from Davao, Maddie Madayag, found her way to Katipunan to play for the Ateneo Women’s Volleyball team.

According to Maddie, while she was still playing for the Davao Christian High School, her uncle and coach Milky Madayag, and then University of the Philippines’ Fighting Maroons Coach Potit de Vera, reached out to the Ateneo Volleyball Program Head, Coach Sherwin Malonzo, to scout her. Malonzo was under the guise that he was going to check on a different player, but as soon as he got there, he found out that the player he intended to check up on and the person he was being referred to were one and the same.

“Parang coincidence lang [but also a] blessing din, [it felt like it was] God’s plan talaga for me to go to Ateneo,” Maddie says.

Maddie debuted for the Lady Eagles in the UAAP Season 77 Women’s Volleyball Tournament. At the time, she wasn’t expected to heavily contribute for the team as she played amongst the likes of Alyssa Valdez, Denden Lazaro, Ella de Jesus, Amy Ahomiro, and Jia Morado, among others. However, it wasn’t too long before she was given the chance to fully display her prowess—come sophomore year, then Head Coach, Tai Bundit, decided to insert Maddie into the starting line-up, poising her for a breakout season.

Unfortunately, the Lady Eagle faced what she considers the biggest 44

challenge of her five-year stint with the Blue and White–tearing her ACL. It was a tragic end to the season for Maddie who was playing very well prior to the injury. Despite being downcast, Maddie looked back on the Christian values she grew up with during her recovery.

“God has better plans, [and I believe] He won’t put me in a situation where I can’t handle it,” she says. For months, she stuck to this mentality as she underwent rehab.

While an ACL tear is not an injury that easily allows players to return to their playing form quickly, for Maddie, it felt the opposite.

“I don’t know, for me, [I felt like] I became stronger after I tore my ACL, so I guess it was a blessing in disguise.” she shares. She credits her successful recovery to the team’s physical therapist, Bethel Solano, and everyone who helped her at the Moro Clinic.

Outside of her life in the volleyball court, Maddie also had to juggle her academic responsibilities as an AB Economics student in her first two years prior to shifting to Ateneo’s interdisciplinary studies program in her third year onwards. She admits that it was a struggle especially during freshman and sophomore year because of how she, along with her other teammates, were still acclimatizing themselves to their twice-a-day training. “You can’t play if you don’t pass, you can’t pass if you don’t study, so you really have to know how to balance [your time],” she says.

“But you can see naman that it’s worth it,” she adds.

In Season 80, Maddie was named Team Captain of the Lady Eagles.

Admittedly, she was overwhelmed by the promotion, as she didn’t have any inclination that she would be chosen

by Coach Tai. However, she says that the opportunity has helped her learn how to handle more responsibility for communicating and addressing the problems of the team. This Season 81, she was once again given the reigns to take on the mantle of team captain, alongside fellow Middle Blocker, Bea de Leon.

As her time with the team comes to a close, Maddie deems this season as the biggest highlight of her tenure with the Lady Eagles because of the different culture that Coach Oliver Almadro has helped instill with the team.

“I think this year we’re [a lot] closer.

Coach O [really] wants to instill the [value of] family in the team. So I think now, we’re more of a family [rather] than teammates,” she says.

Despite being part of the Season 77 team which brought back to back championships for the Blue and White, Maddie says it’s this season that stands out the most for her. She highlights the team’s more cohesive dynamic and style of play that has allowed everyone to contribute as the reasons why this season has been the most memorable for her.

One might expect that volleyball players out of high school would aspire to continue their careers in the collegiate ranks. However, as Maddie was coming out of high school, she had no expectations to play in the

collegiate leagues like the UA AP and more so to be a member of the Lady Eagles.

“I guess it’s really God’s plan for me to really play here, I really didn’t expect [to be here] talaga,” she says.

As she reaches the pinnacle of her college life, being a Lady Eagle is the experience she will cherish the most in her five years with the Ateneo.

From her previous to her current teammates, to the head coaches and the rest of the coaching staff, she was able to find a second family. “I’m from Davao and I seldom see my family, so [it was they who] became my second family,” she shares.

Maddie is deeply grateful to the team’s families, the fans, the team sponsors, the alumni, and of course their teammates who shared time and lessons with them on the court for all the invaluable support. “The team wouldn’t be where it is now without their help,” she says.

To the Batch of 2019, she shares her guiding principle in life, “Lift everything up to the Lord because wherever you are now it’s because of Him. Trust in His plan and always pray.” Whether it’s inside or beyond the volleyball court, Maddie clings on to her faith to get her through them all.

“For me, Whatever I do, whatever I decide to do, I always have to connect it to the Lord, I always have to offer it to God,” she says.

Through the ups and downs and from the setbacks to the comebacks, Maddie knows that there is no challenge she cannot overcome because she is guided by the One she knows is far greater than herself.

SACRIFICE AND PERSISTENCE

Jana Hernandez

BY MAXINE R. GARCIA REPRESENTING THE Ateneo in the famed Blue and White has always been the dream for Jana Hernandez.

After being recruited to play on the Ateneo Women’s Tennis Team after graduating from Assumption College, Jana made a strong start to her career as a Lady Eagle, garnering the prestigious Rookie of the Year title in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) Season 77 Women’s Tennis Tournament as the team finished in fifth place.

Her impressive showing in her debut season as a Lady Eagle along with the departure of her previous skipper meant that Jana had to take over the responsibilities of team captain in her sophomore year. Although she was initially nervous to lead a team of veterans as a sophomore, the Season 77 Rookie of the Year stepped out of her comfort zone to lay the groundwork for greater success.

Her strategy was to highlight camaraderie and chemistry in the team. “We get recruits from all over the Philippines so we had to find a way get everyone together. It was hard to rebuild and spearhead that,”

she admits. Despite the difficult challenge, Jana stepped up on and off the tennis court. While the team failed to reach a podium finish, the future looked bright for the team under her leadership.

In her third year as a Lady Eagle, Jana set her sights on finishing on the podium. New recruits and more intensive training sessions gave the Lady Eagles a much needed boost as they aimed to finally break their silverware duck.

“In [my] junior year, the team had the strongest line-up yet,” she recalls. “Personally, I played my best season but the team still did not place.” Despite a demoralizing finish to her season, the Lawn Tennis Team Captain was not discouraged; in fact, her hunger for a podium finish only grew.

With three years of UAAP experience under her belt, Jana played her heart out in the UAAP Season 80 Women’s Lawn Tennis Tournament, helping her team make a Cinderella run to the Finals for the first time since Season 73. Jana’s strong doubles presence was crucial to the team’s impressive performances

in the elimination rounds. The Lady Eagle continued to push for the championship as she encouraged her teammates and fought on the court but Ateneo lost in heartbreaking fashion and settled for silver. This milestone only further kindled her dream of bringing home the championship.

Taking up the mantle as team captain for the fourth consecutive year, Jana looked to finally bring back the UAAP Women’s Lawn Tennis title back to Loyola Heights in Season 81.

While the team performed valiantly to overturn an under-par start to the season and secure a playoffs spot for the finals, a 2-3 loss in the playoffs meant that Jana and her team settled for bronze.

As with most student-athletes, Jana faced many hurdles as she balanced her academics, tennis, and other commitments. Her time management skills were tested as she was forced to decide whether to prioritize her studies, family, friends, or tennis. She often had to make difficult decisions and she admits she missed out on a lot of things she would have wanted to do.

Even with such moments of hesitation and doubt, her passion for the sport

kept her going. “I made sacrifices for the team, but it was worth it.”

Jana emphasizes that the growing support for the team and the sport in general played a large part in her growing passion for tennis. She expressed her happiness as she described how the bleachers were typically empty in her early years playing with the team but slowly started to fill up. “I love how tennis grew. Nobody would watch in first year, but now people do,” she beams.

As she departs after five unbelievable years as a Lady Eagle, Jana imparts her biggest lesson learned: “If you put your mind to it, you can really achieve anything. I was given a chance to prove myself, and I took it. You have to really focus before everything can fall into place. Have a goal in mind and follow through.”

While it may be time to put away her racket, she knows her journey as a tennis player is not over yet. “You must find your inner passion wherever you go,” she says. “It’s what kept me grounded throughout [college] and what keeps me moving forward.”

45

NEVER ABOUT THE ARMBAND

Jayrah Rocha and Julian Roxas

BY NIKA D. CRISOSTOMO JULIAN ROXAS and Jeremiah “Jayrah” Rocha may have come from rival high schools–Roxas growing up on the blue pitch of the Ateneo High School and Rocha growing up in De La Salle-Santiago Zobel’s green–but for five years, they played side-byside for the Ateneo Men’s Football Team and co-captained the Blue and White for the past two years.

Jayrah, who joined the team as a walk-in try out, shares how he later had to step up and earn his role as a regular starting centre-back bit by bit.

“I knew that I had a lot of things to improve on, so I really took the time to do extra work outside of training,” he says. “Years went by, and coming from a batch of 14 rookies, we didn’t have many seniors, which is what I think kind of encouraged me to lead in my own way, even when I wasn’t one of the captains yet.”

Julian, on the other hand, entered the team as a recruit. Of his reason to stay for as long as he did, he says, “I found a home with people who have the same passion 46

and love for the sport as I have.” For him, this made all the difference.

“That’s when I knew I wanted to stay with this team throughout my stay in Ateneo, and even extended a year to play,” he muses. “I have no regrets, and it has been the best decision of my life.”

Having found and cultivated a brotherhood that collectively desired to move towards the same goal, both captains exclaim that it was winning the UAAP Men’s Football Championships in Season 79 and Season 81 that were the highlights of their Ateneo careers.

“It’s always the goal of the team every season, and knowing we achieved it with the group of guys that we had was amazing,” Julian recounts. “Giving this school [championships] was surreal.”

As co-captains, Julian and Jayrah believe that leadership has always been about putting the team first.

“Being the captain means being the last guy in the spotlight, but always the first to cheer your teammates on when they are,” Jayrah says. “It’s never about an armband, or a title on your name, it’s

really about serving your teammates and helping them realise that they can do so much more than what they think they can. As a captain, one of the best feelings in the world is seeing one of my teammates do something special and exceed expectations.”

On working together within their shared role, Julian explains, “I would say Jayrah is the more motivating and vocal leader in the team, while I am more of the soft-spoken friendly type. Despite that, we both expect a lot from our teammates and push them to their limits.”

Of course, while they expect much from their teammates, the two leaders came to expect a lot from themselves as well. “Hard work beats talent every single day,” Julian confidently states. “Never settle for just enough. Even when you think you are at the top, there will be other people trying to topple you over.

That’s why you can’t stop working.”

Similarly, Jayrah shares, “My high school coach, [Coach Hans Smit], taught me [that] no matter how good we are in football, there will always

be someone who is younger, faster, stronger, and smarter than us, and that is actually very true. That idea alone is why I always look to improve and learn something every chance I get. Not just in football, but in life.”

Being student-athletes, the co-captains share that they came to appreciate how Ateneo had pushed their limits outside of the football field. “I think not getting any special treatment helped me grow as a person,” Jayrah recounts.

“Whether it was losing games or flunking a test, these experiences taught me to keep going and improve,” Julian says. “I’ve learned how to handle the pressures of meeting objectives, as well as bouncing back from failures, that have formed me into the person that I am today.”

Both Julian and Jayrah recall how these past five years were a constant climb to become a better version of themselves—for their team and for their sport—but are both unwavering in their belief that it was all worth it.

“Just enjoy every moment and love the people around you,” Jayrah smiles.

48

Artists & Performers 50

CELLINE MERCADO

54

IVES BACONGUIS

51

RACHEL COATES

55

GENESIS GAMILONG

52

GIANNE ENCARNACION

56

ALYSON

53

PAT KAY LAUDENCIA

AN ARTISTIC INQUIRY

Celline Mercado

BY KAYLA T. CADENAS “CELLINE AS a curator sucks!” jokes Celline Mercado, graduating art management and information design double major. This is a curious statement for Mercado to make, even humorously, considering her major’s primary goal is to produce curators for the future of art.

“You’re just a platform that’s tying together these different ideas to convey one big idea,” she continues, elaborating on the responsibilities of a curator. Although she admits that one can unhesitatingly express themselves through curation, for Celline, it simply isn’t enough.

“It’s a compromise kasi,” she admits, explaining why she chose her course in the first place. “Na parang, o, walang pera sa art. But no; there is.

You just have to know what to do.”

(It’s a compromise that people think there’s no money in art. But no, there is, you just have to know what to do.)

Finding a direction took time for Celline. After being exposed to the variety of visual art in TV shows and fairytale books, she taught herself how to draw with ink and pencil, the most readily available media at home. At 14, she taught herself how to paint. Her art was already impressing those around her, and the praise she received helped propel her into pursuing art professionally.

By the time she was in her junior year in the Ateneo, she was taking studio classes at the University of San Francisco, an aspiration made real by the Junior Term Abroad program.

50

Her works were even exhibited at the 18th Thatcher Annual, with Bawal ‘Yan, a series of digital illustrations depicting sensual self-discovery, winning the Curator’s Choice Award.

She never questioned her passion and ability for art, although she did ponder on what medium to focus on. Numerous attempts were made to try more and more media, hoping to find a distinct style. Her major in information design introduced her to digital art but that, too, didn’t lead to what Celline was looking for.

“I can’t work on something if it doesn’t personally motivate me,” she shares. “I need to have a connection with it, otherwise I won’t work on it.

What’s in it for me?” This reluctance to work on something that failed to connect with her intimately has led Celline to become frustrated with her current degree programs.

She insists that both her majors don’t satisfy her artistic drive, and have, in many ways, limited her work. “During my sophomore year, my drawing professor was looking at my works and said: ‘You really have potential. You should leave Ateneo and go to an art school’,” says Celline. “And that really hit me. Even now, three years later.”

Indeed, Celline’s works are often eclectic and experimental, a testament to her insatiable drive as an artist.

They vary from acrylic paintings like Amorsolo x Tide (2016), a tongue-incheek take on Fernando Amorsolo’s pastoral scenes, to mixed media art like Humahalik and Nangangagat

(2017-2018), plaster casts of a vulva decorated with found objects.

Yet despite her multifacetedness, Celline is no half-baked slouch.

She even bagged a Loyola Schools Award for the Arts under the mixed media category—the only awardee under such category—to show for it. There is a common thread that ties Celline’s works together despite their wide spectrum of mediums and genres—intimacy and authenticity.

As such, her art is often inclined to draw from raw experiences such as the realities of womanhood.

For her thesis exhibit and last adieu to the Ateneo community, In the Spaces We Mend (2019), she curated artworks on the plight of Filipina comfort women. “Three years ago I wouldn’t have identified myself as a feminist,” she confesses.

“But I noticed in my work [that there were] recurring feminist themes.

[I] was constantly questioning why these limitations [were] here, why these structures were here.”

Unfortunately, Celline’s ongoing search for her identity as an artist had to be shelved in the midst of school work and course deadlines. Now in her final year in the Ateneo, she looks toward attending a postgraduate that will fulfill her artistic purpose.

“That’s the only reason why I’m finishing this,” she says, referring to her undergraduate degrees. “I actually want to be a costume designer. It’s the occupation that reconciles all of my interests. Visual storytelling— it’s about a story of a person.”

Celline discusses her plans to focus solely on her art for her postgraduate degree. She points out how the local costume design scene is populated by men, and how that, rather than daunts her, encourages her to make a place for herself in the field.

For Celline, her liberation from the Atenean environment and all its accompanying limitations are long past overdue. Even if art management has taught her to add substance to her work that previously only boasted an aesthetic beauty, and her information design made clear her artistic limitation, she feels the need for development keenly.

“Ateneo is great but it asks for so much compromise,” she says. “Ang dami kong hindi nagawa. Ang dami kong gustong talagang gawin pa.”

