my life as a groupie

because. sir danny started this online campaign. and i had a sudden urge to write about college. and i really love this badge designed by ate kate. so.

i have two maskom stories here. or narratives. story seems a little restricted. they're about my life as a groupie. groupie as defined by penny lane in almost famous, that should be clear.

the first one is about the struggle for the favorable regard of the professor luis teodoro. the overused phrase "reputation precedes him" would always have a place in the lexicon because there's no other way of saying it. the mind has to discover the subtleties but language unfortunately has its limits. there. reputation: übermensch. and i learned that several days before i actually met him.

he gives me a 3 in the first class assignment. better than 4.5 or, well, 8 (either i saw a paper with this grade in it or this is the most vivid dream i had ever) but definitely not acceptable. the opinion article fared better, but the sem ended with a 2 on my class card. the struggle begins. i enrolled in another class under the professor teodoro (trust me, the the is not so korni when you're a student slash groupie) and when he quoted albert camus i made sure i submitted a paper with some reference to the absurd. i did my internship in a community newspaper. to be different (at least that's my story).

and then. opinion writing class. the professor in his usual lecture mode, the subject is capital punishment. he remembers an essay by albert camus. he looks at me and asks, "you know reflections on the guillotine, mr soriano?" yeah i died.

the second story is about the other celebrity (as we've already used the word groupie, whose meaning we defined earlier), yvonne chua. she gives fifty assignments every meeting, they say, and thirty of those get a 4; the remaining ten maybe a 2.75. i'm exaggerating. it's not really fifty, maybe forty or something. ok, it stops there.

oh, i loved the assignments by the way. in a weird way, i did. i almost cried (almost because i don't want to say i did cry) when the storm milenyo damaged power lines and caused a blackout and my laptop's battery was empty and there's not an open internet café near my house. i can't remember how i finished everything but i did.

it doesn't end there. she picks my thesis proposal one semester later, she is to be my thesis adviser. friends flooded my phone with text messages that range from genuine concern to more creative crap like pag pumasa ka maganda nga thesis mo pero wala ka nang kamay. the appendages would change. again i can't remember how i finished everything but i did: 1.25.

these are trivial stories, this is a trivial entry. but that is the point. i'm not in the position to be preaching about what i learned (learned seriously) because ironically one of the things i learned in cmc is that the application of learning is more important than learning itself. i graduated just last year. i've no right to be talking about the purpose of life or the meaning of my past experiences. i'm still trying to figure that out. so i take refuge in nostalgia. but that nostalgia, i'm sure, helps me figure things out.

ps. my favorite luis teodoro joke is this: "i saw a sign that says, 'keep this door close'...and your enemies closer." i never believed i lost weight until professor chua told me in one thesis consultation session: "just pull a chair. we'll talk in my office (she shares it with professor simbulan). you're slim naman e."