GO WRITE YOUR
PERSONAL NARRATIVES
By
Dr. Lex
Librero
Graduation
Speaker
_________________________________________________________
Graduation
Address before the BNSHS Class 2013, Batanes National Science High School, Basco,
Batanes, 20 March 2013
Division Superintendent of Schools Wivina
B. Gonzales, BNSHS Principal Juan E. Redondo, Teachers and students of the
Batanes National Science High School, proud parents, and friends, thank you for inviting me to join
you in witnessing this high point in the young lives of the members of the
Batanes National Science High School graduating class of 2013.
It is both a pleasure and great honor
to be speaking before you, graduates of the Batanes National Science High
School, this year. Fifty years ago, I
was in your shoes, and, like you, I
dreamt of a successful life after high school.
Graduation ceremonies are also known
as Commencement Ceremonies. Particularly, those that transpire in high
school have specific significance. To graduate
means to have completed a series of responsibilities, and to commence means to
start something. Reference to the graduation
ceremony means that you are going through the final stages or rituals of having
earned the right of passage, while that which refers to the commencement
ceremony marks the beginning of the wonderful stories of young men and young women
who are destined to succeed in their lives after high school.
My message to you, members of the
BNSHS Graduating Class, on this day marking your graduation from high school
is: go from these portals and seek your destiny. Let me remind you, however, that destiny,
according to poet William Jennings Bryant, is not a matter of chance, but a matter of
choice. You don’t wait for it, you have
to determine it, then achieve it. So, go
achieve your destiny, go write your own individual personal narratives that you
would want to be remembered by. The
Batanes National Science High School has prepared you well for this
journey. But as you will find for
yourselves, you will, on a clean sheet, draw your lives with a pencil without
an eraser, for that is what life is all about.
You cannot erase the errors that you shall have made. You will have to live with them forever. Think … decide … then act. The world is waiting for you. So go
write your own stories. Some of
you might be asking yourselves, how will I do this? Well, let me tell you part of the narrative
that I have written while away from the portals of this institution, my alma mater. I
must seek your indulgence because this could be a long story to tell.
My friends, in 1984, I was here to
address the graduating class of the Batanes National High School. I considered that as some kind of progress
report to my alma mater 21 years after I left in 1963. Today, twenty-nine years after that address, or
fifty years after graduating from this institution where great minds are molded,
I am back, this time, to make my final report to my alma mater and to the
members of this institution, including you, the members of the graduating class
this year. Indeed, it is a rare
opportunity for anyone to be able to come back to his alma
mater twice in his lifetime to render a report, and I am greatly honored
to have been given this opportunity so
that I may share with you the narrative I wrote for myself while away from
these portals.
In the old English heroic epic poem
titled Beowulf, we are told that when everything is over and done with,
after going through all the significant and insignificant events in our lives, what is left is only our personal individual story
or narrative. Personalis narratives vivat in aeternum. Indeed,
it is through this narrative that we may live forever.
It is my hope, therefore, that you
shall be able to pick some nuggets of thought from my narrative that may guide
you as you navigate through the rough seas of life out there in the real world,
writing your own narratives. It is my
fervent hope that you would write your own narratives as diligently as I did
mine, for in the end this is all that matters in any one’s life. When we are all gone, it is only what we have
done in our lifetime that will linger on after us.
More than a month after our commencement
exercises here in 1963, I joined my brother, who graduated and was already
working as farm technologist at the UP College of Agriculture in Los Baños, in
preparation for my enrollment there. He
was the one who sent me to school.
Without him, I would not have entered high school, much less college.
Anyway, at that time, UPCAT was still
not required, but the UP College of
Agriculture was admitting only the top 5% of graduates from high schools all
over the country. There were 500 of us that
entered the UP College of Agriculture in June 1963, but after one semester 300
of us were left. Passing the subjects at
the UP College of Agriculture was very difficult, almost impossible if you did
not study well, and so after yet another semester, 200 of us were left. In the end, less than 100 finally graduated
after five or six years, a survival rate of 20%. Only four in our batch graduated on time, which
was four years, and so they were permitted to join the UP Graduation Exercises
in April 1967.
I completed my BSA thesis in May 1967,
only one month after the UP Graduation Ceremonies that year, but I was only
included in the graduation ceremonies one year later. When I finally joined the graduation
ceremonies of UP in April 1968, I clearly remembered a dialogue between the
late Mr. Cordell, the well-loved janitor of BHS during our time, and myself. One day about two weeks before graduation,
while we, the members of the graduating class, were converging on these grounds
to rehearse our graduation program that time, Mr. Cordell casually asked me, dinu ngayan mo aya
machinanauo? to which I responded lamely, du Los Baños siguro. He was so surprised, even apprehensive and in
disbelief. He said, mangay ka’d UP? Gattus!