(There’s a lot I didn’t do. There’s a lot more I can and want to.)

There’s an element of sheer excitement beneath Celline’s impatience to graduate. She agrees that she has outgrown Ateneo, that all that she could gain from the University, she has already gained.

Certainly, she has given herself enough time to do so: It took her five years to complete both her major degrees.

Now all that’s left is what comes after.

“If you’re going to do something, do what you’re really great at or what you love doing,” says Celline. “In my case, I think I’m lucky enough that what I’m good at I also love. I’m excited to do art. I’m excited to do whatever I want.”

AT DIFFERENT STAGES

Rachel Coates

BY BEA C. CONSTANTINO AND KAYLA T. CADENAS HAVING DOMINATED the stage for local and international plays and kiddie princess parties alike for years, communication senior Rachel Coates has known and loved the world of theater for as long as she can remember.

Ever since she was a little kid raised through homeschooling, Rachel has always been taught to equate learning with make-believe play, hence the strong foundation for the artist in her.

“Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always been into [theater]. I don’t think I’ve ever been in school and not been working at the same time,” says Rachel. “[The learning] just transferred really easily, and then I’ve been trying to get better at it ever since.”

One memory Rachel says introduced her to theater is her Sonlight curriculum for her homeschooling, where every lesson was reading-based, something that also carried her throughout Ateneo as well. It also showed Rachel the

value of narratives. “The things you learn from stories is a completely different thing than learning from a theoretical basis,” she says.

It is no surprise then, that Rachel took this learning with her up until today. “I feel like the greatest thing I could learn from theater is the power [of] storytelling,” she shares.

“It’s a huge epidemic in society now that people don’t see empathy anymore, and I feel like theater and the arts are bringing empathy back.”

The first ever performance that Rachel took part in was a cabaret show of I Am What I Am. However, she considers her first major performance to be the one for The Sound of Music, which was staged back in 2011 in Resorts World Manila and was a show that influenced her commitment to her theater career.

“It was a huge learning experience because it was a really big production.

It was kind of like a diagram for life.

It made [me] realize that in the grand scheme of things, you’re one tiny little

character. You don’t matter, but at the same time, if you’re taken out, it’s a completely different show,” she says.

With graduation imminent, a completely different stage outside of the theater has been opened to Rachel. Like every other graduating senior, she is confronted with the future and the decisions that have to be necessarily made to pave her own way. There is a colossal transition that is fast approaching, but Rachel is not daunted by its arrival.

“I think that wherever I end up, anything that I learned at theater is super transmutable,” she explains.

“I don’t think a lot is going to really change. I have always given 120-million percent of myself in every single role that I have.”

It is this dedication and zest for life that Rachel is leaning on to get her through this next act of her life. Her newfound freedom from academics means that for the first time, the center stage of her focus has been wholly afforded to her theater pursuits.

“It’s been kind of hard switching from being a student to being a performer and back to being a student,” Rachel confesses. “I feel like it will be a lot easier to be an actor if you weren’t always switching between roles.”

Yet, there is a part of Rachel that readily admits not only the attachment she has grown to have for the Ateneo but also the depth by which she has learned while at university.

“I have to admit I’m going to miss everything about Ateneo,” she says.

“Everything that you learn from your philosophy and theology classes [is] so easily applicable to acting. You have to know the humanities to be a good actor because you can’t assume a person if you don’t understand what it means to be a person.”

Like many working students, Rachel has been molded by the challenge of balancing her passion and profession with her rigorous academic workload.

It is with all that Ateneo has equipped her that Rachel steps forward into the spotlight, waiting to tell her story.

51

DESIGN THAT WORKS

Gianne Encarnacion

BY MARK ANASTACIO MOST WOULD say there’s no money in art, and in truth, it’s definitely uncertain at times. However, that doesn’t stop information design senior Gianne Encarnacion from following her passions. An illustrator, graphic artist, and self-proclaimed coffee lover, she strives to create a future that is not only masterfully designed but also pragmatic and practical.

Although growing up in a family of medical and law practitioners initially made her feel that pursuing art was not an option, she chose to deviate from the norm of pursuing medicine or law. This was because her mother pushed her to follow her dreams, and thus, she chose Ateneo to be her home throughout college to learn how design influences the world at large.

A person of many talents, Gianne’s focus lies mainly in the digital arts.

Her motivation stems from seeing lacking design around us, mainly in the way public information is disseminated. She believes many accidents, errors, and tragedies could have been prevented if good design was implemented with the end-user in mind, and how people would interact 52

with the information. “People deserve better design,” she laments.

She is a self-taught artist with the goal of being a woman for others, Gianne says it was during her stay in the Ateneo that she found her love for the arts. Now, it’s time for her to give back by teaching others as well that design is as important as any other. Education is a key part of her advocacies, particularly on feminism, agriculture, and healthcare.

Gianne says her many advocacies were inculcated in her by her mom. She shares that she aspires to one day be as strong and independent as her mother, whose profession as a nurse inspires her passion for social work.

“My mom is super maalaga (caring). She gave up her job to take care of me and my brother,” Gianne shares. Influenced by her mother’s background, her lifelong dream is to not only design but take part in healthcare through establishing health centers for the less fortunate and making healthcare more accessible.

This design advocate is also a coffee enthusiast, as she also wants to support the local coffee industry,

particularly the very farmers who produce our coffee. She hopes to push her advocacy forward through Kape’t Bisig, her thesis project that won her a Loyola Schools Award for the Arts in Visual Arts, particularly in Illustration.

Kape’t Bisig is a play on the Filipino phrase “kapit-bisig” that means working together towards a common goal. She believes that if all Filipinos, especially coffee enthusiasts, work together in this spirit, Filipino coffee can be more recognized globally. More importantly, she wants her fellow students to have an, “appreciation [for] Philippine coffee, and not [just] see [it] as a commodity.”

Gianne emphasizes that there are two problems with this: Firstly, that “people are interested [to know more about coffee] but don’t know where to start,” and second, that “we have an existing coffee culture in the Philippines, but progress is so slow.”

Thus, Gianne says that “what we can do is to help [in] this process.” Although there are already local initiatives in the Philippines, these efforts are scattered everywhere around the internet.

That is why Kape’t Bisig is a onestop shop where coffee information

is compiled into one website, where all budding coffee enthusiasts and entrepreneurs can learn more about the local coffee industry.

Her thesis is a great example of how great design can be both pragmatic and practical. Where design can help both producers and consumers have a better appreciation for Philippine coffee.

Having learned things the hard way throughout her stay in the Ateneo, one key takeaway that she wants to impart is that “rest is important. [...]

It’s important to add rest into your schedule. You can’t do your best when you are tired. Resting is showing that you care for yourself, that you are not a robot that keeps on churning.”

With all the possibilities opening up for her—including job offers at a renowned studio and projects that push her advocacies forward—she says she ultimately owes it all to her mother. “My thesis is dedicated to my mom. I want to make her proud.”

STORYTELLING THROUGH THE SCREEN

Pat Kay Laudencia

BY GABY N. BAIZAS PEOPLE’S FIRST impressions of Patricia “Pat Kay” Laudencia are usually right. She’s hard to miss, given the many crazy patterns she wears— polka dots, checkers, gingham, and so on. She’s your resident bizarre artist, and anyone who’s seen her work can point out the distinct and purposefully tacky elements she’s incorporated into her personal style.

Friends and family can attest that she’s just as quirky as the art she creates. “I like a lot of kitschy and niche things,” she says. “My ideas are kind of kalat, but [they make] sense.”

Pat Kay’s passion for film began at the age of nine, when she was put in charge of documenting all her family’s trips with her dad’s camcorder. She mentions that she also watched a lot of music videos growing up, spending all her free time on Channel V or MTV. Since then, she’s created several videos ranging from short films, music videos, and experimental shoots Before transferring to the Ateneo’s communication program, Pat Kay spent a year in De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde under their digital filmmaking program. She says she decided to move schools because she

wanted a more holistic education as she wanted to take philosophy, sociology, and literature classes to go beyond the technical aspect of filmmaking.

“It’s not just [visuals]; there’s a lot of different dimensions to filmmaking. I felt like transferring to Ateneo would help me with reasoning and creating more meaningful narratives,” she says.

Pat Kay attributes most of her growth as a student filmmaker to the Loyola Film Circle (LFC), as well as the Ateneo Musicians’ Pool (AMP). She was accepted into LFC’s Production Core in her freshman year, where she joined a few projects and short films.

As for her stay in AMP, she made music videos and worked for different events, including AMPlugged, where she served as project head for school year 2016-2017. In the same year, she also served as the organization’s Videography Deputy.

In her junior year, Pat Kay served as LFC’s Production Core Executive.

She was also the director of the 2017 O-Film Suabe Things, where she worked with a large crew and experienced directing a feature film for the first time. “I’ve always kind of worked alone or with friends, but then, I had to learn to

work with total strangers. That kind of helped build my work—like workflow, and also work ethic, to help me with my style,” she shares.

LFC also allowed Pat Kay to properly immerse herself in local film cinema. Before she joined the organization, she admits she was exposed mostly to Western films, and she didn’t recognize the importance of familiarizing herself with films made for and by Filipinos. After attending and organizing several workshops, she was able to network with established filmmakers in Philippine cinema, who themselves started out with small roles before they got their big breaks as directors.

“I didn’t really realize how much of a growing industry the filmmaking community was here. Film is alive!” she muses.

The workshops also inspired Pat Kay to “give back in some way” should she become a well-known professional filmmaker in the future. “It’s very rare to have these kinds of speakers talk to you, have a workshop for free, and they were so willing to just help out and give advice to all these young aspiring filmmakers,” she adds.

Pat Kay ends her stay in the Ateneo as a recipient of the 2019 Loyola Schools Awards for the Arts under the Screen Arts category. Apart from her work in the University, she was also taken under the wing of director and Communication Department faculty John Torres for her internship at production house Los Otros. There, Pat Kay took on several responsibilities, such as experimenting with existing footage, assisting with scriptwriting, and attending art openings. She is also currently a contributing videographer and photographer for Young STAR. Among the most important lessons Pat Kay learned about being a filmmaker are enjoying the process, understanding herself better, and just being able to see everything through. “Once you figure out how you do things, how you work on set, and how you work with certain people, it makes it a lot less heavy and less pressuring,” she explains.

“Don’t be too concerned about being great in the start. Everyone’s gonna start kind of lame, but just keep making stuff, ‘ya feel?” .

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AN INHERITED HAUNTEDNESS

Ives Baconguis

BY BEA C. CONSTANTINO HAILING FROM the myths and mountains of Los Baños, creative writing senior Carissa Natalia Baconguis, or simply Ives, is easily recognized for her bright, colorful hair, and equally beaming sense of fashion. Speaking about her outfits reminiscent of anime snapshots or Yeo Kaa paintings, Ives says she dresses up depending on “what I first see in my closet, and then I’m like, ‘okay, I’ll just construct an outfit based on that.’”

The same description can be applied for her creative process behind her poems; works that are wild and vivid in nature. “I like challenging myself through the form or the language, how I can interplay the elements of a poem, or how I tie [elements] into a concept,” she says.

“I experiment a lot. Sometimes it comes up badly, sometimes it comes out pretty good. It’s also what I do with my poems—how I portray something with constraints because poetry is also very caged as a genre. Every space and every line is calculated.

How can [I] be wild in a space that’s so limiting?”

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Beyond the experimental nature that Ives has for her writing, she is also exceptional in her intentional usage of the Tagalog language. Ives is the only one in her BS Creative Writing batch who wrote purely in Tagalog for her thesis, and she even had a separate thesis advisor, Allan Popa, to guide her.

Although Ives admits that only started writing in Tagalog in college, she says she has been writing poems since she was six-years-old.

“A lot of people in my high school knew I would go to Ateneo kasi Englishera talaga ako,” she says of her decision to enter Ateneo.

“Pagdating kong college, I realized that there was actually a lack of Filipino poems.”

Ives then tried her best to write in Tagalog in college, but what ultimately pushed her to write in the language was Resil Mojares’ notion of the Filipino’s hauntedness. “[Mojares] always talks about the nation and the act of writing. We’re so haunted by our colonization,” she shares. “I was inspired by that [hauntedness].

[But], I realized that parang hindi ko siya na-cacapture in English. I felt

that the best way I [could] write this was in Filipino.”

She explains these ideas are what ultimately influenced her to write in Filipino, saying, “I tried really hard to get better at Filipino, and now I think I’m kind of okay with it that I want to inspire people din to write more locally. Kasi iba talaga ‘yung dating.

Meron ka talagang hindi ma-cacapture in English.”

(The impact is different. There are things you can’t capture in English.)

Beyond the language, Ives also incorporates Filipino mythology in her poems, like her favourite Tagalog myth of Apolaki and Mayari.

If not mythology, she also fixates on the idea of longing and romance, as she also grew up with romantic or spiritual poems.

“Growing up in the province, a lot of it is kuwentong bayan,” she says about her roots. “Going to Manila, ang different talaga ng ating understanding of mythology.

I grew up in Los Baños and it’s one of the most haunted places in the Philippines. [...] It’s a part of me. It’s a part of my culture growing up.”

As she graduates, Ives looks back at the shift in herself as a poet as she ends her journey in Ateneo. “Going into college, I only knew a few poets, and none of them were locals. [...]

There’s a whole stigma towards Filipino poetry. [...] There’s a whole politics [in literature] in college in Manila that I was exposed to because of Ateneo. I can say that it’s not really perfect. You will definitely have to work on looking for different information on your own.”

Whenever Ives tells people that she writes in Filipino, people would often ask why she even went to Ateneo in the first place, a university usually known to use English dominantly. With this, she responds by saying, “I couldn’t have known any of [this Filipino literature] if not for the Ateneo.”

From here, Ives aims to apply to grad school, and then apply to become a teaching assistant in the field of poetry.

“It’s my plan that I don’t really want to stop writing poetry. And If I do, then I might as well just share what I know about it,” she says. “But I also want to have, you know, a dog. I want to afford a dog.”

POLITICIZING PHOTOGRAPHY

Genesis Gamilong

BY AGA OLYMPIA GENESIS GAMILONG began her journey as a photographer through taking snapshots of rallies.

From the get-go, the legal management major is quick to point out her relative newness to the field.

“My first ever coverage was the Black Friday protest after the burial of [Ferdinand Marcos Sr.] in the Libingan ng Mga Bayani,” she begins, explaining that she had only had her camera for a month then after receiving it as a birthday gift. “I’ve never been into photography, but I love the arts, especially the visual arts. At first, I never thought of being a photographer since I had no praxis to it.”

She took her camera in stride and started snapping pictures of the protests she attended. Genesis observed that the spirit of protest awakened something remarkable in the people’s faces that she felt she wanted to capture. She felt the feelings of anger, disgust, and revolt of the people towards the decision of the burial.

The energy captured her heart and convinced her to join more rallies and document more events. For her, the day of the Marcos burial was the start of the political awakening of many Ateneans, including herself. In the midst of political turmoil, a photographer was born.

“Since I was part of Matanglawin Ateneo, I asked our Editor-in-Chief back then, who was Rambo Talabong, if I could cover the Black Friday Protest,” she shares. “I really liked the feeling of capturing the emotions and capturing the context of everything that happened during that momentous day.”

For her, the power of photography isn’t just something cool or an exercise of vain aesthetics; rather, Genesis shares that it is an instrument for politicizing stories.

Through her photography, Genesis says she wishes to forward the stories of the marginalized and amplify their voices. She has since decided to pursue photojournalism upon

discovering this passion of hers, even garnering a Loyola Schools Award for the Arts in recognition of her work.

Still, Genesis admits that there is more that she has to learn. She shares that one of her daily struggles in photography is navigating the fine line between ‘poverty porn’ and photojournalism.

“It is my dilemma too that if I am taking that photo to forward their story and their concerns or if she is taking a photo of it because it is aesthetically pleasing,” she says.

