IN RANDOM VIEWS of a city-bred and a promdi.

I’ve always been amazed with child geniuses.  If only I could just have a fraction of Mikaela’s cerebellum, particularly layer 4 responsible for photographic memory (which would be very helpful for my exams), life would be much easier!

The first time I heard of Mikaela was when I was a reviewee in Brain’s Review Center which her family owns.  Her mother (who was also a child genius) would talk about an 11 y.o. who got a flat 1.0 in Chemistry 17 (Yun pala, anak nya yun).  Ofcourse we were amazed by her I.Q. at 167, but more so on how she copes up in college when I saw her in her pigtails and black doll shoes as she was surrounded by teenagers in Casaa (the college cafeteria in UP Diliman). 

I shared about her to my friends, and they say that she must be having a hard time despite the fact that she is a genius, for intelligence is not always directly proportional to emotional maturity.

However… Mikaela once again proves her critics wrong.  Please read her speech she delivered last sunday during the graduation exercises in the University of the Philippines.

Take not the road less traveled

One of the
things that strike me as being very “UP Diliman” is the way UPD students can’t
seem to stay on the pavement. From every street corner that bounds an unpaved
piece of land, one will espy a narrow trail that cuts the corner, or leads from
it. Every lawn around the buildings sports at least one of these paths, starting
from a point nearest to the IKOT stop and ending at the nearest entry to the
building. The trails are beaten on the grass by many pairs of feet wanting to
save a fraction of a meter of traveling, no matter that doing so will exact some
cost to the shoes, or, to the ubiquitous slippers, especially when the trails
are new.

What do these paths say about us, UP
students?

One could say that the UP student is enamored with
Mathematics and Pythagoras, hence these triangles formed by the pavement and the
path. Many among you would disagree.

Others could say that the UP
student is naturally countercultural. And the refusal to use the pavement is
just one of the myriads of ways to show his defiance of the order of things.
This time, many would agree.

Still, others will say that the UP
student is the model of today’s youth: they want everything easier, faster, now.
The walkable paths appeal to them because they get to their destination faster,
and presumably, with less effort. Now that is only partly true, and totally
unfair.

These trails weren’t always walkable. No doubt they
started as patches of grass, perhaps overgrown. Those who first walked them must
have soiled their shoes, stubbed their toes, or had insects biting their legs,
all in the immovable belief that the nearest distance between two points is a
straight line. They might even have seen snakes cross their paths. But the
soiled footwear, sore toes, and itchy legs started to conquer the grass. Other
people, seeing the yet faint trail, followed. And as more and more walked the
path, the grass gave in and stopped growing altogether, making the path more and
more visible, more and more walkable.

The persistence of the
paths pays tribute to those UP students who walked them first – the pioneers of
the unbeaten tracks: the defiant and curious few who refuse the familiar and
comfortable; the out-of-the-box thinkers who solve problems instead of fretting
about them; the brave who dare do things differently, and open new opportunities
to those who follow.

They say how one behaved in the past would
determine how he behaves in the future. And as we leave the University,
temporarily or for good, let us call on the pioneering, defiant, and brave
spirit that built the paths to guide us in this next phase of our
life.

We have been warned time and again. Our new world that they
call “adulthood” is one that’s full of compromises, where success is determined
more by the ability to belong than by the ability to think, where it is much
easier to do as everyone else does. Daily we are bombarded with so much news of
despair about the state of our nation, and the apparent, perverse sense of
satisfaction our politicians get from vilifying our state of affairs. It is
fashionable to migrate to other countries to work in deceptively high-paying
jobs like nursing and teaching, forgetting that even at their favored work
destinations, nurses and teachers are some of the lowest paid professionals. The
lure of high and immediate monetary benefits in some low-end outsourcing jobs
has drawn even some of the brightest UP students away from both industry and
university teaching to which they would have been better
suited.

Like the sidewalks and pavement, these paths are the
easiest to take.

But, like the sidewalks and pavement, these
paths take longer to traverse, just as individual successes do not always make
for national progress. The unceasing critic could get elected, but not get the
job done. The immigrant could get his visa, but disappear from our brainpower
pool. The highly paid employee would be underutilized for his skills, and pine
to get the job he truly wants, but is now out of his reach. And the country, and
we, are poorer because of these.

Today, the nation needs brave,
defiant pioneers to reverse our nation’s slide to despair. Today, we must call
upon the spirit that beat the tracks. Today, we must present an alternative way
of doing things.

Do NOT just take courage, for courage is not
enough. Instead, be BRAVE! It will take bravery to go against popular wisdom,
against the clichéd expectations of family and friends. It will take bravery to
gamble your future by staying in the country and try to make a prosperous life
here. It might help if for a start, we try to see why our Korean friends are
flocking to our country. Why, as many of us line up for immigrant visas in
various embassies, they get themselves naturalized and settle here. Do they know
something we don’t?

Do NOT just be strong in your convictions,
for strength is not enough. Instead, DEFY the pressure to lead a comfortable,
but middling life. Let us lead this country from the despair of mediocrity. Let
us not seek to do well, but strive to EXCEL in everything that we do. This, so
others will see us as a nation of brains of the highest quality, not just of
brawn that could be had for cheap.

Take NOT the road less
traveled. Rather, MAKE new roads, BLAZE new trails, FIND new routes to your
dreams. Unlike the track-beaters in campus who see where they’re going, we may
not know how far we can go. But if we are brave, defiant searchers of
excellence, we will go far. Explore possibilities, that others may get a similar
chance. I have tried it myself. And I’m speaking to you now.

But
talk is cheap, they say. And so I put my money where my mouth is. Today, I place
myself in the service of the University, if it will have me. I would like to
teach, to share knowledge, and perhaps to be an example to new UP students in
thinking and striving beyond the limits of the possible. This may only be a
small disturbance in the grass. But I hope you’ll come with me, and trample a
new path.

Good evening, everyone.

By Mikaela
Irene Fudolig

UP Graduation 22 April 2007