12 minute read
Angel Martinez
Tiffany Golangco
Advertisement
WRITTEN BY KENDJI S. TUAZON AND
ANDREA MIKAELA LLANES
IT IS often said that balancing academics and student organizational work is a difficult task, but Tiffany Golangco (4 BS ME) managed to do it. Aside from graduating as magna cum laude from the honors course Management Engineering, Tiffany has also joined multiple organizations and has taken on multiple internships throughout her stay in Ateneo. On top of that, she joined and won multiple case competitions, bringing much pride to the John Gokongwei School of Management.
THE CASE COMPETITION JOURNEY
Pre-college, Tiffany learned about case competitions from her older sister who was also part of the case competition pool during her stay in Ateneo. Tiffany eventually followed in her sister’s footsteps because case competitions allowed her to gain a better understanding of what it was like to be in a consulting company. It also exposed her to different industries and companies.
Back in 2019, when Tiffany was still a sophomore, she was invited by her former professor to join Ateneo’s case competition pool alongside five other Ateneans. However, before participating in case competitions, they were each given multiple cases to determine the four out of the six students who would be part of the team. This was the team that Tiffany would compete with for most of the case competitions she joined.
Once their team was formed, they started their training and joined their first case in the All-Ateneo Business Case Competition, where they won first place. Tiffany and her team were chosen among many teams to represent the University. The star-studded team joined and topped even more case competitions throughout their stay in the Ateneo, such as bagging 2nd Runner Up in the PWC Mergers & Acquisitions Challenge 2020 and 1st Runner Up in the 2021 IIBD International Business Case Competition.
While Tiffany competed with the same team for the majority of the case competitions she joined, she also tried her hand a few times with another team that consisted of her friends. Together, they won the Philippine CFA Ethics Challenge and even represented the Philippines in the CFA Institute Ethics Challenge 2021 APAC Regional Finals where they placed 2nd Runner Up.
PERSEVERANCE IS KEY
Tiffany kept joining case competitions because of the exposure these provided her. She was able to see the many different problems that different companies face, as well as their varying lifespans, business models, and personal goals. This pushed Tiffany to learn about how each business worked and how to solve their problems analytically.
Case competitions are known to be both time consuming and challenging, and being able to juggle this alongside academics and org work is a difficult task. Tiffany shared that it was a crazy journey since case competition training tested one’s endurance and commitment since one session can last for up to eight hours. “Because I was interested in it, and because I had my team, it kept me committed to training. If it was just me alone—without a team and coach—I might have quit,” she shares.
Besides her teammates, Tiffany’s family also helped her stay motivated. In particular, her mom was very influential to her as she was the one who encouraged her to try out various things in college such as case competitions. Tiffany shares that—whenever she would get tired—her mom would remind her that she has to finish, instilling the idea that once she commits to something, she has to do it and see it through.
Today, Tiffany has moved to Singapore and pursued a budding career in investment banking. While working in Singapore was never a part of Tiffany’s plans, she followed her mom’s advice and decided to just try it out.
For everyone who hopes to try out something new, Tiffany has only one piece of advice: “Always go for it if you are interested in it. Try it out because you will never know what will happen in the future. There will always be setbacks, but you realize that it’s better that way and that things happen for a reason. In the end, things work out.”
In the end, things work out.
Mikko Vitug
WRITTEN BY KIARA FLORENCIA RODRIGUEZ
BEST KNOWN for his illustrious debate career, the most common misconception about selfproclaimed nerd Mikko Vitug (4 BS/M AMF) is his course. Many assume he is taking Political Science due to his prowess in speaking—but a closer look reveals a greater polymath underneath. “I end up trying so many different things and I feel like that’s a good part of who I am,” he shares.
While he has a great passion for debating, his general love for learning has led him to pursue a wide range of interests. In his years as an undergraduate, he served as a member of the Ateneo Blue Raiders Flag Football team. He also had a short stint in the Loyola Film Circle. Unrelated as these interests may be, they all contributed to Mikko’s flourishing as a debater.
BLAZING FIRE
Mikko’s interest in the activity was piqued by his sister’s experiences as a debater. Having started later than his peers, Mikko was scared; he expresses the anxiety of going up against people who were better than him. Nevertheless, it was still an enjoyable experience for him.
As he pushed through with debating, he shares, “A lot of debating is just the activity.” He did not have to know all the facts, he just needed to master how to give a seven-minute speech continuously with confidence. Once he nailed the technicalities, he focused on acquiring more knowledge.
“I’d say in my fourth year… it’s the best I’ve performed in debate tournaments, and I’d say the reason for that is I kind of committed my fourth year to learning and just understanding more about the world,” he explains.
This translated to four to six hours weekly of consuming YouTube videos of free lectures on social issues. He would also read articles on similar topics, trying to summarize and create a five-minute explainer for each.
The outcome of such efforts was historymaking. Mikko was among the first Filipinos and Asians to ever make it to the 2021 World Universities Debating Championship grand finals. Despite falling short of the championship, he still placed fourth on the Best Open Speaker list of the competition.
Mikko recounts the recognition of Ateneo’s teams as serious contenders in international debate competitions as his proudest achievement.
“When I started out debating, people didn’t know how to pronounce or spell Ateneo. In a lot of the Zoom rooms, they would struggle with how to spell our school’s name but nowadays, that’s not the case. It’s one of the most heartwarming achievements you can have,” he shares.