She explains that since her photography often showcases the plight of the marginalized, it can be confused with exoticizing and aestheticizing people’s suffering.

“I talked to a photographer [named] Raffy Lerma, and he told me that the first thing you should do before taking that photo is to talk to them [and] know them to [really] know their condition,” she says. “Make sure that one must be connected with the subject in order for the interaction not to be left empty.”

According to Genesis, a connection thus must be first established between the photographer and the subject in order to properly forward their story.

She advises other photographers to remember that one should not just take a picture for the simple reason that it looks nice. For Genesis, one should remember that the ultimate end of photojournalism is to highlight stories that need to be seen.

After graduation, she plans to work under established photojournalists.

Many of her idols are “nightcrawlers,” a type of photojournalist that specializes in photography that exposes violent scenes, stories, or faces that can be only seen during the veil of night. Her plans are looking up, as she has already met with some nightcrawler-photojou r na lists regarding a possible internship.

Genesis believes in photography that reveals the truth behind atrocities not readily seen, and that there is truth waiting to be found in the shadows of the world we do not know.

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THE EVOLUTION OF ALYSON

Pio Ligot, Miguel Erfe, Marcus Mababangloob, and Luis Uy

BY ISABELLA FELICIANO SMOKE MACHINES, strobe lights, and the reverb of a nearby amplifier— Pio Ligot (4 AB DS), Marcus Mababangloob (4 AB COM), Miguel Erfe (4 AB COM), and Luis Uy (4 BS CTM) are no strangers to this kind of environment. This boy band has been sharing their music with the Ateneo community since they were 6th graders, and almost a decade later, they continue to grow and produce more music. Those unfamiliar with Alyson may have heard some of their tunes such as “Miss Chinita,” “Telescope” from local school fairs, or from more recent hits such as “Heto (Na Naman)” from their self-titled debut EP. Born and bred blue, these boys have known each other since their days in Ateneo Grade School as classmates.

It was a pivotal year for them when Pio, Luis, and Marcus decided to join a mini battle of the bands competition known as the salo-salo.

At that time, it was only Luis who knew how to play an instrument, which was lead guitar, but this didn’t stop the rest of the boys from picking up an instrument and learning just in time to compete.

Marcus learned how to play the drums, and Pio learned the rhythm guitar as well.

After a year’s worth of practice, they eventually had their time to shine at the salo-salo. Unfortunately for them, it was the exact same day Typhoon Ondoy made landfall. As Pio would put it, “During our first gig, na-Ondoy kami–di siya natuloy (Our first gig was canceled because of Ondoy).”

One would think that the sudden cancellation of their very first gig would lead to the boys immediately heading home and giving up. There was no one to perform for at the grade school covered courts, so why bother?

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Despite the situation, their love for music and tenacity to perform only shone brighter.

As a matter of fact, it compelled them to add another member to their band in 2011, who happened to be Miguel Erfe. “[E]ventually, we needed a bassist.” Pio said. “So we made one, we made a bassist. Erfe was very prominent,” Marcus continued.

“Erfe plays keyboards actually. [H]e learned from scratch how to play [the bass].” With Pio on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Luis on lead guitar, Erfe on bass, and Marcus on drums and back-up vocals, this group seemed to have it all. The only thing they needed now was a name to call themselves.

A curious question that lingers even among the most casual of listeners, is the name of the band.

Their name sounds as if inspired by an ex-lover, especially considering the group is exclusively male, a la Maroon 5 when they were previously known as Jane’s Flowers.

However, the name is much more humorous in origin than anyone would expect.

“We were originally called two other band names that we did not want to disclose but [we chose] Alyson because before when we used to play, nag-aalisan yung mga tao. So ta-da, charan! Kinonyo na namin.” Erfe jokes.

(We were originally called two other band names that we did not want to disclose but [we chose] Alyson because before when we used to play, the audience would leave. So ta-da, charan! We wrote it in English.)

The name is simply fanciful wordplay for the Tagalog translation of “alisan”, which means “to leave or depart.” This was because, at that time, the band was virtually unknown.

Through grade school, high school, and now in their final lap of college as

undergraduates, there’s no mountain too high or river too low enough to stop them from doing what they love—despite balancing academics, racing against time for practice, and adjusting to young adult life. In spite of the chaos, the boys say the transition was quite seamless.

They also credit their home organization, the Ateneo Musicians’ Pool (AMP), for providing them with the support and networking opportunities to grow personally and musically. As the cliché goes, if there’s a will, there’s a way. The love is still there and these boys never gave up the will to pursue their music and as they all concluded, things just fell into place.

Performing in gigs, or gigging as they would call it, became second nature to them. They no longer felt the anxiety of messing up or wondering if enough people will show up to see them. They just play for whoever’s there. The fun isn’t in how well they do—it’s in the raw beauty of the moment, in how the audience responds. According to Marcus, “Call me a purist but [my favorite part of gigging] is the moment—while you’re there you just kind of forget everything else there. I think that’s performing music at its purest form.”

Pio adds, “What I love about gigging the most—are the people who support you after.”

Their sincerity is prominent in how they perform. Proud of their own sound, even practice doesn’t come off as an obligation or a chore. For them, it’s always an exciting opportunity for them to fine-tune their performance and bond together. Nearing a decade as a band, with seven years of experience and exposure in the gig circuit, the boys of Alyson have grown together into a family.

“Nagkaroon ako ng tatlo pang mga kapatid (I gained three brothers),” as Erfe would say. Although don’t be mistaken, their family extends well beyond each other; they consider their loyal listeners as part of the family too.

There’s more to Alyson that just playing in local festivals, battle of the band competitions, and other gigs.

In 2018, Alyson released their selftitled debut EP. Although they say the entire process took longer than expected, Pio sums it nicely saying, “From day one until the EP launch that took two years in the making and ang tagal rin (it took a while), the EP you can say, is a manifestation of that time–the transition from high school to college–you might not notice it [but for us] every single song [has] something different [because] of that time that passes.”

Each song from their debut EP is a love letter reminiscing of a distinctive time in their lives, echoing the transition period from high school to college—a hallmark that these boys were growing up now, and so would their sound.

Even with long years on their belt, Alyson is still not in it for the money, fame, or glory, but for the thrill of it all.

The opportunity to create something and share your craft with anyone and everyone who is willing to listen is a rare one, and these boys aren’t letting go of it anytime soon. Luis concludes they’ll keep playing “wherever the path takes us, whether we get signed or if we move somewhere else to another city [...] As long as we be true to ourselves as long as we continue to make the music we enjoy making [we won’t] let anyone else destroy that.”

As the late Pedro Arrupe, SJ once said, “Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything else.” So far, these boys have done exactly that.

IMAGES PROVIDED BY INTERVIEWEES

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Narratives 60

ROB NAZAL

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GEELA GARCIA

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SAM KIM

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ALEX BEJASA

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MIKA FILOTEO

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ANDREA ESPIRITU

JEF THE EAGLE

Rob Nazal

BY MARTINA R. ROCES THESE DAYS, it’s impossible to be unfamiliar with Jef the Eagle.

With over 14,ooo followers on his page, Jef the Eagle has made a name for himself as a meme machine and cultural icon unique to the Atenean experience. His memes on Facebook, which poke fun at student life and the latest trends on and off campus, have been liked and shared by thousands of students from even different universities, hence creating something of a community for fun-loving university students. This blue bird all began with graduating management economics senior Rob Nazal.

“I started Jef mainly as a mascot for my tirade against Ateneo Trade,” says Rob who was banned from the popular Atenean-exclusive buy-andsell Facebook group for what he says was no apparent reason.

This led him to start his own version, cheekily called Areneow Trade 2.0. Rob needed an admin to manage the group. Instead of using his own account, he created Jef the Eagle, who was named after a memorable scene from comedy 60

flick 22 Jump Street (2014). What started out as an account that was meant to promote a secondary marketplace for Ateneans grew into the full-fledged meme page that it is now. From making fun of conyo Atenean stereotypes to teasing the university’s rivalry with a certain school along Taft Avenue, there is no issue that Jef leaves untouched with his trademark “broski” humor.

More than just his online presence, though, Rob is also known for his events that have caused quite a spectacle—and sometimes, controversy—on campus. His first event was the Naruto Run at Red Brick Road, where dozens of Ateneans watched as 20 students, led by Rob, gamely ran around the area dressed in their best Naruto costumes.

The event immediately made its rounds on social media and inspired other universities to stage their own versions. He shares that it really started out as a joke and that he originally didn’t think it would push through. Because of its success, he came up with two more events later in the year which he based on popular trends at that time: the Wakanda Forever Charge

and the Dante Gulapa Eagle Dance.

The fun capped off this year with Ateneans Assemble: Endgame sa Red Brick Road.

The fun and happiness that people experienced as a community during those events are what Rob says inspired him to keep on coming up with those ideas. “Since [the] Naruto Run, it’s sort of been like tradition that every year we want to do something fun. Anyone can join in and just enjoy,” he shares.

As for some detractors online who criticized his events for being a waste of time, Rob believes that that’s not the case at all.

“In the end, our goal isn’t to disrupt classes or anything. It’s just to enjoy for kahit ten minutes in a day, di ba?” he says. “Let the Ateneo community know that Ateneo is fun, that we can do fun things like this, and that we should always continue to be creative and find ways to help everyone in the community enjoy for a while.”

With all the joy he brings to the community, Rob admits that he also experiences his fair share of difficulties. One of the reasons why he’s able to survive the things that

he goes through is because he always tries to be happy.

“It’s you who makes the decision of whether you’re happy or not and whether you make other people happy as well. It’s all about making your perspective as positive as possible,” he shares. As the real-life face behind Jef the Eagle, he hopes that people will remember him after he graduates for the happiness they felt whether they joined his events or laughed at his memes. “At least once in their life, they were able to smile because of something I made or helped make.”

A true-blue Atenean since his pre-school years, Rob expresses that he definitely will miss Ateneo as his senior year of college comes to a close.

“I feel as if Ateneo in itself is such a big part of my personality. I would’ve never thought of Jef if it wasn’t for Ateneo,” he admits. “Meeting people, seeing new things. Learning so much about life. I’ll always remember Ateneo in my heart for that and it will always be a part of me.”

GRIT BEYOND BOUNDARIES

Sam Kim

BY ALEX AGCAOILI TAKING BRISK steps with a backpack slung on one shoulder, Sam Kim arrived at the interview with us apologizing, say ing, “Sorr y to keep you waiting, I came from a business meeting.”

Rushing from one place to another has been an integral part of Sam’s life.

Sam shares that he is strongly shaped by his multi-cultural background, having lived in Korea, China, Australia, and the Philippines at various points throughout his life. In particular, his parents were influenced by the years they spent in Australia. “[They were] very Australian [in their understanding of] independence, [and] very Asian about everything else,” he says. It was by seeing how young Australians were typically financially independent very early on in their lives, often starting at the age of 18, that they came to feel it would be best for their kids’ growth if they followed suit as well.

Thus, it came to be that Sam had to carry the responsibility of paying his way through university life.

As a graduating political science major, Sam has juggled rigorous academic requirements and varsity responsibilities with various

internships, part-time gigs, fulltime jobs, and business ventures.

He has managed to shoulder his full tuition payments and living expenses throughout his college life, paying his way and paving his path through the past five years.

Sam was preparing to pay for his own education even before freshman year started. Right after graduating from high school, he took a threemonth internship in Korea to begin his savings.

Throughout his college life, Sam has taken several part-time jobs and gigs. Speaking four languages (Korean, English, Filipino, and Chinese) definitely proved to be an advantage, since he was able to land several translation gigs throughout the years. One of his most exciting gigs was translating for the Blackpink concert in Manila.

In the middle of college, having gone through his savings, Sam took a Leave of Absence for a year to build capital once more. In that year, he worked in both Korea and Australia.

Coming back to the Philippines and ready for the last half of university, he transitioned more towards investing in stocks and pursuing his own independent business ventures.

Working while studying has, essentially, shaped Sam’s college journey. Reflecting on how it has affected his life, Sam talks about how working while studying has forced him to become a planner. “I always made my daily schedule the night before,” he says, “including timetables, daily goals, and free times for studying.”

The past few years, he says, have demanded a whole lot of grit. “It’s not a matter of your talent, it’s a matter of putting the long, boring hours into it.” He talks about how he’s had to sacrifice trips with his friends because of budget or time concerns, his many sleepless nights, and the times he’s had to drag his feet through campus hallways just to get through the day.

One of his biggest struggles, he says, is balancing his time. Because he often has to leave campus for extended periods of time for various gigs, the unli-cut privilege for Dean’s List students matters a lot to him, which is why he works hard to keep his QPI up. It gets frustrating, he shares, when professors are unwilling to accommodate that. “I’m just asking for a bit of understanding,” he says about this struggle.

But for all the struggles and challenges he has faced came life

lessons and experiences that made it worth it. For one, learning about finance has made it clear to him that it is definitely a career he wants to look into. At a point when a lot of us are unsure of where to go or what next step to take, Sam’s picture of his future is a bit clearer than the average graduate’s.

Moreover, Sam’s most important takeaway from his working student experience is the mindset that he’s developed. His work had him constantly meeting new and inspiring people of different backgrounds. From this he’s learned two things: First, there’s always someone better than you. This will make you feel small, in the grand scheme of things. Second, that feeling is a good thing.

In the end, for Sam, it is the constant pushing yourself out of your comfort zone that makes your story. That’s precisely what made his own story one of grit, perseverance, and priceless memories. And even though at some points he may have had to drag himself from one step to the next, it’s those moments that made him stronger than ever.

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LONG-LASTING LEGACY

Mika Filoteo

BY PATRICE V. MIRANDA FROM THE bustling streets of Tokyo, to the towering temples of Bangkok, all the way to the colorful roadways of Mexico City, the life of the average debater cannot compare to that of legal management senior Mika Filoteo’s.

As the two-time best speaker in Asia, Mika has spent years honing her skill and climbing her way to the top, where debate has taken her to countries far and wide, outside the confines of Southeast Asia and even into the West. Prior experience from high school guided her throughout her college career in the Ateneo Debate Society (ADS), and helped her gain international recognition and overwhelming success in the debate world.

“During one 7th grade graduation practice day,” she recalls, “the Miriam College high school debate team came onto the stage and announced that they were doing tryouts for potential summer recruits.” The tryouts consisted of a random number system in which a candidate would randomly pick a number, which would then correspond to a topic given by the 62

team. Candidates would be given one night to prepare a speech, which was to be delivered the next day. For Mika, all it took was one speech about Andres Bonifacio, and the rest was history.

She was officially welcomed into the debate community. From then on, she joined tournaments both nationally and internationally, leading her to eventually be named one of the best debaters in Asia.

However, holding such a title wasn’t easy. “Each tournament is at least a week long, and is extremely draining—mentally, emotionally, and physically,” she explains. “In addition to the majors, debaters would also usually attend multiple preparation tournaments, which are usually weekends long.”

She mentions the many times she had to study on the plane on the way to her tournament, and the countless classes she had to miss to represent the University. According to her, some exams would have to be rescheduled, and a number of quizzes would even be completely missed.

“After a tournament, no matter how tired I was, I’d just force myself

to study and catch up for my classes,” she says.

Never one to make excuses, Mika tackled both school and debate with a stubborn determination. This determination produced favorable results. Out of the seven semesters Mika spent in the Ateneo, she spent four on the Dean’s List (DL).

Considering how many lessons she’s missed and tournaments she’s gone through, this was an incredible feat.

Some students spend their entire college life trying to achieve DL status, yet for her, it was almost a regular occurrence.

“I honestly think I’ve come this far through sheer force of will,” Mika says. “Debate taught me to be hungry, strong-willed, and to know how to persevere despite all odds.” It’s evident that debate has definitely led her to win more than a couple tournaments.

