By Sophia Angeline G. Delantero, UC student
After three years, I am still running through the stairs of the institution I once dreamt of. Leaping from one tile to another, trying to juggle extracurriculars and the academics that have become the very personality of most students who have always wanted to perform better than ever.
Now that I am about to step into and live another world, I cannot wrap my head around the fact that this is my last chance in life to worry about academic deadlines, organizational work, and understanding the instructions of the professors I have come to admire. Thus, I do not know if I can bear the weight of leaving these behind, the very things that have made me breathe, through and through.
No one ever taught us that even after the complaints, sighs, tears, and even blood we have shed, we would still have to suffer the pain of letting go of what we once called home.
This is like the dot above the “i” in Jeremy Bearimy from The Good Place, where it is sometimes Tuesdays, or July, or sometimes, nothing really happens at all. It is like living in between the letters of a wobbly little world, not minding the time nor the existence of it just living, and barely existing.
Crazy as it may sound, I feel like I could do this for ten more years. I would rather review ten thousand more concepts than be made to suffer in the real world. I could be a slave to the grading system if that is what I need to do to live a life that feels worth living.
But maybe this is the part of my life where Everything Everywhere All at Once takes place, in which I am trying to make sense of everything, of everyone, all at once.
This is just me being scared of not excelling in the real world or of what life may offer outside the institution I have grown in for the past three years. Not just scared, though terrified that I may fail in the years that follow, in the life of working that awaits me. Oh, how do I stop time?
No. Maybe I am not scared of doing this. Maybe I am scared of how the government will ruin the potential I have, only to let me receive benefits that only they seem to benefit from. Maybe I am scared of how the system will crush the dreams I have spent more than sixteen years building. Maybe I am scared of fumbling the little to no opportunities this country will offer. I might even be excited to show the world what I am capable of. It is the system that terrifies me. The people within the system are the ones I am terrified of.
As I carry the burden of our not-so-capable leaders, I hope that all the graduating students this year, and in the years to come, find their purpose to keep the flame burning still, to remain steadfast in the spirit of fighting for their dreams until they reach the sky.
To live for the hope of it all. To live, and to love, for the hope of it all.
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