Summing up four great years is hard to do.

Undeniably, I had onehelluvanawesometime in my stay in the University. Every year has been extraordinary. No doubt about it, UP gave me the best four years of my life. It has been such a great honor to be in a crowd like that, to be mentored by the best professors, to exchange ideas with tomorrow’s best men and women, and to be a scholar of the entire Filipino nation.

In UP I learned not just about life. I learned about what it means to lead a great one (and also how to!). I became classmates not just with bright people. Better still, I got to mingle with the country’s brightest. I may have “failed” at times in UP’s standards. But hey, those were UP’s standards. And though it may not seem true due to my previous statements (haha), UP humbled me and made me realize that you’re never really good enough… and it is not a matter of “you can always do better” but more of “you should always try to strive to be better.” After all, you owe it to the people. And it’s not even out of pagbabayad ng utang na loob because the people subsidized our tuition. More than anything else, it’s about good citizenship.

I miss UP already.

It’s a bit hard for me to move on given that there never was really any closure. But then again, why should there be a closure when you can still keep in touch? Closures are for endings. I may be an Atenean in a few months time, but I’ll always be UP. I’ll always have the blood of a UP graduate and not passing the LAE can’t take that away from me.

I can’t stress enough how I love UP and how I enjoyed my short stay. I comfort myself with the fact that I have maximized my stay by being so many things at the same time, without sacrificing my academics. I don’t know when I’ll ever be in such a great sea of bright minds again. Sure there’s Ateneo Law, but then we’d all be students of the law. The feeling of being among tomorrow’s leaders in just about every field is really different. Besides, Ateneo can never be UP. But then that’s a good thing, ‘cause then I’d be looking forward to brand new experiences, things I wouldn’t get if I’m still in UP :) For more academic (and personal) growth na rin, diba? (I hope my point is clear, as I do not mean to offend the former school in any way).

So Philippines, thank you for the honor of being an Iskolar ng Bayan for four splendid years. You know I love you :)