Despite her exceptionally decorated career, Mika insists that the prestige in debate lies in the lessons it has taught and the person it molds you to be.

“It’s not about the trophies, awards, or compliments because all of these

are fleeting,” Mika says. “What will matter in the end is your character.

Did it make you kinder? Smarter?

More empathetic?”

Debate, according to her, was always more than just a competition.

It was something that provided a sense of fulfillment and a sense of purpose.

“If it gave you a reason to get up in the morning, if it gave you a sense of community, then you can say it was all worth it.”

Nowadays, Mika spends her days judging debate tournaments rather than competing in them. This is the usual career progression of debaters in the circuit, and it’s expected of senior, more experienced debaters.

After her substantial contribution to the debate community, Mika still hopes to retire her debate career, and pursue other endeavors.

“I’d like to leave debate feeling satisfied with what I’ve already accomplished,” she says. “I’d like to try other things, like maybe going to the gym.” It’s sure that whatever the endeavor, Mika will excel in it as it is the only way she knows how.

FASHIONABLY PASSIONATE

Geela Garcia

BY MARTINA R. ROCES IF YOU’VE ever found yourself scrolling through Ateneo Trade, you’ve probably come across one of the many posts of communication major Geela Garcia, whose name has become synonymous with trendy and fashionable clothes and accessories.

It feels like every week that Geela has new apparel to share on the group, where dozens of students snap up her offers almost instantaneously.

Geela tells how it all started with a planner she wanted to buy at a discount by ordering multiple pieces and selling the extra, not prioritizing earning—except the extra came with many unexpected orders. With such a thriving business at this point, it’s interesting to hear Geela confess that she never really saw her Ateneo Trade posts in that way. “If [there’s something I want to buy, I would post it on Trade so that others looking for the same thing could see it also.]

That’s what happened,” she explains.

For Geela, there’s no harm in sharing her style with others. In return, she gets a good discount and earns a little extra. Not a bad deal.

Yet she doesn’t stop there: Behind the name who posts on Trade is also a passionate photographer.

Initially interested in shooting fashion editorials, once news of the controversial burial of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in the Libingan

ng Mga Bayani broke, she took to the streets for the first time, armed with her camera, and took photographs of the protests happening at the time.

“First time ko gumawa ng something more than about my hobbies,” she shares. “Paglabas ko, narealize ko na may place ang photography doon at may kahalagahan ang documentation.”

(It was the first time for me to make something more than about my hobbies. When I went out, I realized that photography has a place there and there is value in documentation.)

From there, she joined Matanglawin Ateneo as an outlet for her pictures.

When she’s not busy selling clothes online or taking pictures out on the street, Geela also works as one of the brains behind the JSEC coffee stall Glasshouse. Formed by her group of friends, she hopped on board as the creatives head. It may seem hard to balance the demands of academic work with her two businesses and her photography, but Geela has had it all under control for the past year.

During her internship under artist and designer Karl Castro, Geela spent three days in a Cordillera community in what she describes as an “intense immersion”. She spent time getting to know the members of the community, listening to their struggles in protecting their ancestral lands from the government and corporations who want to exploit its resources.

Some members of the community were tortured for standing up for their rights. It was in that experience that she became conscious of her advocacy for the indigenous people.

“Binibigyan nila ng faces ‘yung mga statistics na nababasa mo. Once you hear those stories, doon mo mas maiintindihan ang sitwasyon nila (They give faces to the statistics we read about. Once you hear those stories, that’s when you better understand their situation),” she says.

She sees the labor and farming sectors as the backbone of the Philippine economy and its people’s basic needs, and yet, they are among the most displaced and marginalized.

If others feel discouraged from being part of the movement because of the stereotype given to Ateneans, she advises that it doesn’t matter once you’re out there.

“You’re just fighting for the same causes,” she explains. “Magugulat ka dahil matututo ka from different sectors. Never naging barricade ‘yung pagka-Atenean ko kasi mas busy sila na i-assert kung ano ‘yung kailangang ipaglaban more than kung sino ka.”

(You’re just fighting for the same causes, but you’d be surprised that you can actually learn a few things from different sectors. Your being Atenean doesn’t become a barricade because they would be more busy asserting

whatever they’re fighting for rather than who you are.)

For Geela, her utmost desire is to tell the stories of the different faces she captures through her photography.

Because of her experience in the Cordillera mountains, she realized how most city folk tend to forget the things that truly matter since life is just so fast-paced in the metro. She wants people to realize the importance of documentation in this day and age.

“Paano mo mabibigyan ng mukha yung mga heroes na hindi naman nadidiscuss?” she asks. “Hindi sila sikat, pero sa isang community relevant siya. Ganoon ‘yung gusto ko gawin sa photography ko.”

(How do you give a human face to the everyday heroes who don’t get discussed? They aren’t popular, but in a given community, they are relevant. That is what I want to do in my photography.)

In the future, Geela hopes to meld her passions for fashion, activism, and photography by creating a sustainable fashion business. And she really means it when she says that she wants it to be sustainable—everything, from the raw materials to the people who make up the business, must be ethically sourced.

To do this, she wants to start from the ground and work with the people.

What many might see as a pipe dream is something Geela is willing to fight for.

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BREAKING BEYOND THE FAMILIAR

Alex Bejasa

BY MICHELLE D. ABAD AND FRANCO M. LUNA “I THINK I genuinely love learning,” muses information design (ID) supersenior Alex Bejasa of her love for language. “I love language because it’s the beating heart of a culture. Ang ganda, the way it develops.”

With minors in sustainability and in French, Alex’s zest for learning is evident from the get-go as she laughs recalling how she joined up to seven orgs earlier in college. “When I was younger, I always thought that I wanted to be magis, but my understanding of that was always [to get] a lot of [good] grades, a lot of org positions,” she explains.

Although considering a management degree at first, Alex initially decided to go the path of the creative because “there was a whole aspect of ‘graphic design is lucrative’. It’s becoming a big thing because the world needs designers.” The world was a contest, and Alex was ready to compete. “[It was] work your way up, end up in advertising, be a creative director,” she explained.

Later on, she went on her Junior Term Abroad (JTA) in France, which she says struck her with a certain disturbance when she returned to Manila.

“I wanted to get that level of inspiration [I saw in the European designers], because Europe’s very different. I wanted so badly to feel the same way I did in JTA, [filled with] excitement to go to new places, so inspired by wonderful designs around me,” she recalls. “When I got home, I was doing a lot of stuff. Work was my life, grades were my life. I was in a crisis because [it felt like] I didn’t know how to design anymore.”

When Alex reverted to her regular programming, she found that her 64

commitments were no longer giving her excitement and inspiration. That was when she knew that perhaps her former idea of magis as all-out acads and orgs and following the conventional, linear path of making her way up into a corporate industry wasn’t as fulfilling as she thought it out to be.

A year after her JTA experience, Alex also attended the 16th congress of the Ateneo Student Leaders Assembly (ASLA), an experience she says made a huge impact on the way she looked at her career path. After having gone through the ASLA experience, she began to understand how her passion could be used outside the world she knew.

Alex dropped many of her commitments after that, even though she initially felt scared to leave something she was so familiar with. “In [my former org], I wasn’t passionate about [the kind of work given to me.] It wasn’t the kind of design I wanted to do,” she says.

Her sudden freedom also came with a sense of liberation. “Everyone has expectations of where they’re going to go, [but] it keeps you so limited in your options,” she reflects. “[And] at what cost? When you finally achieve it, you realize you’re not happy because it wasn’t what you wanted, it was just what people expected of you.”

Only upon leaving her organizations did Alex realize that she was living in a bubble of the things she committed to. Alex describes this new period as one that afforded her a newfound clarity, where her life became “so much more interesting” because her eyes were opened to new perspectives. She began learning in the little experiences in life that passed her by, and in discussions with her friends about the national

situation that made her say, “Oo nga ‘no, I didn’t see it that way.”

“I realized ang lawak ng mundo (the world is so big),” she says. At present, Alex is a Knowledge Management and Communication intern at the United Nations Development Programme.

Despite the shift in her career path, one thing Alex says she held onto was her passion for design. “I feel like throughout the years, the reason why I stayed changed. I could’ve shifted. I wanted to [at one point],” she admits. “[But] it was slowly made obvious to me that we weren’t designing just for the corporate world. It was always for creating solutions for problems in mind.”

It’s this advocacy-oriented approach to design that Alex says kept her in her course. She recalls a certain conviction and inspiration she felt upon seeing her batchmates’ theses that were problembased, particularly one project that tackled environmental issues.

“You can change lives through design, and that’s what really made me fall in love with my course all over again four years after I got into it,” she shares.

“Design is always for others.”

Post-graduation, Alex says she sees herself working for an NGO or in government. “I want to work for the government at least once in my life,” she shares. “I don’t really know how that’s going to play out.”

Still, it’s clear she’s fallen in love with the journey. “I [said] once that my life has no direction right now, [and] it’s probably the worst my career has been. [But] I’m super excited to see where it goes. I want to do something meaningful,” she says.

Even with Alex’s love for learning, she realizes that there is more to see and experience beyond the hill of

Loyola, as there are solutions to the world’s problems that cannot be found by intellect alone. While her passion for design is still aflame in her heart, she is opening herself to learning even more beyond working at a computer.

“Right now, I’m doing my best to equip myself with understanding problems on a theoretical level, and just trying to learn as much as I can while I’m still in the University. But as soon as I get out, what I really want is not necessarily just to work towards a particular advocacy, but also learn about what’s actually happening beyond the books,” she reflects. Alex sees herself immersing with actual people and communities somewhere along the road, because “sometimes [on your own,] the solution you have in mind isn’t what they need.”

In a world where it is easy to succumb to pessimism, Alex dreams of one where people hold onto even just a glimmer of hope, even when some might see her as naïve. “I just want everyone to be friends!” she laments with a laugh. “[We should] talk to people about what’s happening in our country [...] I hope that people are given the opportunity to do good in their own way, and keep doing it. You [might not be able to] change the world, but you can change someone’s world.”

Formerly believing that a career path was a competition to beat others to the top, Alex declares, “My crazy dream is that people start caring again for each other. Once you start seeing outside of your comforts, ang dami mong pwedeng gawin para sa ibang tao (there’s so much you can do for other people).”

CLIMBING THE RAVINE

PHOTO SOURCED FROM INTERVIEWEE’S PUBLIC FACEBOOK ACCOUNT PHOTO BY MIGUEL SADORRA AND EMIL SANTOS (ATENEO LEX)

BY ISABELLA PEREZ-RUBIO IN HER freshman year of college, life dealt Andrea Espiritu a severe blow after she lost her mother to a six-year battle with cancer.

Before losing her mother, Andrea says her dream was to go to Ateneo.

She fought tooth and nail to convince her parents that the Blue and White was the right choice despite the fact that she had not initially been offered a scholarship, which had been her parents’ stipulation. However, after realizing how badly her daughter wanted to go to Ateneo, Andrea’s mother was able to secure her a 75-percent scholarship.

But at Andrea’s lowest point, it was an Ateneo professor who failed to support her. After having missed her MA 19 midterm due to her mother’s wake, Andrea says her professor refused to allow her a makeup exam as she recalls breaking down in tears at the sound of her professor’s raised voice in front of her blockmates.

Although a talk with the head of the Mathematics Department eventually granted her permission to take the test, she says the lack of empathy she felt from her professor had already done its damage.

Thus, what followed was a long period of uncertainty where Andrea began to second-guess many of her choices. “[I felt] that there was always something lacking in me,” she explains. “I always felt like, ‘Oh, she would never see this,’ [or] I would always question if I was doing the right thing because I was always guided by someone who [knew] what the right thing [was].”

Eventually, Andrea found her place in Ateneo, which renewed her confidence in her choice of school.

She says she found a family in Ateneo Lex, a business-law organization, of which she is the current President.

She says that she feels uplifted by this connection with the many students who share her beliefs about ethical business practice. During her time with Lex, Andrea says she learned to move past her mistakes—not allowing them to define her. She shares that the organization created a safe space for her to grow. In return, Andrea contributed to Lex by fine-tuning the organization’s internal systems, creating a mentorship program which invited non-active members to participate, and encouraging

Andrea Espiritu innovative initiatives such as a business class and a baked goods fundraiser called LexEAT. A number of professors have also managed to leave an indelible mark on Andrea’s Ateneo experience. In particular, she recalls her TH 121 professor Javier Luis P. Gomez quite clearly—she fondly reminisces his banana-printed socks and how he would stand atop a table to drive a point home. She says she remembers the feeling of acceptance which backgrounded his classes and the conviction that he was teaching them about life rather than a tangentially related body of knowledge.

Andrea also credits part of her unique education to her LS 142 professor Julio Miguel P. Azurin, whom she says instilled in her the humanistic belief that people are capable of changing themselves, that everyday is a new start, and that we all grow at different paces.

Now on the cusp of graduation, Andrea is preoccupied with the next stage of her life. She was recently accepted into the Halt International Business School in Boston for further studies and is currently weighing her options.

In the long run, she hopes to work with companies that prioritize sustainability.

“I don’t want to be in dead space,” she says firmly. “I don’t want to be waiting for stuff to happen.”

Andrea will leave Ateneo perhaps more profoundly changed than even she imagined, as the loss she faced during her time in the University demanded a level of personal growth to match it.

“I realized that if you lose someone, it doesn’t mean that you lose yourself also. It just means that you need to have the courage to restart your life.

I guess that’s been my philosophy all throughout,” she ruminates.

“That I have to have that courage to go through these challenges on my own because I’ll never truly be with someone else. I’ll always be alone as I experience everything that happens in my life.”

Despite her significant loss, Andrea has had the courage to open herself up to new people and new experiences daily—but she has also proven to herself that she is enough even on her own.

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66

Mentors 68

EDWIN YAPTANGCO

73

OLIVER ALMADRO

69

MANNY DY

74

ALLAN POPA

70

KENNIE ROBLES-ASUNCION

75

MATEC VILLANUEVA

71

RACHEL SANCHEZ

76

INEZ PONCE DE LEON

72

BRIAN GIRON

77

CHRIS PEABODY

67

NAVIGATING THE WATERS OF THE BANKING INDUSTRY

Edwin Yaptangco

BY CARLOS H. CRUZ BEFORE JOINING the Ateneo’s Economics Department, Edwin Yaptangco had a productive 40-year career in the banking industry, to say the least. The current Money and Banking instructor spent a total six years abroad, split between attending post-graduate classes and a stint at Citibank, San Francisco. Upon returning to the Philippines in 1989, Yaptangco climbed up the ranks in three different firms, ranging from local investment house UBP Capital Corporation to multinational banks such as France-based BNP Paribas’ and Belgium’s KBC Bank NV, where he retired in 2016 after serving as Country Manager for 14 years.

Throughout a banking journey that spanned across three continents, he has familiarized himself with the tricks of the trade as well as the nuances that are tied to corporate life.

But at the root of his illustrious career, Yaptangco started out in the same seats where the graduating batch will be donning the toga embellished with the university seal at the end of the school year.

BUILDING THE ROOTS Graduating with a double major in AB Economics (‘79) and BS Management (‘80), Yaptangco sought to build his resume further. Given the opportunity and a fortunate amount of generous Californiabased relatives willing to take him in, the Ateneo alumnus attended 68

San Francisco State University for his Masters of Arts in Economics.

Through an Optional Practical Training work permit that was approved upon graduation in 1983, he joined Citibank’s office in San Francisco and was exposed to both classroom and on-the-job training. “I had high-caliber officemates from all over the world [and was] able to feed off brilliant minds of my bosses and peers,” he says.

Although Yaptangco was not drawn to consumer banking because of its seemingly mundane transactions, his role as US West Coast Business Manager of Global Payment Products formed the bulk of his experience in consumer banking which was highly regarded by future employers.