In those days, there were very few
Ivatan students at UP. It is a different picture today. As late as last year, if we compared the
number of Ivatan students at UP based on the population base of the province,
then we could say that Batanes was over
represented in UP. This is perhaps an
indicator that, indeed, Batanes is bursting on its seams with intellectually
gifted young men and women, something all of us must be absolutely proud of. Then again, getting to UP is just the
beginning.
When I enrolled at the UP College of
Agriculture in 1963, I realized Mr. Cordell was right being concerned whether
or not I would make it in Los Baños. I
was thrust into the block section comprised of valedictorians and salutatorians
from all over the country, from high schools, large and small. Coming from a small high school, I felt I was
so provinciano
and completely unprepared for the intellectual competition notwithstanding my
excellent training at the Batanes High School.
Of course the competition was very fierce and I had to study extremely hard because that was a point in my life when
I was no longer simply thinking of my self but of my being an Ivatan. Yes, there comes a time when you will no
longer be concerned about yourself alone but with whom you represent. I was the only one from Batanes in our batch
and I became known to my classmates simply as hoy, taga Batanes, which even
sounded derogatory as Batanes was terra incognita,
an unknown place, in those days.
While enrolled in the UP College of
Agriculture, I was always short of money.
There was nothing new about this since I was also always short of money
throughout my high school years. But
being short of money while you are in college in a distant, unknown place, the
experience is extremely humbling, so I labored for additional survival pocket
money as working student, earning a princely amount of P0.50 per hour. In those difficult times, that meant I had
some money, just enough to afford a respectable student life at that time,
which was three square meals a day and cost of laundry, but I had to walk to
all my classes everyday. By any standard during that time, I was as
poor as the bottom 5% of all students at the UP College of Agriculture.
Initially, as early as 1964, I was assistant
laborer in the department of horticulture, in-between my classes. I remember vividly that for one year, my
responsibility was to water all the plants in the nurseries of the Department
of Horticulture before I attended my classes in chemistry. When I got to my classes, I would be all swollen
up due to bites of giant garden mosquitoes.
In later years, I worked as assistant janitor and later as news release
sorter in the Department of Agricultural Information and Communications, then
later as student news writer, and then as student announcer in the radio
station of the UP College of Agriculture.
As working student, I had to study doubly hard to avoid being left
behind in my subjects. I was lucky to
have been included in the Dean’s list for one semester, even as I was a working
student.
By the time I graduated, one of the
regular staff members of the radio station resigned so I decided to apply for
the position vacated. I patiently waited
for almost three months before the UP
College of Agriculture could hire me, and to make sure that I would be hired I continued
working with the radio station, even after my official appointment as student
announcer has expired, doing whatever was assigned to me without any
salary. I was finally officially hired as
Radio Station Supervisor of UPCA’s rural educational radio broadcasting station,
DZLB, in 1968. Working in the radio
station meant working in odd hours. I
had to report early to work at 7:00 a.m., and went home after signing off at
past 8:00 p.m., everyday, including Saturdays and Sundays.
I guess the message is, for those of
you who wish to work in media like radio, television, or the newspapers, be
prepared to work 24/7.
For four years I worked 12 hours
everyday, but I never claimed nor got any overtime pay, even if I was entitled
to it. Instead, I continued working more
than the required number of hours per day, and completed an amount of work more
than what was required by my position without expecting to receive any
remuneration.
My intention was very simple and
mundane, just to prove to my superiors that they did not make any mistake in
hiring me after my graduation from college.
To top this all, my salary as Radio Station Supervisor then was only
about 5% of what the present Radio Station Supervisor receives today. I did not mind this because I learned by
heart a lesson from our teachers in the BHS who used to tell us, “don’t expect
to receive a reward for every single effort you make. If you deserve to be rewarded, such reward
will come but at a time you least expect it.
And whatever reward you will get will not always be what you have
expected to receive.” Yes, life does
have unexpected turns and twists beyond our wildest imagination, especially in
today’s world where everybody who wishes to stay alive is engaged in a survival
competition among the increasing members of society.
Then four years later, when my
department was looking for an individual to fill an Instructor’s position left
vacant by the resignation of one faculty member, I got the surprise of my life when
I was appointed to the vacant position of Instructor in 1972. Apparently, the then Chairman of the
Department learned that I was doing overtime work everyday, including Saturdays
and Sundays, in the past four years, without
complaint and without additional remuneration but simply performing my
responsibilities the best way I could. In
other words, I was dependable and could deliver. And I was good at what I did. It helped, too, that most of the faculty and
staff of the department were my friends and had, individually or collectively, suggested
to the Chairman of the department that I deserved to be appointed to the
position of Instructor. At that time,
becoming an Instructor in the UP College of Agriculture was what every graduate
aspired for. Incidentally, the norm then
was that the only fresh college graduates that were hired for faculty position
at UP right after graduation were honor graduates of UP.
