by Polo F. Imperial
I can no longer remember the first time I stepped inside the Philippine Collegian’s office at Vinzons 401. You see, I was summoned rather than invited, and I was suspicious of why the editorial board would want someone like me to write a column for a student paper notoriously known for its radical agenda.
I was then a sophomore Biology major. I used to be fat, pasty white, and socially awkward. I also fancied myself as apolitical, and though English is my preferred language, I harbored no illusions that my writing skills are anything near extraordinary. I came from a privileged upper-middle class family. I knew almost nothing about the issues that the Collegian writers and artists were so passionate about. What could I hope to contribute?
Maybe it was a social experiment, I guessed then, and the latent adventurer in me could not resist saying yes. What have I got to lose? I didn’t have any social life besides playing DOTA and board games with creatures like me. My parents are not very keen on grades. And most of all, I believed that I am immune to the Collegian’s brand of advocacy journalism.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Week by week, month by month, I began to realize that what I signed up for was something that would possibly be the best decision I would ever make in my entire life in UP. I discovered the value of friendship and camaraderie that is based on mutual respect for each other’s differences in ability, opinion, preferences, background, and disposition. Not the kind that simply accepts you for who you are, but the kind that allows you to become who you should and can be.
I also learned the value of hard work, however seemingly thankless and most especially when it is for something else other than personal gain. I met a lot of people, and gained many new friends, many of them poor and disposessed and robbed of their right to dignity and justice. I learned that there is a much bigger world outside the gated subdivision where I live in, cruel and unforgiving to almost everyone, except those who are obscenely wealthy and frighteningly powerful, though perhaps this is not so apparent for those of us so accustomed to a life of relative ease and privilege.
Most of all, I learned to be brave, to always choose and never apologize for doing the right thing, to fight for myself and for others, for we all share a single humanity that we must defend from those who seek to reduce us into docility and poison us with illusions of changing the world without shaking its very foundations.
Until now, the editors would not tell me why, of the 25,000 students of UP Diliman, they singled me out. To me, even now, all of it still seems so “nefarious secret organization captures mutant.” I have employed various stratagies to snare them into conversation traps where they might inadvertently tell me why they chose me, but they would each time foil all my attempts and give me cryptic smiles.
One thing is clear though. The Polo Imperial who first entered Vinzons 401 is not the same Polo Imperial who will be leaving it twelve months hence, and I am glad of the changes in my life brought about by my very brief stint here. For all of you who are reading this, I thank you for being with me in this adventure. And now, as they say in Castle Black, my watch is ended.
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