This period was crucial for his career as Yaptangco narrates how he was able to build interpersonal skills while the inclusive and growth-centered working environment allowed him to build on the technical side just as much as the topnotch post-graduate programs. “The organizational structure [in Citibank] was downplayed,” he says. “Office environment in the US is more congenial with a family-type atmosphere. Senior officers come across as big brothers [or] sisters to lower-ranked employees.”

Financed by his own earnings, Yaptangco relocated to the United Kingdom where he acquired a Masters in Science in Management Sciences from the Manchester Business School in 1988. From there, he made the decision to return to

the Philippines, with the country's economy expected to take flight as the political scene stabilized.

RETURNING TO THE PHILIPPINES Upon returning to the Philippines, Yaptangco would focus primarily on institutional banking, covering investment, treasury, corporate, and revenue generating banking activities.

As he was exposed to the corporate environment in the Philippines, he had to adjust to the boss-subordinate relationship. “[The working environment locally is] the reverse of the US culture. It’s very much structured based on ranking,” he says. “It’s not a family type atmosphere, it’s really a business atmosphere.”

Dealing with the intricacies of corporate life was just one adjustment as Yaptangco would also deal with the high stakes of investment banking which became more critical as the Asian Financial Crisis swept the region in 1997—just a year after joining KBC Bank NV’s Philippine office.

Amidst the uncertainty and bad loans hitting financial institutions, gathering all relevant information and conducting stringent analyses of the data became all the more important during the financial crisis. “Not all decisions may turn out right, but one should be all right if the due diligence has always been carried out,” he says.

“We had problems, we had bad loans, but since I did my job right they didn’t put the blame on me.”

Five years later, his attention to the detail definitely paid off as Yaptangco was tapped to replace an expatriate as KBC Bank NV’s Country Manager in the Philippines up until his retirement in 2016.

AN INDUSTRY AWAITS Contrary to popular sentiment, the banking industry can be a valuable learning experience across various industries and companies that propel the Philippine economy forward.

“Before granting or underwriting credit facilities, stringent screening is required so bankers become vicarious experts in the businesses of their clients across markets and industries.”

With the Philippine economy growing even further and more sophisticated product lines entering the market, aspiring bankers will need to be more critical in assessing risk and reward. As funding becomes a crucial asset of developing countries, bankers can spur growth by increasing credit lines and the availability of funds to those who need it.

Yaptangco’s navigation through foreign work environments and the Philippine banking industry is a journey that graduates pursuing further studies abroad and careers in corporate banking will seek to experience for themselves. “Those who come up to the challenge will find banking as both an intellectually and financially rewarding career,” he notes.

FIFTY GOLDEN YEARS

Manny Dy

BY THEA UNSON TEACHING FOR five decades is no mean feat, but with relentless dedication, it is certainly possible.

Philosophy professor Manuel “Manny” Dy, Jr, PhD has done so unflinchingly, firm and determined amid all that has transpired in the past fifty years.

“The School of Humanities has already written about this,” he says animatedly, pertaining to an article about his golden anniversary in the field of teaching. “It’s called The Golden Boy.” It is certainly an endeavor that entails much pride and honor.

Throughout his lengthy career, Dy has had the privilege of witnessing all the transformations the Ateneo has gone through and how it has grown and prospered in the past fifty years.

He was not a mere spectator on the sidelines, though—he had an active role in shaping the Loyola Schools community into what it is today.

“For one thing, I was partly the cause of these changes,” he says.

SCHOOL FOR THE NATION He recalls his boyhood in the school, where there were only three hundred students per batch. “Ateneo used to be a very small community.

You knew everybody,” he says.

Such exclusivity meant limiting the number of people who could be brought up by an Ateneo education—according to Dy, his predecessors “really held on to the view that the Ateneo should be a small academic community.”

When Dy himself became the first lay to be appointed as Admissions Director around 1995, he decided to change that. He had the support of then-University President Bienvenido Nebres, SJ. Once himself only a hopeless dreamer of getting into the school, Dy wanted the Ateneo to open its gates to as many young people as possible. “I believe the Ateneo should be a school for the nation,” he says. “It should not be limited to only people from Metro Manila.”

This tradition of opening more doors carried on ever since, and today the Ateneo is a vast community, with around 7,600 members. While it flourished in population—just as intended—Dy admits that it has its own set of difficulties. It’s “harder to practice cura personalis,” he says, expressing his frustration on how difficult it is to focus on individuals in big classes.

Still, Dy has no regrets in making this fateful decision. He knew that

the Ateneo “has to have an impact on the nation,” and believes that this impact continues to be carried out today.

BEGINNINGS AND LEARNINGS Although he’s been teaching for fifty years, Dy still thinks there is much to look forward to. “I’m excited,” he says of his golden anniversary.

He started teaching at the young age of 20—a decision he had not considered before it was offered to him. Decades later and an unlikely chance he took has paved the way for the entire of his professional career thus far. “It’s partly the inspiration of my teachers in high school and college,” he explained. “[It was also] a way for me to think forward for the scholarship I got in college.”

According to the article he proudly refers to, Dy could not afford the tuition in Ateneo back then. The school, he says, was nothing more than a mere dream. But he was able to secure a scholarship through the efforts of his mentor, Fr. Donahue, SJ. And to play this forward even further, Dy implemented his own scholarship program—a fact unknown to many people. Dy recalls with beaming pride how the scholarship has had children graduate and thrive in the

fields of engineering and architecture.

Although he has been a teacher for fifty years, Dy says he continue to learn from his students. “I think they taught me more than I ever taught them,” he admitted. “I’ve learned from them many, many things.”

The most important thing he’s learned? “The best way to teach is [through] yourself,” he says. “In other words, you have to walk your talk.”

‘SIMPLENG TAO’ In his office, Dy keeps a poster of one of his talks in 2010, and it says two words: “Simpleng tao (Simple person).”

If there were a certain philosophy he abides by, it would be that phrase. “I guess that’s it. That’s the thing I live by the most,” he says.

But this would not seem enough to young students. He says he wanted to impart two main things: “One, be yourself,” he says. “Two, be of service to others.”

Manny Dy has been the epitome of being himself and being of service.

He dearly hopes students would follow the same thinking. “As you go down from the hill, just remember: You have to be of service to others,” he says. “But, from time to time, come back to recharge.”

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UNTIL THAT DREAM IS YOURS

Kennie Robles-Asuncion

BY ENZO PASTOR IT’S BEEN 16 years since Coach Kennie Robles-Asuncion came on board the Ateneo Badminton Program as full-time head coach for the Men’s and Women’s teams.

Her priorities have changed drastically since then: When she was recruited in 2003, she was still an active member of the Philippine National Team. While her main focus at the time was her commitment to represent the country, she agreed to join Ateneo’s Badminton Program on the side. However, it didn’t take long before Robles was enamored by the idea of staying for good.

Right off the bat, staying seemed to pay off instantly. In just her first season with the Women’s team that same year, she quickly guided the Lady Eagles to a championship as they bagged the gold in the UAAP Season 66 Women’s Badminton Tournament.

Fast forward to UAAP Season 81, and the now-long-tenured mentor has once again accomplished leading the Women’s team to another elusive gold after settling for silver and bronze in Seasons 77 to 79 and Season 80, respectively.

MENTORSHIP BEYOND THE COURT Championships in competitive sports are never a guarantee. They 70

don’t come any easier with each passing season, but Robles has continued to stay with Ateneo Badminton as she finds fulfillment in pushing her players to be the best they can be. For her, there is joy in being able to help her players change their mindsets and pushing them to achieve things they thought they couldn’t do.

“Because you believed it with them, and you dreamed that dream with them and then you accomplish it with them, it makes it all the more worth it,” she shares.

The mentor’s remarkable 16-year tenure with the program has given her the opportunity to be a part of the lives of several student-athletes, with each athlete’s story being a unique experience of guidance that has helped Robles herself grow as a coach.

Despite having to adjust to the different tendencies and personalities of every athlete that has been under her wing, she acknowledges that there is one thing she has valued and kept constant when it came to her coaching style since day one; a personal touch that transcends the matters on the court.

“I like knowing them personally, so I know what drives them, I know what gets them down [and] so [that] I know how to work on it,” she says.

Whatever happens, Robles always reminds her players to do their best, because she believes that once they’ve instilled the habit of always giving it their all, they can’t lose. Robles knows that their best does not guarantee the gold but because the players continue to persevere, their skills and capacities will continue to improve.

“Winning the gold, or winning any medal along the way is icing on the cake but being a better player from where you started, that for me is an accomplishment,” she says.

PROVING DOUBTERS WRONG Heading into Season 81, the Women’s Badminton Team lost some key cogs from the team. Instead of seeing these losses as detrimental to their goal, Robles takes it as a challenge for herself but also for the team to step up to the plate. She motivates her players who may be discouraged by these departures and reminds them of the roles they need to take, inviting them to step up and to prove their doubters wrong.

Feeding the players with positive thoughts and positive energy has helped her get the best out of them throughout the changes they had heading to Season 81. As a result, the women’s team brought the crown

back home to Katipunan, four years after they won it all in Season 76. As the team aims for a back-to-back next season, Robles tries to keep her players grounded. “In order to do that [backto-back championships], we must not get stuck on just the win. We have to start again, we have to focus again, check on our future opponents and work hard,” she says.

Through the ups and downs of the season, Robles draws inspiration from her father and shares this message to all her players, “Dream your dream and do your best, never doubt and never rest until that dream is yours.”

Being with the Ateneo Badminton Program for an astounding 16 years, Robles has witnessed several batches of her players reach the end of their college lives as they too have stepped down from the hill.

And so, Robles reiterates the advice she imparts to her players for the graduating batch of 2019: “In whatever field you get yourselves into, you always have to give it your best.

Focus [on] making yourself better, and everything will fall into place.”

THEOLOGICAL RELEVANCE

Rachel Sanchez

BY CARLOS H. CRUZ RACHEL JOYCE Sanchez is used to being an oddity in her particular field. Whether she’s one of the few laypersons in her Loyola School of Theology (LST) classes among aspiring priests, or a professional in the corporate world with a background in the AB Philosophy, Major in Predivinity program from the Ateneo, Sanchez has certainly taken an interesting path en route to her teaching career with her alma mater.

This interest in religion and the divine began as early as her childhood and remained aflame up to high school.

After falling in love with the discipline, she decided she wanted to be able to share it with others. But as in anything, hers was not a straightforward journey to her faith.

She sought solace in the prayer room, not to seek God, but to expose her vulnerabilities away from the world in silence and isolation. But as she questioned her injury a la-St. Ignatius, she found more than just the quiet she was looking for. “While ranting one time, I felt God’s presence.

Thinking that I’m alone, [but] I’m not really alone. He/she was there with me,” she said. “That was conversion experience for me.”

During the progression of her Christian Life Education, each lesson became something relevant and personal for Sanchez, prompting her to learn more about God. Knowing her teachers had studied theology, she thought that Theology may be the best way to know God more intimately.

A CANONBALL EXPERIENCE “In high school, I believed in God, but I imagined him to be distant and indifferent. Life really depended on what we did for ourselves,” she said.

“To be honest God was an image of weakness and vulnerability.” Back then, Sanchez’s main priority was Martial Arts, and she would travel from Saint Pedro Poveda College in Ortigas to Ateneo just to train. She excelled in school so that her parents would allow her to continue training and competing, but when she got injured, she lost her purpose along w ith close friends and a favorite hobby.

MAKING SENSE OF PASSION Sanchez admits that her decision to teach was not very well thought of. Being part of the academe was not exactly the end-goal she had set out to accomplish as she was sidetracked to a brief stint in the corporate world in between her MA. Ultimately, however, she was drawn back to theology and an opportunity to teach in the LST. “I first fell in love with the disciple [and secondly] found a job teaching the discipline,” she said. “While teaching theology, that’s when I became more aware of its relevance, it’s beauty.”

It is this appreciation that has given kept her passion even a decade after

her first teaching job. As a seasoned instructor of TH 141, Sanchez has gained various perspectives and exposure to the vast social changes and conditions that permeate Philippine society today. “[The value of the Church] is very important for the ongoing reflection of the Church about its faith, what it stands for, its mission.” Vatican II was an example of the Church’s efforts to reevaluate its doctrines amidst social changes brought about by the sciences and authority. Herself an instructor of feminist theology, Sanchez says that gender inclusivity and compassion to others is just one example of societal developments to reexamine and a testament to Theology’s importance in making sense of the world as we know it.

BUILDING BRIDGES In line with this critical analysis and acceptance is forming dialogue with other religions. Despite the majority of Roman Catholics in the country, Christian Theology, which aims to articulate Christian beliefs in a manner relevant to everyone, can participate in religious and moral discourse with other belief systems.

While religious dialogue encompasses doctrine, rituals, life, advocacies, and many other issues, Sanchez finds that the fundamental element is the discussion of life.

“People from different faiths can come

together praying for social justice, for the environment, even if they belong to different faiths,” she said. “What binds us is a desire for social justice to be real in society.”

In a trip to Marawi organized by the School of Humanities faculty, Sanchez recalled moments of critique, not just finding commonalities but also acknowledging tensions and nonreconcilable aspects. While some of the people from Marawi see what happened as God’s will, she notes how many students would pin the blame on society. This alone is a learning experience—a critique of her own faith.

With globalization accelerating paradigm shifts in terms of lifestyle and morality, it becomes all the more crucial to acknowledge the interconnectedness and complexity of society today. As part of the laity, the graduating batch of 2019 also has a role to play. “Usually we think na conflate a vocation to the priesthood but hindi na. Theology is its own discipline with its own integrity,” Sanchez said.

Amidst threats to social justice today, Sanchez hopes that Ateneans can remain steadfast in the face of adversity and remain critical of social structures. “Huwag matakot (Do not fear). There are many things we can fear, but if we allow ourselves to be limited by our fears, then we won’t be able to change things.”

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ON TRUE STORIES AND THEIR CHRONICLERS

PHOTO SOURCED FROM INTERVIEWEE’S PUBLIC FACEBOOK ACCOUNT

Brian Giron

BY THEA UNSON BRIAN PAUL Giron is especially in his element when he shares stories and his love for them. Strangely enough, though, he doesn’t teach creative writing or literature in the University—he teaches history. If there is any one discipline that would methodologically study stories, he says, it would be history.

“What I began to realize growing up was [that] some of the best stories are true stories,” he says.

“Sometimes, you look at fiction and it’s funny that they already have a broad spectrum of making stuff up.

But it’s not really that compelling.

Yet you have these true stories of people, of places, of things, of trees, of towns, of cities—these are the good stories. We study these stories and try to probe them for meaning.”

A political science major from the Ateneo, Giron only pursued history when he was working on his master’s degree. “It was in the latter years of college when I began to realize that I like history,” he says.

HISTORY IS ALIVE History tends to be tedious for most people. The approach they tend to take when discussing the subject matter is a ‘static’ one, which is a collection of knowledge and narratives transferred from one generation to another.

Giron challenges this approach quite strongly.

“History is not static, it’s not dogmatic,” he says. “And it’s not dead.

It’s rather quite alive and constantly 72

bettering itself. Even our sensibilities [and] society's needs are reflected in what kind of histories it consumes.”

Today, however, there is an evident disconnect in the way people view history, with Giron lamenting the inadequate consumption of history by contemporary society. Yet these misconceptions further prompt Giron to teach the subject himself.

“It’s not really just so much my love for stories, but I also felt like there was a gap. [There was] a need to teach Filipinos—or at least students—the idea of history as a critical thinking field,” he says.

THE PAST FOR ‘WHAT IT IS’ Another thing that people should start understanding, he says, is that history is not just a tool to make sense of the present. This is how people would usually attempt to justify the need to study it—and Giron advises against this, urging people to “respect the past for what it was.”

“Students usually end papers with how it applies today, and so on and so forth. And I tell them that the past needs to be studied for the past,” he says.