Beginning when I was a Radio Station Supervisor,
however, I had started enrolling in one advanced or graduate subject every
semester so that in 1974 I graduated with the degree Master of Science in
Development Communication. At that time,
UPCA had become what is now known as the UPLB.
In 1975, I was then designated Station
Manager of DZLB. This was an additional responsibility without additional
remuneration. I had to leave in 1977,
however, to pursue my PhD degree at Indiana University. Upon my return from Indiana University in
1981, I was promoted to Assistant Professor by virtue of the fact that I had
earned a PhD degree and was already called Dr. Librero, and then I was
appointed Acting Chairman of the then Department of Development Communication
from 1983-1984, and as full-fledged chairman from 1985-1987.
During my term as Department Chair, I
worked for the elevation of the Department into the Institute of Development
Communication, to which I was appointed the first Director in November 1987. In 1991, I was appointed Associate Dean of
the College of Agriculture. Then in
1993, I was appointed Dean of the School for Distance Education (Los Banos)
after the UP Open University was created by the UP Board of Regents. In 1995, I was appointed Vice Chancellor for
Research and Development of the UP Open University, and then as Chancellor, or
Chief Executive Officer, from March 2001 to February 2007.
During all those years, I was so lucky
to have been able to undertake various responsibilities. Among other things, I was also able to do the
following:
1. I trained all
the 110 farm broadcasters of the Department of Agriculture in 1973.
2. I served as
resource lecturer in more than 500 training courses, in a span of 34 years,
from 1973 to 2007.
3. I authored
five academic books, more than a dozen book chapters, more than 30 technical
journal articles, about three dozens popularized articles published in national
and international magazines and newspapers, more than a dozen booklets, and
more than two dozens papers presented in national and international conferences
where I represented the Philippines as country delegate or representative.
4. I was lucky to
have mentored a whole generation of junior faculty members in the Department of
Development Communication at UPLB, who have themselves become excellent
academic administrators at UP today, and advised 30 PhD graduates, 30 MS
graduates, and 25 BS graduates of development communication who are now
successful professionals with various national and international institutions.
5. I never left
the University of the Philippines in search of a new job because when I was a
student of the BHS, what got implanted in my mind then was the saying, “a
rolling stone gathers no moss.” Whatever
that meant, it did not include getting rich.
Had my first job been with one of the commercial companies that tried to
recruit me when I graduated from the UP College of Agriculture, I could have
ended being chief executive of that company and would have become a millionaire
as early as many years ago. That was not
my luck because I chose to be an academic in the public service, working
through the University of the Philippines.
Teaching in UP
was very rewarding intellectually, but certainly not rewarding
financially. Again, my days in the BHS
have always been coming back to mind with the reminders from my teachers that
money was not all there was in the world.
I found
teaching and introducing innovations to
improve my teaching capabilities in the university much more challenging, even
if they were not financially rewarding.
In the end, I was able to improve myself as a professional and even influenced
others to improve as well.
The lesson
here is, if you wish to become rich early on your own, select a high-paying job
and stick to your organization until you make it to the top. In the professional world where individual
performance is important, always strive to be the best you can become. The trick is, compete with your own self, not
with others. If you compete with your
own self, you learn to improve and respect yourself, and develop your self
confidence to its utmost. If you compete
with others, you will eventually learn to lose your self confidence. Remember, too, that it takes time to succeed
because success is the natural reward for taking time to do anything well.
During all these years, I have been
lucky to receive some awards for work well done. Those that I treasure include the Leadership
Award in Educational Technology that the Alumni Association of Indiana
University gave me in 1987, the M.S. Swaminathan Award for Social Science
Research in Agriculture in 1993, the Distinguished alumni awards that the
College of Agriculture, College of Development Communication, and the UPLB Alumni
Association gave me from 1993 to 2007, the UP Scientist award from UP in
2006-2008, the international publications awards from UP from 2007-2012, the UP
Alumni Association Distinguished Professional Award for communication education
in 2007, the Rolando Andaya Sr. Award for Distance Education and Open Learning
in 2011, among others. There are
numerous other awards but I don’t have to mention them here. It is enough for me to say that I do have a
fair share of recognition for work well done.
I should also explain to you that
recognition comes in various forms as well.
I always value more those that did not carry financial rewards even if
money might be important. I was elated
no end, for example, when the then Dean of the UPLB College of Agriculture
himself initiated my nomination to the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the
Philippines awards in 1987. While my
nomination to the awards was not submitted because I was already over-aged, I
thought it was enough indicator that I had been doing well as a professional
and other people have taken notice of my work as a professional. That was already great reward for me.