STOKING EMBERS
When debating became too emotionally taxing, Mikko would find respite in the abstractness of math. His pursuit of a degree in applied math stemmed from a childhood interest in numbers. “When I was young, I really expected to do something with math,” he recalls.
Despite the difference between his two main interests, he finds that both are underscored by rigorous logic. Mikko realized that he could apply the same thinking he uses in his course to debating. “Even if it’s not numbers, there’s still some facts about the world that have to be true; some very logical sequence you’d have to follow to make an argument,” he explains.
Mikko notes that he picked up the value of perseverance throughout his academics and competitive endeavors. Deeming himself average at flag football, he worked hard to improve. He realized the same thing about debating—improvement entailed hard work.
Still, he was satisfied as long as he was able to be a good teammate to his co-players; yet another thing that influenced how he debated. Instead of focusing on individual recognition, he would fix his efforts on how they could win as a team. “The moment you focus on [individual performance], you do worse and your team performance is worse as well,” he explains.
NEW SPARKS
Now in the twilight of his debating career, Mikko shifted focus from competing to coaching— something he began doing at the end of his freshman year in Ateneo. It gives him a different sense of pride to see his students perform well in competitions. “I think it’s one thing to personally do well in debating, but to watch a bunch of different people really grow and start to find themselves is a different kind of joy,” he says.
Currently, he coaches a local high school team and is in talks with a US-based university to do the same for their undergraduate team. He plans to continue helping mold future debaters for the foreseeable future as he pursues graduate studies. With a genuine fondness for learning, he shares, “I feel like there’s so much more I can learn still, and I find that more comforting than alarming.”
Angel Martinez
WRITTEN BY TATIANA L. MALIGRO
IT’S RARE for one’s trajectory in life to be predicted at a young age, but Angel Martinez (4 BS COMTECH) is an extraordinary exception. At just five years old, Angel’s knack for writing prompted media outlets to predict that the “future of Philippine literature” was in her hands. With bylines in five local and international outlets, Angel is well on her way to fulfilling this prophecy.
Once diagnosed as a gifted child or “child genius,” the budding writer’s time in Ateneo has been a humbling experience defined by a process of falling in love with the learning process and the craft of writing all over again.
Z, Y, X, W…
From learning to talk before turning one to teaching herself to sing the alphabet backwards, Angel had exhibited extraordinary intelligence since her formative years. Recognizing their daughter’s unique abilities, Angel’s parents hired a child psychiatrist to assess their daughter and determine how to best nurture her gift. A 20-page assessment that Angel read when she was 13 revealed that she was diagnosed with “advanced cognitive ability” for her age.
Her unique genius continued to shine until high school, where she graduated with flying colors and passed the entrance exams to the country’s top four universities without the help of a review center. Angel admits that she thought she was going to be “that” girl who nailed every aspect of her academic journey.
Despite making it to her dream university, Angel’s journey was not all smooth-sailing. During her freshman year, Angel was called by a professor to discuss a paper she had submitted. Thinking that the professor called her in to praise her work, she was heartbroken when her work received a C-grade and feedback that her essay was underdeveloped.
Once praised as a child prodigy who wrote hundreds of books, reality quickly hit Angel that studying in the Ateneo was being a small fish in a big pond. “As time passed, parang I realized that my peers were like the super brilliant people who would echo the original ideas I thought I had,” she says.
POST-RUDE AWAKENING
Left demotivated by her freshman year, Angel eventually developed a “healthier” attitude towards college in her sophomore year. However, her love for writing remained dormant until the COVID-19 pandemic.
The revival of Angel’s love for writing began with posting essays on her blog just to express her thoughts. Her friends and family would soon encourage her to submit her pieces to domestic and international organizations. “Of course, I was hesitant at first because sino ba naman ako, diba? To submit to places that I’ve been reading since I was in high school,” she recalls. She would eventually cave in and pitch her story ideas to various editors.
As of writing, Angel is a regular contributor to Young STAR, CNN Philippines Life, Rappler, VICE, and i-D.
Beyond writing, Angel consistently seeked internship opportunities to learn and grow. She has previously interned for Cobena Business Analytics and Strategy, advertising agency Wunderman Thompson, and Kontinentalist, to name a few. Here, Angel learned how to present ideas to high-impact stakeholders, manage her time, as well as the qualities she wants in a potential employer.
An advocate for quality education, Angel also pursued an internship in non-profit Teach for the Philippines.
Aside from her various internship experiences, Angel accepted an offer to mentor for The Young Writers Initiative. “When I was starting out, especially in freelancing, I had to learn a lot of the stuff on my own,” she explains. “So I feel like being a mentor and then by extension a speaker was a way for me to democratize the information that younger creatives needed so that they could achieve their dreams, fulfill their potential.”
NEXT CHAPTER
As her time in Ateneo comes to an end, Angel hopes to balance a potential job in market research with her freelance writing gigs. “I don’t wanna give up writing at all. I do want a nice day job that’s also interesting for me. So these are pretty important considerations for me because writing is literally a part of who I am now,” she says.
Surrounded by driven and passionate people throughout her Ateneo stay, Angel learned that—while she may not be an “invincible child genius”—it’s the process of learning and growing at your own pace that is most important. This not only pushed her to pursue various learning experiences; it also encouraged her to impart her knowledge with others.
“It doesn’t matter at what pace I’m reaching that standard, or how I’m performing compared to my peers. There’s always going to be someone out there who will outperform me in some way. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