They still certainly take a toll for us in the present, though. Painful things that transpire in the past will not be any less painful today, especially if it has ramifications. The effects of colonial rule, wars, and martial law still linger in our national consciousness and experiences.

To Giron, however, these experiences are still as valuable.

“History allows us to go beyond dark times because of its longer view,” he says. “We’ve been through terrible things; dark times when we thought there could never be anything worse than this. And each time, it passed. We got through it. Without those events, we could be a completely different people, we would have a completely different sense of nation, a completely different sense of self.”

OWNING OUR HISTORY Although we seem to be approaching another era of turmoil, we possess a kind of liberty never available to us before. The kind of democracy we have today—albeit dwindling—allows us to share our stories on a grand scale.

Social media, for instance, gives us a platform to fight better and harder despite its perils. Not only is it a tool for advocacy; it also gives us the opportunity to directly contribute to history.

“One of the problems with the way we used to write history is that our histories were from people who had the luxury and the ability to write journals and to be published,” says Giron.

“But with social media, even everyday people’s narratives have a potential to be included. I suspect that when we look at [it] a hundred years from now, we’ll have access to a greater number of accounts. Many of them will be mundane, normal, and from people on the streets.”

As a result, accounts of the past

will no longer be written exclusively by the victors nor will it be a limited account of the past from the lens of the privileged.

“I feel like it has made the tapestry even more colorful and vibrant than it was. It will democratize, popularize, and decentralize our history,” says Giron. “It gives us an opportunity to own our history as a people, rather than leaving in the hands of a few who like to claim history is about themselves.”

In such a harrowing time, Giron believes that we ought to keep fighting.

“Be purposeful with what you decide to do—be hopeful rather than cynical,” he says. “When we feel despair, it’s because we hope for something. The moment you get that tinge of despair creeping up on you, remember: That’s hope. Instead of giving into despair, you could choose to fight for what it is that you’re hoping for.”

His words ring true now more than ever. Perhaps fighting and holding on to hope are the two things most required of us today.

BETTER THAN YOUR BEST

Oliver Almadro

BY ENZO PASTOR COACH OLIVER Allan Almadro, fondly referred to as Coach O, is on his ninth year with Ateneo Volleyball.

His coaching career with the Blue and White began way back in UAAP Season 70 as an assistant for both the Men’s and Women’s Volleyball Team before taking the helm eventually for the Men’s team.

He briefly left the Katipunanbased squad to transfer to National University for three years. However, after receiving encouragement from the Ateneo Volleyball Program’s management and careful discernment on his part, Almadro took his coaching prowess back to the Ateneo in Season 76, where he would lead the Men’s Volleyball team to the finals.

The following season, he guided the team to a historic run that would see them hoist the championship for three consecutive years from seasons 77-79 of the UAAP Men’s Volleyball Tournament. After falling short of extending their spectacular run in the Season 80 Finals, little did we know that that would be his last go with the Men’s team as he was reassigned to the Women’s Volleyball Team, who just lost its long-tenured coach in Tai Bundit.

ONTO GREATER THINGS Behind his decorated career with the Ateneo, Almadro carries a set of philosophies that have helped him guide his players on and off the court.

Firstly, he firmly believes that if his players wholeheartedly dedicate

themselves to their craft, they will always reap the fruits of their sacrifice and hard work. “One of my philosophies is that discipline and determination will be rewarded and recognized,” he said. “Next is [that] we have to be better than our best everyday.”

After reflecting upon this philosophy, he realized that it reflected the Ignatian value of magis, to strive for excellence and give everything your best. “There’s best in you, but it could be better, so for me, we have to do better than our best everyday, every game, in every practice, all the time.” he emphasized.

Almadro is also known widely to be a spiritual man, and this character has translated in his demeanor as a coach. For the fiery coach, faith is not just simply about the belief in God but also the belief that something is already there even when it hasn’t happened yet.

“Hindi pa nangyayari, alam mong mangyayari na, that’s faith for me. Ibig sabihin, hindi ka pa nagcha-champion, alam mong mag cha-champion ka na,” he says passionately.

(When it hasn't happened, but you know it will happen, that's faith for me.

Meaning, you haven't been crowned champion but you know you will become a champion.)

He puts emphasis on faith because he acknowledges that technical skills are not enough, and that the players must have confidence that will ultimately invigorate them in everything they do. “Hindi ako sobrang

religious ah, [but] I always see to it that I give my players verses, and normally, it relates to our volleyball life, [the players] school life and our personal life [as well],” he shares.

BEYOND RESPONSIBILITIES ON THE COURT Almadro understands that accepting his role as head coach means he won’t just be a coach, but also a second father. “It’s not enough that you [focus] on volleyball. You really have to take a look at the other side of them being an athlete: being a student, being also a daughter, being also teenagers,” he says.

His acceptance of this role beyond the court is rooted in the principle of family that he emphasizes with his team. The fiery coach believes that if the athletes treat each other as family, their work becomes easier, because their pride and ego go out the window and in turn, his players will always look out and play for each other.

Acknowledging the spotlight shining on the team, Almadro has come to emphasize that being part of the team is not about popularity, rather it is about being an instrument and inspiration to many, especially their passionate young supporters.

In line with this, Almadro constantly reminds his players to always look beyond themselves and yearn for something deeper. “If you play for yourself, you will be great, but if you play [for something] higher

than yourself, extraordinary things will happen because t here is a deeper meaning [in it].” he enthusiastically shares.

YEARNING FOR MORE To the graduating batch, Alamadro shares the same values he preaches to his players that remain relevant on and off the court.

“Ask, always ask. Ask the Lord, always ask Him [because there is nothing we ask that we do not receive.

What is important is that,] it is the desire of your heart, not the need of your mind,” he fervently shares.

“When you graduate, ask for more learning, ask for more experience outside this campus, and ask the Lord always, “Lord, ano pa ibibigay mo sakin?” “Ano pang role ko?”

(Lord, what role will you give to me?

What more is my role?)

For a few in the graduating batch, Almadro serves not just as an inspiration on the court but also a mentor beyond it. He doesn’t simply push his players to be greater athletes, but also instills in them values he hopes will make them even greater individuals.

He hopes that the graduating class of 2019 can inspire and cultivate others aside from themselves. “Don’t stop learning here, always ask, always be an instrument, always be an inspiration to many, and accept what God has planned for you,” he says.

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BAON SA PAGLALAKBAY

Allan Popa

BY NIO B. ATRIGENIO IT IS not uncommon to find esteemed poets, playwrights, painters, and artists of various backgrounds in the academe. Such is the case for Allan Popa, whose journey as both an artist and teacher exudes the same passion and dedication exhibited by his works.

Like many others, Popa did not immediately delve into teaching after graduating. “Bago magturo, nagtrabaho muna ako for [the] media (Before teaching, I worked for the media),” he says.

However, not too long after, he recognized his calling. “Na-realize ko na medyo nakaka-corrupt ng language ang media work. Nakita ko [ang akademiya] bilang pinaka-hospitable na espasyo para sa pagtutula at pagsusulat, [na aking prioridad],” he stresses.

(I realized that media work can corrupt language. I saw the academe as the most hospitable space for poetry and writing, which is my priority.)

He taught in the De La Salle University for a few years before entering the Ateneo in 2001, where he continues to teach at present. Aside from the Filipino literature and essay writing classes that he usually handles, he is also a mainstay in the Fine Arts Department under Creative Writing, where he takes on poetryrelated workshops and electives on a regular basis.

COMMUNITY OF WRITERS Right from his stint as the editor of his collegiate literary folio UP Quill, 74

Popa has already held the communal and cooperative aspect of writing in high regard. “Ang pagsusulat, unlike journalism, ay isang lonely na gawain.

Madalas mag-isa ka lang sa silid mo (Writing, unlike journalism, is a lonely profession. Usually, you’re just alone in your room),” he says. As such, he notes how this spurs one to really treasure the small communities of writers that they get to interact with.

For this, he appreciates the environment that the Ateneo has been able to foster with regard to poetry writing. “Iyon ang maganda sa Kagawaran ng Filipino at Fine Arts Department. Bukod sa maraming batang manunulat, ang Ateneo rin bilang isang komunidad ay isang hospitable space para sa creativity,” he emphasizes.

(That’s what’s nice about the Filipino and Fine Arts Departments.

Aside from the abundance of younger writers, the Ateneo community as a whole is also a hospitable space for creativity.)

The classroom setting in particular, especially the interactions with students, allows for an approach to writing that cannot easily be found elsewhere. “Lagi at lagi kang nalalagay sa posisyon na muling pag-isipan, i-reconsider, at i-reassess ang iyong mga assumptions. [Malaking bahagi] ito ng proseso ng pagtuklas o discovery ng pagsusulat at pagtutula,” he says.

(You’re always put in a position where you have to rethink, reconsider, and reassess your assumptions. This is

a big part of the process of discovery associated with poetry writing.)

CREATIVE OUTLET Interestingly, many students who take part in his Creative Writing classes come from Computer Science, Communications, and other seemingly unrelated fields. “Alam ko na marami sa kanila hindi magtutuloy, hindi naman talaga magiging published author… Pero alam mong nandoon ang kagustuhan [nilang] umunawa sa karanasan, magpakahulugan, at lumikha,” he points out.

(I know many of them won’t pursue writing or become published authors, but you can feel their desire to interpret experiences and create works of art.)

As such, a big part of Popa’s drive to teach is not so much in his students getting big awards or becoming famous, but in being able to provide a creative outlet. “Gusto kong magiwan lang ng option. Alam mo yung pinto na may uwang lang, na alam nila at any moment pwede nilang balikan.

Malaking bagay iyong may creative outlet ka,” he stresses.

(I want to leave an option, akin to a slightly opened door that they know they can re-enter at any time. It’s important to have a creative outlet.)

Popa wants to instill in his students a mindset that doesn’t concern itself with the potential lack of profitability, readership, and attention commonly associated with

writing. Letting go of the constant pressures and demands of modern life allows one to truly appreciate the freedom and fulfillment that the act of writing can provide.

INTO THE WORLD AT LARGE As much as the Ateneo is able to provide a conducive environment for the arts to flourish, Popa draws attention to the fact that this kind of dynamic is significantly more difficult to find or sustain outside the campus.

In this light, a common sentiment imparted by Atenean mentors is the idea of taking root, which Popa likens to the game of agawan base. “Embedded sa larong iyon ang kahalagahan ng pagbabalik sa pinagmulan. Mas confident kang muling bumalik sa pakikipagtunggali at paglalakbay kapag nakatapak ka sa base mo,” he explains.

(Embedded in that game is the importance of going back to where you came from. You gain renewed confidence to face challenges and explore once you step on your base.)

Beyond simply going back, Popa also emphasizes the importance of the students being the ones to establish the hospitable spaces and creative outlets when they go down from the hill. In the end, he challenges students as they move on from the Ateneo: “How [will you] create a similar space for others to create, think, and rethink assumptions?”

TRIED AND TESTED

BY NIO B. ATRIGENIO SINCE GRADUATING college in 1980, Maria Teresa Villanueva has already been pursuing her passion for teaching. However, this job at the time was one that she could only realistically take on part-time. “Wala nang pera, wala pang love life (No money, and no love life, either),” she says jokingly.

As such, she went on to pursue numerous other jobs before settling into her main forte of marketing and advertising, even going so far as to be the CEO of Publicis Manila for a time.

Over the years, she has had her fair share of interactions with people both young and old. “[A key part of] my job even in advertising was mentoring, [so it’s] something that comes naturally,” she says.

True enough, after roughly 30 years of working in the field, Villanueva has passed on the reins to focus on her teaching career. She began teaching in the Loyola Schools under the Communication Department, but eventually she found her way to the John Gokongwei School of Management. At present, she continues to teach marketing and advertising to management students while pursuing further studies in Sociology and Anthropology.

BEYOND THE CLASSROOM Through the years, Villanueva has been able to make a name for herself

Matec Villanueva as a beloved mentor and friend to the students she has taught. In particular, the classroom dynamic that she upholds is one that many are fond of, as it relies just as much on hands-on activities as it does on theory. With the bevy of videos, print ads, and short stories she shares, there is never a dull moment in any of her classes.

This key part of Villanueva’s teaching style is something that she attributes to her many years of working in the field. Whereas it may not be necessary for an English or Math teacher to have an extensive background in their respective fields, Villanueva notes that this is crucial especially in the field of management. “Experience actually validates, contests, or enhances the theory,” she affirms.

With this in mind, she does as much as she can to incorporate the things that she has learned by being on the job in order to make the theory come alive in the classroom. “In the level of college, people have to stop looking at the campus and start looking out into the real world. Eventually, when you go down the hill, [you’ll realize] it’s really the world that you’ll be facing,” she says.

BONDS THAT NEVER BREAK Villanueva can often be heard referring to her students as “kids,” and this speaks of the kind of

student-teacher relationship that she fosters both inside and outside of the classroom.

In a way, this is something that she picked up from the students themselves. She notes in particular how the last few batches of students that she has handled have been “very affectionate and expressive of their emotion,” not so much because they want to endear themselves to her, but simply because that’s just how they are. From this, Villanueva has also learned to be more patient and listen more to what the students have to say. She recalls how she has mellowed down in recent years by being more open to her students and making time for them when needed.

That said, despite the motherly nature of her relationship with students, she still maintains a gritty, no-nonsense attitude especially when it comes to assessing her requirements. Her classes can be just as fun and insightful as it is intimidating and frustrating, especially in the event that students don’t put in the necessary effort.

Thus, what Villanueva says she appreciates the most is when students go out of their way to consult and ask for help, whether it be for a class requirement, an outside competition, or even work-related concerns. It is at this point where the student-teacher relationship is no longer one that

was simply forged by being forced to interact with each other to get a grade or fulfill a job.

BRUISED, NEVER BROKEN While asking for help is far from a complicated task, many students still opt not to for fear of appearing incompetent or inferior. More often than not, students are furthermore petrified at the thought of failing or being stagnant, and these are things Villanueva attributes to the environment they grew up in.

“Parents constantly reinforce the idea that ‘it’s not the losing, anak, it’s the trying,’ but no,” she emphasizes.

“It’s the losing. Learn how to lose.”

In doing so, one must learn not just to be unafraid of making mistakes, but also to be patient. “Investing” in something is a helpful approach to adopt, as it implies having a firm commitment and a dedication to learning and doing more. “You have to put in the time. Although you’re a very learned and knowledgeable group of kids, knowledge is just knowledge. The only time it becomes wisdom is if it’s tested by experience,” she says.

At the end of the day, “people will pay you not for [something you can easily Google], but for your wisdom.”

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RENAISSANCE WOMAN, AND THEN SOME

Inez Ponce de Leon

BY THEA UNSON

ASKED ABOUT her developing so many talents, including communication, and belly dancing expertise, Inez Ponce de Leon, PhD only laughs. “Oh, my gosh,” she says.

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

If anyone has the slightest clue on who she is, they’d know that that’s an expression of modesty at best. She’s been through it all, from the arts to the sciences—and not even her work in the University can cover all the things she does.

POLYMATH Ponce de Leon took up Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (MBB) at the University of the Philippines-Diliman, and a PhD in Science Communication in Purdue University in Indiana, USA. She now serves as an assistant professor and a belly dance instructor in the Communication and Physical Education Departments, respectively.

She is in vastly different fields— but they barely cover her spectrum of talents and interests. She lists off the rest of her hobbies: drawing gowns, writing songs, writing poetry, film at some point, and her first and constant love—writing stories.

“When I was around 11, I wrote my first novel,” Ponce de Leon says. This talent in particular especially significant because story-telling, to her, is healing.

“The people [who are most likely] to tell 76

stories are also those who pick up and empathize quickly. If something bad happens to me, it’s hard to get over it.

Writing is my outlet.”

As for belly dancing, Ponce de Leon considers it a hobby and a profession that’s still “growing,” as she continues to afford herself opportunities to learn and improve—even though she started out as an instructor in belly dancing before being a professor in communication.