In May 2008, I was all set to retire
from the University of the Philippines but the new Chancellor of the UPOU had
other plans for me and she convinced me to accept an extension of my
appointment as professor of development communication at the UP Open University. She said I was still needed by the UPOU to
finish the work I started in 2004 to conceptualize, design, organize, and write
the curriculum of the first Doctor of Communication program ever to be offered
in Asia. I relented and accepted full
extension of my appointment every year in the last five years, which means I am
still on the official roster of the faculty of UPOU until May this year. In
fact, I am here as professor of development communication representing the U.P.
Open University.
In December 2007, I was elected by the
faculty members in all the seven different campuses of the UP System to serve
as member of the UP Board of Regents in 2008, representing the entire UP
Faculty. The UP Board of Regents is the
highest policy-making body of the University of the Philippines System and I
was a member of it for one year. As
Faculty Regent, I was sometimes called UP’s Centennial Faculty Regent because I
was Faculty Regent during the Centennial (or the celebration of the first 100
years) of UP. I was, of course,
extremely proud of this because there can only be one Centennial Faculty Regent
at UP every 100 years. It so happens,
too, that UP’s first Centennial Faculty Regent (and, if I may add, the only UP
Centennial Faculty Regent until 3,008 A.D.) was an Ivatan, an alumnus of the
Batanes High School, the forerunner of the Batanes National Science High
School.
In 2009, I completed designing the
proposed Doctor of Communication Program curriculum, which included system-wide
consultations with other experts in communication at UP. At UP, consultations meant very intensive and
endless debates over many philosophical issues about a doctorate curriculum in
the field of communication because at UP there were already two PhD programs in
communication, one in Diliman and another in Los Baños.
After the intensive consultations, I
presented the proposal to the UPOU University Council for approval, and then to
the UP Board of Regents for final confirmation.
In 2010, therefore, we started offering the program, and I was appointed
to serve as the first Program Chair of the Doctor of Communication
Program. Today, the UPOU’s Doctor of
Communication Program is the most popular professional doctorate degree program
in communication in the country and in Asia, and one of three programs
world-wide.
By the end of May this year, 2013, I
shall cease to be Program Chair of the Doctor of Communication Program, and I
shall also cease to be professor of development communication at UPOU. By then, I shall have reached the age of 70,
and Civil Service rules prohibit regular appointment to the civil service of
the country beyond age 70. While I shall
have come to the end of my active professional life, I shall be starting
another life. Life could begin at 70,
indeed.
During the meeting of the UP Board of
Regents on 28 February 2013, just three weeks ago, the University of the
Philippines System honored me again with a lifetime honorific appointment to
the title of Professor Emeritus
effective May 31, 2013. At UP, the title
of Professor Emeritus, which is
solely for the qualified retired faculty members, has become highly competitive
and is, indeed, a great honor to be awarded the title. To qualify for the nomination to the Professor Emeritus title, one has to
have achieved the academic rank of Professor 12 while still in active service
at UP, and must have performed exemplarily as professor at the University of
the Philippines. Not all retiring
professors at UP are awarded this title.
It is still an elite title for any one, and as an Ivatan, I am proud to
be called UPOU Professor Emeritus of Development
Communication. I offer that in
honor of my alma mater, now called the Batanes National Science High School.
And so, my friends, incomplete as it
may be, that is my narrative, the story of my life (or at least part of it)
after high school, until 70, that is. In
this narrative, I am very proud to say that this Ivatan standing before you now
has been given such honors by the University of the Philippines System. This Ivatan is a member of the Batanes High
School Class of 1963. Some of the
members of that class are here now to honor you and to celebrate their 50th
anniversary as graduates of this institution.
Let us acknowledge the BHS Class of 1963. (Members of the Class of 1963 all rise.)
They, too, have their own individual
narratives. Some day, you will know what
those narratives are. Perhaps, the
Batanes National Science High School might want to collect the narratives of
its graduates for reasons of posterity.
I shall be glad to give a copy of mine to the BNSHS.
Thank you, Golden Jubilarians of the
BHS. You have survived half a century of
exciting life after high school. That,
indeed, is something to be proud of.
So, now, may I address myself to you,
members of the graduating class of BNSHS 2013, go forth and write your own
individual personal narratives for only you can do it for yourselves. How your personal stories will unfold depends
on you, and you alone. The world is
waiting for you, and your teachers in this institution from which you are
graduating today, shall be watching.
May I now invite you all members of
the graduating class of 2013 to please rise … and may I invite all teachers,
parents, and those in the audience, to give these young men and women a big
applause. (Every
body applauses. Graduates take their
seats.) My final message to you, my friends, is a
passage that someone has written before.
“The roots of true achievement,”
it is said, “lie in the will to become
the best you can become.”
Thank you again, and congratulations
to all of you.
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