…and well, all I have to say about that is a big and loud shit.

Classes begin again on Monday (05-26-2008). I’ll see old and new faces, the ID108 froshies are up and coming and it’s a new school year. The promise of new energy and new vigor is always there. Everything is new with every new term. It always begins with a new promise of doing well in school or doing something else right during the duration of the trimester. It’s like New Year’s Resolutions. The promises and chances to do better are never-ending. Me, I missed a lot of things. I missed the patented smell of the classrooms and hallways, I missed the campus itself, the smell of Taft Avenue and the smog of U-Mall. So you see, despite the big expression of shit, there are some good reasons to be back to school again.

A little summer vacation recap… as far as I’m concerned, I have done nothing for the vacation but to engage myself in long hours online in the computer whenever I’m at home or just watch NBA Playoffs. Good thing the Lakers are winning. LET’S GO LAKERS! Yay for that. But a big boo for these: Several failed plans for a getaway summer vacation? Check. One and a half month’s worth of worthless time off? Check. I’ve pigged myself out during this summer vacation and it visibly shows in the weighing scale. I’ve gained a considerable amount of weight. Again. So I can surmise that’s another check in my list of junk and things that I’ve did in the summer.

Aside from the disastrous summer fate that I’ve encountered, I’ve been just thinking of the back-to-school thing since last week. As it is not a secret, La Salle is one of the schools earliest to open classes and one of the latest to send off dead-tired students for vacation. But one thing that I can’t help thinking that this will be my last year in college. I’m still looking for some guidance and direction. Sure, I want to finish college but there’s still this cloud of doubt in me of what’s happening after that. Not that I’m doubting the education and the diploma that I will get once I finish. I believe that my school gave me the necessary learnings to compete with the rest of the world. What’s bothering me a bit is more of… where do I go after graduation?

I’ve long laughed at and passed at that question from my frosh year to third year, reasoning out that, hey, I’m still not in that stage to graduate so cut some slack off of me. I just want to enjoy the collegiate years. Pass subjects, go out with friends and drink, play ball during weekends in school, and just do school stuff that we’re needed to do. But I realize that I had enough brain cells to reach fourth year college in school so that means there’s no escaping for me. It’s a prerequisite that I need to set a direction in my life, set my goals, maybe set direction in my love life too, and I have to show to my parents that I have a definite plan with my life with a decent career to boot. All of those before I graduate. After all, I was the one who burned all of their hard-earned money for my tuition. They deserve better from me.

So I have a couple of options right now and so far, windows of opportunities have come to me. With that, I’ve laid out three plans for myself given I graduate next year:

Plan A: My uncle (from the mother side) said that he’d petition me after graduation, which will make me Canada-bound in a few years. He says that work opportunities here in the country are scarce if not low-paying, and my talent and my La Salle pedigree will be wasted. I seriously got flattered with those words. But going on track, he segued that I just have to earn some work experience here, which is absolutely true. My parents won’t have problems getting me some work experience. This is the primary plan that I’m riding with - get some work experience here after graduation and then jet away from the Philippines to greener pastures. I’m so nationalistic.

Plan B: I can ride the hopes that my practicum in my Economics degree will turn out fine and that the practicum firm that I will go in will hire me for a good paying job. But the key here is that it will turn out fine. If not, I might end up with Plan A. Or it’s back to the drawing board. Worse, I might end up unemployed and broke. Surely, I’d get killed choked and strangled by my beloved parents if that happens. On the flip side, this might be, in a longshot, the experience that will be the key for Plan A. But I seriously doubt it because practicums are just no match for real job experiences. They key really here is for me too have a good practicum so that the firm will have good reason to hire me. And then I can start to ask them to raise my salary right after. Way to go for me.

Plan C: This is given that things will not work out fine in the practicum or I will not like it, well because I’m choosy and bitchy. Or my dear Plan A will get botched, just like the summer vacation plans. I’ll engage in a tug of war with the rest of the no-work force and try out my luck in the labor market. Job hunting will surely be fun and adventurous. I’ll have extended hours reading openings in Jobstreet.com trying to look for openings that match my field and then repeatedly submitting my curriculum vitae and begging for follow-ups. I’m imagining it now and all I see is an image of a jungle. it doesn’t look pretty good but it’s challenging!

But before all the plans go on, I do remember that I still need to finish off my major subjects, and that includes finishing my thesis work and my electives. I still can fail, and I’m well aware of that. But I do have a checklist of priorities to help me graduate *crosses fingers* next year.

First and foremost, and the most important, I need a better work ethic. Perhaps I need to get a page from the book of Kobe Bryant’s work ethic. People keep dissing this guy but his work ethic is unquestionable. He’s doing things immediately when they can be done now, not like me who just bums out and then procrastinates like trying to beat the buzzer. His desire for perfection is also amazing, and I can take some points from that. Maybe I should stop telling myself “pwede na yan” to start off and start settling for the best possible output that I can make. I also might take a page from his cockiness, which is the appropriate way assassins should go. I don’t see any connection with assassins and academics though.

In relation to having a better work ethic, I also have to quit bad study habits to start with. Those bad study habits either way affected my grade to go down or have caused me to have bad grades in some subjects. These were times where I was completely unmotivated to study like my parents aren’t paying almost 50-grand for my matriculate every term. I have to quit forgetting/ignoring things that need to be done, I need to take every test seriously, I have to have better sources for researches, I need to come up with more well-constructed assignments and papers. Bottom line of it is I need to quit slacking off and I need to quit being like a fucking bum who thinks that he will get pension pay from the government.

Maybe I’ll also be needing a new inspiration, a new jolt of energy to drive me, say a new lover. It has been a far long time ago since me and the last lover broke up and I am in serious need of a new relationship. Okay, but that’s not the whole point of having an inspiration. I just need to have a new rally point to invigorate me because seriously, studying can get become so boring especially when the students are uninspired and unmotivated. It also doesn’t when people just came off from a long vacation and then you ask them to work on something uninteresting just immediately. Probably a series fortunate turn of events might do me good to reinvigorate my spirit to study and work my ass off.

The UAAP basketball season is coming back again. I need to balance my time being a fan of the UAAP and being a student. In fact, I need to balance everything that I’m doing now. I never cared for time management back then but for maturity’s sake, I swear to God that I will try time management for the first time. Maybe a change of attitude is also in the checklist for me so I’ll gain much more friends and people who hate me will delete me from their hate list. Also, I’ll also need luck. Might come handy when times get rough. We never know. I’ll need many other things and it will take much effort from me to graduate, I just can’t think of them all so I can’t iterate them in this space.

That’s too long for a post to read. I haven’t even included images yet. So yeah.

With that, I hope to have a good school year ahead, and I hope to see myself graduating next year. Time to rise up… the campus bells are back!