It's been a year.

Exactly a year and a day ago, I finally received what I had been working for for the past five years --- my college diploma.  I can't help but remember how things went months before and months after March 30.

The beginning of the second semester made me silently anxious.  I was back.  The familiar face, who has been given a tribute already on the school paper he served for two-and-a-half years, is back.  I have to take one subject for the third time with the batch next to my original batch.  At first, I was thinking of what others were thinking.  But days went by and the thought just died.

I did way better than I did before, or so I think.  Before, I did it all along.  This time, I did it together with them --- my classmates.  That was the lesson I always tell those who are to take the subject: 'If you want to survive together, do it together.'  I suddenly became their reference.  I checked set their systems up and corrected their works.  I went he extra mile by lending my Marius to a very close friend when I was done submitting my final output.  There was one casualty though which saddens me because she'll have to go through what I was through.  Nevertheless, we survived almost together.

Queenie Alas, Anna Galendez, and your blogger together with my mentor and favorite teacher, Dr. Ernesto O. Golosino during our college's Tribute to Parents and Sagbay Ceremony. Photo by Queenie Marie Alas

Being tied up with The WORD until the end of the summer term, I was still compelled to do my WORDian duties.  I applied for jobs on the side.  At least online, though.  I went to job fairs, enduring long queues, and harboring the fear of being rejected for the job.  I was rejected couple of times.  I didn't receive any reply from most of the jobs I applied for.  I reached the point when I questioned myself if I wasn't enough.  I asked myself if my resume was deemed too costly for employers to afford.  I asked myself if what was wrong with me that I don't seem to fit into a job.

But the universe has its ways of leading us to the places where we ought to be.  Here I am now, a non-practicing Management Accounting graduate but doing what I love the most --- writing.

With my fellow BSA and BSBA-MA graduates. Photo by Anna Veronica Galendez