“I [still] have to grow,” she says. “I need to learn more and that’s normal with all kinds of dancing. No dancer would say, ‘I’m done, I’m perfect, I’m 100% there.’”

Nonetheless, Ponce de Leon loves the genre for its versatility and ability to give people a confidence boost. “It’s the most sustainable of all the dance forms.

You can dance until you’re 90, and you’re fine,” she says. “And your body does not have to conform to an image set forth by the media.”

MARRYING SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATION When she was younger, Ponce de Leon thought she would be a doctor, but as much as she loved science, the laboratory work “burned her out.”

“You know that feeling [when] you have to drag yourself out of bed because there are times where you stay up? I can stay up for comm until 2:00 AM, and when I wake up at 6:00 AM [I say]: ‘Yay, I’m gonna do this all over again!’”

Can she say the same for her other path? “Not for MBB,” she says. “I didn’t feel that.”

She anchors most of her work right now in communication—especially in research and public speaking.“A lot of people say na you should feel it to be your mission,” she says when asked why she chose to focus on the field. “[Here], I felt it all at the same time. It was my mission, it was my destiny, and it was my love.”

Still, she loved science too much to ever let it go, so she turned to the one field that would combine this with her current love: science communication, which she actually got a PhD in. Many of her years were spent on advocacy work, public speaking, and research on issues in the sciences.

“There are days [that] I love being the public speaker and being the teacher, but there are days [I’d rather] sit down and do research,” she says. “They each serve their purpose and they both give me a different kind of joy.”

ON THE YOUTH AND BURNOUT With the sheer number of communication avenues and tools today—social media, for instance— Ponce de Leon judges it herself: “In order to stay stable in evolution you have to keep running. I see that in [communication]. It’s adapting to people’s needs, and people adapt to it.”

So, how do we gauge our communication skills today? “What is

effective for me is not effective for you.

What is not effective for me might work for you,” she says. “Neither one is better than the other.”

And as someone who juggles many hobbies and areas of work in her hands, Ponce de Leon is no stranger to burnout.

She knows that many of her students feel it often, too. “When [people] experience something so negative, [they] will find a way to cover it up. It’s so unhealthy. When you’re confronted with a new situation, you will just repeat the same mistakes over and over again,” she says.

Amidst all those challenges, she advises: “You’re gonna have to embrace that burnout.”

Ponce de Leon also credits prayer as one of the ways to cope with such things. “I was drawing from a well that was finite—and you’re not infinite,” she says. “You’ll always need someone and something to help you out. For me, that was a lot of prayer and advice and friends,” she says.

From here, she assures that there is nothing else to do but improve. “You have to keep on getting better. But you cannot get better on your own. For me, it would have been spirituality— that faith keeps evolving—and the friendships I have to keep nurturing [that makes me better],” Ponce de Leon says.

HEART OF GOLD

Chris Peabody

BY NIO B. ATRIGENIO TO SAY that Chris Peabody is a familiar figure on campus would be nothing short of an understatement. It’s rare to find a student who has not been in one of his classes or hasn’t at least heard of his name in one way or another. Aside from teaching a variety of sciencerelated classes, he is also involved in formation programs and can be seen giving counsel to students with nonacademic issues on a regular basis.

For Peabody, teaching has always been something close to his heart. “I realized very early on that I [had] an ability to take a complex subject and explain it so everybody can understand it,” he says. “One of the things I started doing very young is getting people to understand why [something is important.]”

As such, getting into teaching was as logical as the different sciences he continues to teach. This core philosophy is also one that he has taken advantage of to effect major changes to the core curriculum and school policies that still stand to this day.

a method that’s very down-to-earth,” he says.

Along with other like-minded science professors, he spearheaded an overhaul to the core curriculum that aimed to come up with a general science that incorporates a little bit of everything. Their efforts resulted in a program that makes most students go through natural sciences classes of their choice, usually during their freshman year.

Aside from his versatility in being able to teach many of the different NatSci classes offered, Peabody is also known for his unorthodox lecturing style. “I teach SCI 10 differently from other [professors],” he says. “It’s less important to me that you can tell me this and that concept, but rather, why it is important.”

Included in his usual approach is the heavy usage of videos, stories, and even inspirational talks. While some instructors would simply dwell on how things work, Peabody puts a premium on how these theories apply to one’s life.

Besides tutoring and mentoring for theses, Peabody is active in both the InTACT and NSTP programs, and takes part regularly in outreach and development work. As a frequent advisor in the administration’s decision-making bodies, he also champions scholars and advocates for better mental health programs.

His teaching isn’t limited to just students. In line with the latter, proper faculty and staff training has also been an integral part of his initiatives. “[I’ve been] trying to get teachers to learn how to listen to students, get together regularly to get feedback, [and] support each other,” he says.

At present, many security personnel, department secretaries, and even photocopy station staff are trained to look out for and assist students who may be in a rough spot. To date, Peabody has been able to help out hundreds of students who have gone through both minor episodes of stress and sadness, major panic attacks, abusive relationships, and mental illnesses.

MAKING SCIENCE ACCESSIBLE Peabody is one of the minds behind the creation of the Natural Sciences program. His involvement stems from the wide variance in the learning experience of students from traditional science classes.

“Sometimes [students] go through a pure science class, which is really heavy. [Meanwhile,] others [learn] in

MORE THAN A TEACHER Going beyond his place inside the classroom, though, Peabody is also a prominent personality when it comes to student formation and concern. “A big chunk of my time is spent on helping people. I’ve been doing that since I was in college, [as I was considered by many to be] a person that people could always talk to,” he notes.

FORCE FOR GOOD For someone who puts helping others above all else, Peabody has a lot to say about Ateneans especially as they move on to bigger and greater things after graduating.

“Something I’ve been teaching since the day I came in [the Ateneo] is that you’re not just here for yourself. I very much believe in taking care of others,

not just here, but more importantly, outside,” he emphasizes.

Amidst the prevalent talk of going down from the hill and being men and women for others, Peabody stresses the fact that these things should be even more apparent as one leaves the Ateneo. He makes it a point that one need not go far to be able to embody these teachings. Indeed, taking part in giving to beggars on the street, teaching in public schools, and helping out in orphanages, for instance, can all go a long way toward making a difference.

However, it is just as impactful, if not more, when one is able to change how things are done in places where social concern is not a priority.

“Don’t just talk about getting into a job; change the job, because things are not getting any better,” he asserts.

He commends initiatives such as social enterprises Hope in a Bottle and Rags2Riches, which have exhibited the possibility of taking on social responsibility in conjunction with being businessoriented. There is still a lot of work to be done across the board, not just in the corporate world.

In the end, he calls for students to answer a deceptively simple question: “What do you want to do to make things better for others?”

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80

Staff & Administration 82

THE REGISTRAR’S OFFICE

83

MIRA OFRENEO

84

DR. TIROL AND THE OAA

87

MARIA LUZ VILCHES, PHD

85

LS OFFICE OF PLACEMENT

88

JOSE RAMON VILLARIN, SJ

86

DEPARTMENT SECRETARIES

AND CAREER SERVICES

81

UNSUNG HEROES

“If [students] are not able to resolve enlistment problems, they’re not going to be able to get the subjects they require to graduate,” he says. “And who intervenes with the departments in behalf of the students? It’s RegCom.”

The Registrar’s Office

BY TOBI W. DAVE NESTLED IN an inconspicuous corner of the Social Sciences (SS) building, the glass walls of the Registrar’s Office (RO) betray the hushed hustle of a typical place of work.

Inside, students are seen lining up, anxiously waiting for their name to be called. In the beginning of every semester, they ‘clutch’ load revision forms, hoping to get into that one class they need. As they become seniors, they can again be seen lining up for a litany of requirements for graduation.

Be it registration, load revision, or requests for important documents, the RO personnel are always on the go in meeting the students’ needs.

Behind the office’s wooden counters is a team of dedicated people who work around the clock to make sure that students get classes and that records are filed properly.

BEHIND THE COUNTER From the moment an undergraduate student enrolls into the Ateneo, the RO silently yet diligently keeps track of students’ progress towards that coveted diploma. Yet, it is easy to overlook the amount of effort that goes into every record and certificate obtained from the office.

Day in and day out, the RO and its personnel perform many important functions that may not be visible to the very students they serve.

“The Registrar’s Office is in charge of being the custodian of all scholastic records,” says Joaquin Julian Agtarap or “Sir JJ,” the bespectacled man whose position the office is named 82

after. “We serve as evaluators to guard that [students] are en route to complete their degrees.”

While the typical Atenean only interacts with the office when important documents are to be requested, the RO’s work is actually year-round in nature, beginning before enrolment and extending beyond graduation.

The office, Sir JJ says, performs many monitoring functions. “It’s [our job] to certify and attest to the documents and the academic accomplishment of students,” he says. “We also monitor their grades [and] the completion of their theses and culminating projects.”

The RO’s outsized role in each Atenean’s life, while oftentimes invisible, continues as the student goes down from the hill. After all, the office is in charge of diplomas, academic transcripts, as well as many other miscellaneous certifications required by employers or postgraduate schools.

“When the time comes, we also prepare the scholastic documents that the graduating students will need to proceed with their lives, whether it be for employment, further studies, or travel abroad,” Sir JJ says.

NO SMALL FEAT If that were not enough, the population served by the RO extends beyond just present students and fresh graduates. Sir JJ says that many employers also contact the office to verify the truthfulness of documents submitted by applicants fresh from the Loyola Schools.

“If we make the mistake and say that these documents aren’t real when in fact they were,” he asks, “We would be putting that person in jeopardy, right?”

Sir JJ is all praises for the office’s six records officers, who each handle literal thousands of students on their own.

“If you divide the [Loyola Schools] population by six, that works out to about 1,700 students per records officer,” he says. “And that records officer has to ensure that student records are correct [and] timely.”

With this much responsibility, it is not surprising that RO personnel may find the work demanding.

“It’s challenging because the bulk of the work that we do has time limitations,” says Sarah Joquico, one of the six records officers. Indeed, the office can make the difference between students graduating on time or not. Timely delivery of diplomas and academic transcripts may determine the fate of employment applications.

“That is why we invest upon each member of the office,” says Geraldine Sandrino, the agreeable, soft spoken Assistant Registrar who is known as “Ma’am Dindin” inside the RO. “Each one [of our personnel] is responsible and trustworthy. We serve with confidentiality,” she says.

Apart from this, Sir JJ also commends the Registration Committee (RegCom), a group of student volunteers which he describes as an “extension” of the RO. The student arm facilitates manual registration and disseminates registration information, among other tasks.

INTRINSIC REWARDS Despite the challenges her job entails, Joquico says that RO work is nevertheless fulfilling. “The reward is actually intrinsic. Just a ‘thank you’ is very rewarding on our part,” she says.

“Kasi, hindi kami nakikita eh (We aren’t very visible, after all).”

For Sir JJ, serving the University through the RO is his way of saying thanks to his alma mater. “A former [Ateneo] vice-president said that [I] might want to consider reciprocating the Ateneo for the education that [I] got,” he says. “That’s one of the reasons why I’m here,” he says.

As this year’s commencement exercises draw near, both Sir JJ and Ma’am Dindin look forward to beholding the moment when graduating seniors receive their ceremonial dummy diplomas at the High School Covered Courts.

“The best part is when you see them receive their diploma. We are happy to see you go up the stage,” says Ma’am Dindin. “But of course, we will miss you. You’ve been with us for four or more years.”

PAYING IT FORWARD When asked for their parting words to Batch 2019, the RO personnel wish that the graduating batch apply the lessons they have learned in their four-year stint in the Ateneo—and hopefully, come home and give back to their alma mater.

“Congratulations on all your hard work! Make an impact outside by living out what you’ve learned from the Ateneo,” Ma’am Dindin says. “We hope you come back from time to time. And if you can, donate to scholarships!”

Sir JJ reminds graduates that they are now the new faces of the Ateneo.

“When you leave the University, you essentially become a culture bearer and an image of the University to the outside world,” he says. “So please, stay true to the skills and values that the Ateneo has taught you.”

In the end, all the RO personnel can hope for is that graduates remember the name of a certain office tucked away in the SS building. “Fr. Jett might be in the diploma, but if we don’t authorize your graduation, you don’t graduate!” Sir JJ quips.

Mira Ofreneo

DYNAMIZING GENDER RIGHTS ON CAMPUS

BY ANGELICA S. ANDAYA DESPITE BEING one of the most esteemed pedagogues in the University, Mira Ofreneo, PhD, fondly called Ma’am Mira, did not seem to see herself as such one bit.

At the start of the interview, she still asked if she was the one being referred to about her work, as if there was another interviewee in the room. “Me?” she humbly asked, hesitating before answering.

An expert in gender and sexuality, the current chair of the Psychology Department of the Loyola Schools (LS) serves as one of the frontrunners for gender initiatives in the University.

Ofreneo also leads the technical working group (TWG) for the proposed LS Gender Policy and LS Code of Practice Against Sexual Harassment, as well as the LS Sexual Misconduct Task Force that handles cases on sexual harassment and violence on campus.

To top it all off, Ofreneo has also been working in the past year on the establishment of the Gender Hub, an office dedicated to building safe spaces for the Ateneo community. She will be focusing on the Gender Hub after her term as chair ends in May. “I felt [that] this was an opportunity to create change, and to really claim that Ateneo will stand for gender justice [and] gender diversity,” she says, referring to her leadership on gender initiatives.

She also mentions that the current political climate, having gender as one of the most prominent issues, also influenced her work in the academe to be geared more towards these issues, which she started with research projects both inside and outside the Psychology Department.

The Ateneo community has witnessed a rise in gender-related thrusts in the past year, along with the exposure of reported sexual harassment and misconduct cases involving various members of the community. Ofreneo’s initiatives, with the support they gathered from the Office of the Vice President for the Loyola Schools (OVPLS) and the Sanggunian, with the inauguration

of the commissions on Anti-Sexual Misconduct and Violence (CASMV) and Gender Equality (CGE), have made sizeable impacts on the University and will continue to do so when they come to full operation.

“IT’S ABOUT TIME” Despite a heterogeneous reception by the University, Ofreneo shares that what amazes her still is the community that showed its support for the gender initiatives.

“I was maybe just amazed [at] how so much support came from students,” she says. “Teachers responded; they [also] wrote a statement. People will come to me and tell me that they’re grateful for the initiative, and that they welcome it. So that was like, ‘oh, there is really a community talaga that is wanting [for] this to happen.’”

On the other hand, she narrates that there were also responses from other members of the community that she thinks could be rooted in hesitation, prudence, and carefulness, as the initiatives were “seen as a change, as a shift” in the traditional system.

Nevertheless, Ofreneo wants to focus on how they are “making visible what was once invisible,” especially with the help they are getting from the people who support them.

Apart from this, Ofreneo highlights the significance of the gender initiatives particularly to the senior faculty in the Loyola Schools whom she called as the “feminists of the older generation.”

“It was amazing lang to see all of them [coming] forward, all of them speaking out and saying ‘It’s about time.’ Parang if it did not happen during their time, they’re glad that it’s happening now and they’re still here, they’re still around,” she expresses with a hint of hope and relief.

Ofreneo adds another observation on the reception of her works on gender, noting that the views are “not singular” and that “there’s a plurality” in such. Bottomline is, she explains, is the creation of a shared vision on the idea of gender on campus, as well as the respect that everyone should establish towards one another.

“In the end, if Ateneo will say and believe that it is rooted in the belief that creates a culture of respect for each person, then that respect has to be accorded to each person including every woman, and every, let’s say, LGBTidentifying student, teacher, staff, or employee, any person of any gender, any sex, any sexuality. So I think that’s the bottom line, [because] I think we will all agree that we embrace that principle of respect,” she says.

