Countdown to graduation

Yesterday I felt the first indications of how close our impending graduation was. We were in school to pay for our picture-taking, rent our togas, attend the baccalaureate mass and recognition ceremonies, and rehearse the motions for the commencement exercises on Saturday.

In previous terms we could only wonder how those odd folks walking the halls in semi-formal attire and togas felt, only knowing that we’d have our chance at graduation someday. Now that it was finally our turn to do so, it felt a little bit strange and surreal. My blockmates and friends Monique, Anj and Ces didn’t seem to mind; they were making a lot of noise about our being graduates smack dab in the middle of the amphitheater where everybody could see us. We certainly didn’t feel bashful about getting into our togas in public either.

After all my time in DLSU I finally got acquainted with Anj’s friend Ces, whom we “adopted” into our block of CAM-MMG graduates as she was the only OCM-MMG graduate this term. We were all products of the Communication and Marketing departments after all.

Kate and Ces were recipients of the Honorable Mention award, an honor which eluded at least Tantan and I. Still, they had murmurs of discontent as they got bronze medals and a cheap organizer as a token of recognition, while I had a mug and a bronze-and-green medal as Loyalty awardee (DLS-System’s way of saying “thank you for 18 years of making us richer”). Yeah, something was definitely off in that picture.

Of the batchmates I know personally, Veron Bacani got cum laude, while Mica and my old friend Martin Bañez will graduate magna cum laude. Congratulations to all of you guys!
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The graduation rehearsal was a paragon of forward planning and good event management, to be honest. It’s as if the Office of the University Registrar and the Office of Career Services got together seamlessly to not only make sure the graduation proceedings go well, but also that we fresh graduates have a crack at job-hunting literally the whole week after we graduate at the Job Expo. They gave us five free tickets to the event too.

They even made sure to include a Request for Documents form in our Graduation Package in case we wanted to obtain transcripts (as I’m sure most of us will), as well as a Graduate Information Sheet so companies can look for us on the OCS’ roster if they’re considering hiring any of us.

It’s the stuff of genius. Mr. Gutierrez, my Events Marketing prof, would have been mighty proud.
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Ces just started work at Universal Robina Corp last Friday as a brand assistant and it seems like an interesting marketing-related job to gain experience from. While I was asleep this afternoon, she sent me a message (apparently getting my phone number from KD) about whom I should e-mail my resume to.

That was real nice of her. I think I might as well give it a chance. Thanks Ces.
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My mom was asking me if I wanted to invite anybody to the lunch or dinner after graduation. I don’t really have any plans yet. Whom exactly should I invite anyway, apart from my family?

It would be great if the whole block could get together and have lunch as one long, happy, noisy table, but that might be asking for too much and some of us may have plans of their own.