By Erika Marie C. Hautea
Master of Science in Management
Magna cum laude
To our guest speaker, the Honorable Mayor Victor María Regis Sotto; to the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Honorable Ambassador Jose L. Cuisia, Jr.; to our University President, Dr. Winston Conrad Padojinog; to the Management Committee; to the Operations Committees of the University’s respective Schools; to the deans and program directors; to the members of the faculty and staff; to our beloved parents and guests; and, finally, to the very resilient batch of 2020, good morning!
Surely, an online graduation is not what we expected, but I hope that you all feel as proud as you would have been if we were in PICC. In the years we spent in UA&P, we faced countless experiences of disappointment and hopelessness. But we also went through moments of joy and triumph. It is this range of emotions we had to face before we could proudly sit in our homes and wait to finally be declared graduates.
In the middle of this journey, we were also transformed into better versions of ourselves. Personally, this is something I am proud to take with me as I graduate. This personal transformation is something many of you have also gone through, so allow me to take you back in time.
When I entered the University, I felt nervous for the expectations set on college students. I was not sure how I could live up to higher standards and showcase my talents well. Later on, I realized that what makes us special is something we already have and one that comes from within. And so, it was in UA&P where I learned the most important thing: I learned how to love.
But what is love? Love is totally giving yourself for the sake of the beloved. And I would like to share with you the three loves I found in the University, each with different stories and lessons learned.
We start off with my first love, which is the love for work. While love is not something we would associate with schoolwork, I believe that we can all agree that our schoolwork has made us better. When the readings got longer and the papers more research-based, the will to continue became so weak. But I realized that while the experiences we went through were difficult, we became wiser and more resilient than who we were before the struggle. And this development transformed itself into a motivation that inspired me to overcome the succeeding obstacles in college.
But I found it a challenge to remember that motivation during the past school year because this was when I struggled to write my thesis. I rushed against time and only found a topic with less than a month to go for my proposal defense and was challenged to get interviews during the pandemic as my study was on nurses. However, looking back at those unending problems, I would not have had it any other way because I matured so much as a person.
None of us had an easy time in college. We ran with less than four hours of sleep and were powered by caffeine. There were a lot of instances when we asked ourselves, “Can it get any worse than this?” Oftentimes it did, and the pandemic made it even more stressful, as we struggled to do everything virtually and dealt with poor internet connection. We might not have enjoyed all of these moments, but it was in the process where we learned to love because we gained a lot of virtues, such as wisdom, courage, and prudence, that made us more human. It is this process of developing ourselves that allows us to give so much more to those around us.
This brings us to my second and most complicated love, which is the love for others. For a long time, I wondered what could have been the reason why some classmates would often be unresponsive to messages or be absent from meetings. I failed to remember that they were more than just students and had other problems outside of school. Things began to get clearer to me when I was placed in their shoes too.
My 2018 was a year of tragedies. In January, my mother was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer; in April, my grandmother passed away, and in May my uncle died too. I felt that my life was crashing, but my most significant takeaway was that I learned to value and appreciate the people around me even more. People have different stories, and our ability to empathize creates the biggest impact in their lives, as we are able to make them feel valued even if we do not see the full picture. We all want to feel understood, and the ability to give this and to feel this is so powerful. Also, in this ability to love people, we get a taste of how beautifully God loves us.
This leads us to my final and favorite love, the love for the Supreme Being. These anecdotes and many other demotivating experiences made me run to someone whom I give my full trust, He whose love is the source of everything. I learned that whatever happens, as long as I give God my whole faith and love, then things will turn out to be for my good, even if it is not what I initially planned.
We do not know how we survived our journey in the University, but that journey prompted us to cling to our faith. We found ourselves in the chapel for every exam and every failure. Maybe we even held back a lot of tears there as we prayed about the death of a loved one. Looking back, I am sure you would agree that we would not have surpassed these trials alone.
In our stay in UA&P, we were taught the natural goodness of man, to see things in a wider perspective, and to direct our actions to what is noble. And what better way to flourish with this knowledge than to love? As we graduate today, we are not just bringing with us our degrees but also the love we have discovered, understood, and shared.
Lastly, I know that we had set aspirations for our careers right after graduation. However, this pandemic changed many of our plans. Nevertheless, this hurdle provides us with an opportunity to become even more significant than what we initially sought out to be, an opportunity to see that the great things we wanted to accomplish on our own, we could achieve together.
May you be emboldened by the richness that lies within you, to harness your talents and skills to serve our fellow Filipinos, and to see that the love that you give will transform the little things into something extraordinary even amidst these uncertainties.
May you accept the invitation of this pandemic to use this time to flourish even more, to do greater things than what you expected, and to continue doing what is good in your special part in this world.
I extend my heartfelt congratulations to all my fellow graduates. Thank you.#
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Banner photo by Ben Kerckx from Pixabay.
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