STUDENTS AS MOVERS As parting words for Batch 2019, Ofreneo expresses her gratitude to the members of this year’s Sanggunian, particularly Sanggunian President Hya Bendaña, CASMV Commissioner Regina Pagdanganan, and CGE Commissioner Ramon Tanjuatco.

“I always tell them [that] ‘You were part of the change, you were the movers here, and you should remember that. So that five years from now, ten years from now, you see the Gender Hub here, you come here—you created that. So that’s your legacy,’” she says appreciatively. “They were the people who were not afraid to speak up, so thank you.”

She shares the same sentiments for the Ateneo community.

“Thank you too, for the willingness to take the step, to support a policy, even if people had some reservations or perhaps fear,” she remarks. “I think it’s to recognize those fears and to have faith that as a community, we will come together, we will work out tensions, we may not agree all the time, but as long as we return to our common vision [which is] respect for all, respect for human beings, of every person, I think we will know what to say, we will know what to do, and what we would expect [to] be the challenges ahead.”

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BEYOND ADMISSIONS AND AID

Dr. Tirol and the OAA

BY ANGELICA S. ANDAYA AND TOBI W. DAVE WITH GUSTO, the speaker onstage addressed an auditorium full of potential scholars. He had a singular goal: to convince his precocious audience, many of whom were also accepted into other Big Four universities, to choose the Ateneo.

However, he let actual scholars do the convincing, as numerous students recounted how their scholarships changed their lives, while alumni shared how the Ateneo turned them into skilled professionals and holistically-formed people.

By the end of that afternoon, many in the audience had likely made up their mind.

In March, the Office of Admission and Aid (OAA) held its Open House for Financial Aid, a first in the University’s history. The event saw accepted scholarapplicants from high schools all over the country flock into the Leong Hall Auditorium, to discern if an Ateneo education was right for them.

Each year, thousands of aspirants take the Ateneo College Entrance Test (ACET), making a slot in the Loyola Schools (LS) one of the most coveted in the country. Few are offered a slot, and fewer still are given the privilege of a scholarship. The fate of these applications rest largely in the hands of the OAA, which handles the University’s recruitment, admissions, and scholarship endowments.

ATENEO’S GATEKEEPERS The OA A’s work begins with recruitment season, when it visits high schools to encourage promising graduating students to come to the University.

“We try to market the school,” OAA Director Jose Ma. Edito “Jo-Ed” Tirol, PhD, says in his office in Kostka Hall.

“We send teams out to different schools inside Metro Manila, outside Metro Manila, and even out of the country.

We’re designing new videos [for] social media. That’s part of our job.”

Every September, Tirol’s office conducts the ACET in the Loyola Heights campus, as well as multiple satellite testing sites in the provinces. As the Office deliberates results, the OAA then whittles down the hefty applicant pool into a much shorter list.

“We come out with results in 84

January, then we repeat the process on a shorter level,” Tirol says. “We have a second round of ACET [in] January for those who were unable to take the one in September.”

Although many associate the OAA with the coveted acceptance envelopes it sends out, the Office is likewise responsible for the many scholarship grants in the LS. “The dream of Fr. Jett [Villarin] is to have twenty percent of the [student] population as scholars.

In the past year, we reached eighteen percent,” Tirol says. “That’s not bad.”

The OAA matches available tuition grants and other forms of aid, such as food and dormitory scholarships, with the needs of scholars who apply for these grants. “Some scholars are needier than others,” Tirol says. “So we consider, ‘what are their finances? How is their financial status?’”

The process of allocating aid is harder than it seems, as the University’s resources are finite. Granting excess aid to one student may hinder a needier student from receiving it.

“What the Office tries to do is to try to see how much [resources] we have to play with, given by the University [and] by benefactors,” Tirol says.

“Then, we try to bring in the scholars and match them with how much [aid] they really need.”

Speaking at the Open House, Tirol emphasized the arduousness of deliberating which accepted applicants are offered scholarships. “To be an Ateneo scholar is something that is very important and very precious,” he says. “I made an effort to explain how hard the selection process actually is.”

The OAA Director sees the Open House as a boon to the rate of scholar enrolment, with as much as 90% of attendees confirming their slots, Tirol estimates. “The place was overflowing.

It was done very well.”

“A PARTICULAR PERSONALITY” When asked about how OAA becomes more than an office in Ateneo, Tirol explains that the staff working there “need to have a particular personality” in dealing with the scholars.

“Kasi nga, sometimes, for many of the scholars, they don’t just need financial aid. They need a place where they feel loved [and] valued,” he explains. “You need to have a certain personality here to want to work

with the scholars. Most of the Ateneo [graduates] who work [at the OAA] were former scholars themselves.”

He also adds that apart from processing admissions and scholarships, the OAA also listens to the scholars’ concerns, serving as an avenue to help them cope up with college life aside from their classrooms and organizations.

To this end, the Office’s scholarship team holds semestral individual consultations with scholars to check up on them. The team is composed of Tirol, who is also Director for Scholarships, as well as Assistant to the Director for Scholarships Jolly Morata, and Scholarship Officers Christine Magboo and Summer Logarta.

“Some of [the scholars] talk to me, but mostly [to] the scholarship officers.

I think they get intimidated by me, eh.”

Tirol quips.

In the end, the OAA director asserts that financial aid, by itself, could only provide so much to their scholars.

Sometimes, an open ear and a shoulder to lean on is what they need, and the Office is also glad to provide those.

“This office is a receptacle of help,” he remarks. “And what is the biggest help?

It’s not money. Often, it’s people.”

THOSE WHO GIVE BACK Furthermore, Tirol also recounts his encounters with the benefactors, saying that it is indeed a pleasure for him to personally meet the people who make Ateneo’s generous scholarship program possible.

He narrates how one benefactor donated the entirety of his seven-figure retirement fund to Ateneo, which he only considers as a bonus from everything he

has earned in his lifetime. He was also a former scholar who said that “Ateneo gave him a good career in a bank.”

“Napaiyak ako n’on! He was a poor kid from Pampanga. When I shook his hand, nanginginig kamay ko. I was so honored to meet him. I love that part of the job.

(That made me cry! He was a poor kid from Pampanga. My hand was quivering when I shook his hand. I was so honored to meet him. I love that part of the job),” Tirol says.

Another benefactor he encountered was a chief executive officer at a major grocery chain who funds ten scholars, and another 10 once those students graduate. When Tirol asked him why, he responded ,“Why not?”

Tirol also mentions a man from Cebu who, after years of insisting to be anonymous, finally agreed last year to meet some of the 22 scholars he funded in Ateneo.

“To be part of the Ateneo community is an opportunity for service. But to meet the people who help [realize] that service even more—that’s the benefactors— wow. And to meet the scholars with all their wonderful, inspiring stories?

Wow. I love this job,” he expresses with admiration.

With this, he gives his parting words to the scholars, as well as the graduating batch of 2019.

“One of the worst things an Atenean can ever be accused of is being entitled.

Ateneo doesn’t owe you anything.

Your benefactors [and] teachers don’t owe you anything. But you received it anyway. This says something about the gifts that life can give you. And because you have received so much generosity— totally undeserved—the least that you could do is learn to give generosity back,” he says.

“The greatest thing Ateneo should teach any graduate is that the gift is not so much the diploma, but the value of generosity. That is what Ateneo is all about. Learn it, and learn to share it.”

ENABLING NATION-BUILDING

LS Office of Placement and Career Services

BY ANGELICA S. ANDAYA

WITH SKY high spirits, Loyola Schools Office of Placement and Career Services (LSOPCS) Director Carla Siojo cheerfully appears at the lobby of her office at the Social Sciences Building for her interview, looking very thrilled to receive her expected guests.

Aside from the widely-known annual Career Fair, the Placement Office provides career-related services to the students from preparation to actual application, to help them take on their desired paths after college. Their efforts collectively make possible for the Atenean to be prepared for what awaits them beyond Loyola, a commonly daunting idea that boggles the mind of anyone who will leave Ateneo after graduation.

“We help our students transition from school to work. As we walk them through that process, we have career development programs that enable them [to prepare for their jobs, and] that provide [the students with] career exploration and career education.

Because we, as much as possible, want the students to make informed decisions, right? About the first job that they’re gonna take, what career path they want to start with, stuff like that,” Siojo says with a lot of excitement.

As if the warm welcome was not enough, Siojo, together with LSOPCS Career Advisors Ronny Rodriguez, Krislyn Plucena, and Carla Mico generously provide brochures and show a powerpoint presentation of the programs held by their office such as the Ateneo Placement Exposure (APEx) Series, the General Orientation on Transitioning to Work (G.O.T. Work) program, as well as the Interview Performance Appraisal and Development (IPAD).

WIDENING HORIZONS For the staff, the Placement Office seeks to broaden the scope of the Atenean’s future career by providing the students several job opportunities even outside their field of specialization.

“We want to help make paradigm shifts, get out of the stereotypical tracks, [and prevent the students from thinking that] ‘This is my course, these are the things that are available for me.’

But it does not work that way anymore.

You have to think out of the box or create your own box,” Siojo asserts.

She then mentions some University alumni, a biology major who is now working in finance, an art management major who is now a head of a company’s human resources department, among others.

Rodriguez nods in agreement, hoping that the “actionable information” the office provides the students ais them in choosing their respective careers.

“Sometimes, students would feel na ‘Ah, I’m pursuing this, I’m directed to that path only.’ So we try our best to provide options that they can think about and discern, and hopefully, it can provide them a broader picture of what’s available to them out there,” he expresses.

Siojo mentions that this flexibility in future careers could be traced to the age of digitization, as well as the trend among companies starting to hire employees not only based on competency, but also capability.

“Careers are no longer linear. [They are] no longer ladderized. It’s what they refer to as a jungle gym now,” she says.

Despite the diversification of opportunities, Siojo refuses to discount the factor of practicality in choosing careers, as this is part of their vision to help Ateneans make informed decisions about

their future.

“In fact in career development, before, they used to say ‘Find your passion and pursue it.’ Okay, but as we said we would want you to make informed decisions. What if at that moment, your passion will not put food on your table? Or give you clothes on your back or give a roof on your head. Is that practical? No, you have to think,” she remarks, maintaining an pleasant tone amidst explaining a harsh reality. “What is the practical thing now? Where is the need now?

What does the country need? What does the world need? What are the emerging industries now?”

Yet she adds, “You have to decide and take those things into consideration, but bring your passion with you. Who says you can’t, right?”

GETTING THINGS SET For Rodriguez, the Placement Office does not only equip Ateneans with the technical skills needed for work, but also inculcates “lifelong skills” in them.

“It’s not just preparing them for work or career in the real world but also promoting some lifelong skills, because in your generation, your first job is not your last, definitely,” Rodriguez explains. “These are what we try to introduce together with our career development programs to make [them] more holistic.”

Siojo affirms his remark, saying that one of their missions is to “futureproof” the students in such a way that Ateneo alumni are able to adapt to the challenges they face once they are in the world of employment.

“We have to prepare them for that, to make them ready for a future that is not known, because everything’s changing

so rapidly,” she says.

Meanwhile, Rodriguez expresses that there is a constant challenge for the office to remain relevant and “seek new opportunities” in providing their services. He mentions that Ateneo itself does half of the job due to its appeal to employers.

With the effectiveness of their programs at hand, Plucena narrates that some alumni regret not consulting the office earlier, after having discovered how big of a help it is in their careers.

“They would come back and say, ‘Ma’am, I’m so happy that I’ve been part of the office. I was able to find my first job. It just so happened na sana I was able to tell my classmates about the office kasi sayang,” she says with quaint laughter.

A HELPING HAND Amidst all their efforts, Siojo stresses that their services at the Placement Office could only go so far, as the trajectories of the students’ careers could only be determined by themselves.

“We think we are the bridge that links the students, the academe to the world of work. But the thing is, students have to walk that bridge themselves, and when you get there, sure we can take you to the door, but you open it and you walk in yourself,” she says amicably.

Then again, Siojo finds what they do in the Placement office “a great service,” as helping to future-proof Ateneans serves as a “tall order and a real challenge.”

On the other hand, Rodriguez emphasizes the challenges in the “real world,” with hopes that the Atenean will be able to handle them, being a “continuous learner” who is able to adapt to various working environments.

For Mico, undergraduates should find themselves consulting with the office more, so that “they can really see what the world has to offer after college.”

Nevertheless, Siojo gives her regards to the graduating batch of 2019.

“Hopefully they’re able to find their corner in the sky, and always in their life, always think that even if it’s a glass half-filled, they’re always half-full instead of half-empty.”

Rodriguez then reminds the batch of the bigger picture in their career.

“Ateneo education is a privilege; Ateneans are fortunate to receive that. And I hope they can maximize all their learnings, the skills and capabilities that they have, not only for personal fulfillment, but also for nation-building,” he says.

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PARTING WORDS TO BATCH 2019

Department Secretaries In behalf of the Ateneo non-teaching staff, we all wish you well, Batch 2019!

We hope your curricular activities made you smarter and your extracurricular activities made you wiser. We hope that whatever you have learned in college will enable you to make smart and wise decisions about your future.

Congratulations today and all the best for all your tomorrows!

CATHERINE DELA CRUZ DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATIONS ENGINEERING

Congratulations graduates and to your proud parents for their sacrifices.

Enjoy your day with this important occasion and forget your work. Again my heartfelt congratulations and best wishes for your next stepping stone in achieving your success.

RHEMBRANDT MAGSINO COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT, MANAGEMENT WITH APPLIED CHEMISTRY, AND MANAGEMENT ENGINEERING PROGRAMS Today, marks not the end but the beginning of another journey. As to one accomplishments leads to another so, your time is coming, and through him you are going to make it just commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.

Again, congratulations and God bless you all on this wonderful achievement.

All your hard work paid off.

“Take pride in how far you’ve come. Have faith in how far you can go. But don’t forget to enjoy the journey.” –Michael Josephson

JOY SOBREMONTE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE (GRADUATE PROGRAM)

They say that once you graduate you now enter the real world. But what really is this "reality" that people are talking about?

With the various modern complexities and nuances that are present to your generation, you have the chance to go beyond what tradition dictates and create your own version of reality. Always remember you are well equipped to succeed and it’s just a matter of being true to who you are and what you believe in. Soar high, aim high and never settle for less than you deserve.

CAISSA NAVALTA DEPARTMENT OF EUROPEAN STUDIES

Congratulations, Batch 2019! You did it!

All the best as you go forth on the next stage of your life—the outside world. Go where your heart leads you. Work hard but have fun. Always be humble and remember the values & principles taught by the university. You’ve been given the gift of the Ateneo education, share it and use it to influence and inspire others.

Don’t forget to visit us in the department. Good luck and God bless you all!

GENEVIEVE LOPEZ DEPARTMENT OF LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGY

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ROWENA ARGONES DEPARTMENT OF ENVIROMENTAL SCIENCE

Time flies really fast!

It seems only yesterday that you were sitting with your parents, attending the ES Open House. And now you’re here, squeezing the so many things to do over the so little time remaining. Finishing final exams, defending your thesis, working on your clearance until finally, the big day comes when you go up the stage and tell the whole world, ‘I made it!’

On behalf of the ES family, thank you for giving us the opportunity to take care of you and be part of your life in the Ateneo. We will surely treasure the moments we shared for the past five years and we hope you treasure them too.

Following our ES tradition: ‘Once an ES Family, Always an ES Family!’ You will always be welcome. I hate to say ‘good-bye’ and would prefer to say, ‘see you around’ as this will not be the end of our friendship and partnership, but rather, the beginning of a new bond as we continue to support you like family.

Fly high, guys, and show the world what an ES Major can do!

Maligayang Maligayang Bati po sa inyong lahat and see you all soon!

VICE PRESIDENT FOR THE LOYOLA SCHOOLS

Maria Luz Vilches, PhD

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UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT

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Jose Ramon Villarin, SJ

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