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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Sunday, April 2, 2017
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THREE graduating College of Communication students from the West Visayas State University – Ranzie Jane Apid, Novee Ann Estrella and Nikki Ann Guillen – recently met with me as requested by their professor, Dr. Ian Espada, who had asked them to interview me for a term paper.
One of the questions they asked was, “Why did you study to be a journalist?”
“Journalism has always been my passion,” I answered. “It began in high school when I passed the exam for staff members of our high school paper. I assumed the position of news editor.”
Temporary setbacks could intervene, I explained, detailing how my late father had tried to suppress my dream by asking me to take up Veterinary Medicine instead because veterinarians were very few, and so could get profitably employed.
“I knew dad was right,” I told the three ladies. “So I enrolled as a freshman Vet-Med student at the University of the Philippines (UP)-Visayas in 1966. But there being no second to fifth years thereat, I had to move to UP-Diliman the following year.”
To make the long story short, I said that enrollment had just closed at UP-Diliman when my dad and mom took me there. It became my turn to convince them to let me shift to Journalism. They nodded and allowed me to take up my dream course at the Manuel L. Quezon University.
I asked my “interviewers” whether they were also interested in newspaper work, insisting that they ought to be; otherwise they were in the wrong college. If 10 years in the elementary and high schools had not yet honed their ability to put the right words on paper, four more years in college would go to waste.
I assumed though that they had the writing aptitude, just like other WVSU graduates who had worked or were still working for Panay News.
“You could be both in the media and the academe for a more stable future,” I said, citing their professor, Ian Espada, who until then was editor of the weekly Visayan Tribune. I advised them to proceed to a masteral course.
I recalled that when I was in Journalism school, most of my classmates could not write according to the rules. Our instructor, the late Angel Anden, would often remind us, “If you can’t even write simple news, you have no right to be here.”
At the risk of offending my audience, I recalled that I could not count on my 10 fingers my classmates who could write.
“Most of them graduated without knowing how to write,” I stressed. “But that was good for them who eventually found non-writing but better-paying jobs abroad.”
On the other hand, I don’t have enough fingers to count my classmates who have resorted to post-graduate “MD” – “marriage degree,” that is – after failing to get a job.
Conversely, we have active newspaper reporters today who have had no formal education in journalism. All that they have is writing aptitude.
Summing up, I reminded Ranzie, Novee and Nikki that it is not their parents but they themselves who know which path would lead them to their destination.
“Of what good is a diploma when its possessor does not function as expected?” I asked.
I once read an inspirational book (title and author forgotten) about two men walking on the road. One had an expensive stainless flashlight; the other, a cheap, plastic-encased flashlight. When the night fell, the two switched their flashlights on. The expensive flashlight failed to light up while the cheap one shone brightly. As to which was the successful flashlight, the answer is obvious.
A verse in the Bible (John 12:36) quotes Jesus advising his flock, “Put your trust in the light while there is still time.” (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
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