Reading my blog again, I learned how passionate and cutthroat I was eight months ago. Now I’m beginning to remember what I really wanted to become in life.
I became a slacker (until now), lying way lower than my competitiveness level that I had a year ago. I wish I still have the same vision: to become an excellent lawyer. But as months rolled by, that vision was effaced for reasons I don’t know.
Deep in my heart, I just want to be somebody happy. That’s the goal that I wrote in one of my classmates’ autograph way back in 2000, which eventually pissed my classmate who owned it.
I realized, then, that no matter how I will become successful, it would be inutile if I’m not happy with what I’ve become.
Question is: what kind of person would I really want to become to be happy?
This one question has an answer that seems to change from time to time. It’s like happiness which many people consider as fleeting.
My ambition in life is as volatile as risky ventures such that if somebody asks me what my ambition is, I honestly don’t know the answer. For one moment, I want to be this and the next, I suddenly want to be that.
Now that I’m a law student in University of the Philippines, it seems that I have no option but to become a lawyer.
But the road to get there is not easy. It is extremely difficult.
Stories of students dropping out of class are not uncommon. Many cannot face the immensity of the challenges law studies pose. One must not only have the passion to study, he must also be brave enough to continue what he had started.
I was one of those victims that the river of doubt carried away. I literally went home at the end of July 2009 with the thoughts of never coming back. That very day that I came home was the day of PGMA’s SONA so I wasn’t able to process my papers for dropping out because there were no classes. I then planned to just come back weeks later to make my quitting ‘official.’
I was thinking that if I quit from law school, I’d finally liberate myself and end up a happy person, the kind of person I wrote on my classmate’s autograph almost a decade ago.
For three weeks, I was a bum while everyone in class was busy studying. Have I become the person I longed to be?
I was freed from all the pressures law school gives. My head is shouting “I am free!” But then I learned that freedom doesn’t always equate to happiness.
Yes, I was free. But I wasn’t equally happy.
One Saturday as I was using Facebook (again), one of my classmates advised me to just drop some subjects and come back to school. I was convinced that that was a good idea. I then told my parents that I want to come back to school. Three days later, I rode an airplane which brought me back to Manila, thus ending my 3-week stay in the province.
Some upperclassmen like Anj Balacano came up to me and counseled me. A lot of other people shared the same feelings they had when they were still freshmen.
The feeling of quitting in law school is not a joke. It exists. If you are not brave enough, its current will carry you into the sea of non-lawyerish world. Day-by-day humiliation and voluminous readings scare students from continuing that mere ambition is never enough. One has to drink the potions of bravery and persistence in order to survive.
Prayers help too.
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