I am here to give a response on behalf of the Master of Science and the Doctor of Philosophy graduates; I would like to focus on the tough decision we have to make on the transition from a Bachelor of Science degree to a graduate degree. After all, most of our parents would feel a sense of relief that we are at last graduating, and would now be able to support ourselves. However, most of us would refuse to work, and would rather proceed to study further!
Let me share my experience regarding this hard decision. I come from a poor family [in Dumaguete]. My mother is a housewife who does small jobs like selling viands and wrapping longganisa to support our family; while my father works as a contractual carpenter; in other words, his pay was not on a daily basis.
There was a time when I had to sell mangoes in our Parke on weekends to support myself in school. During my elementary school years, my family did not have any electricity at home, and we had to rely on gas lamps; so one time, I had to do my homework under a street lamp [in barangay Banilad].
My family also did not have our own comfort room that we always had to use my aunt’s. Our CR was installed when I won a contest in Grade 5; electricity was finally installed in our house after I graduated from Grade 6. We had it right after I won as champion in a national history contest and our City mayor then [Mayor Felipe Antonio Remollo] pledged to shoulder the expenses for the electricity installation.
In a way, I could relate with the childhood experiences of our guest speaker, Prof. Macrina Morados, dean of the UP Institute of Islamic Studies.
Upon hearing my story, one might think that I had a very pitiful childhood. On the contrary, I had the best childhood ever! This is mostly due to my early curiosity and fascination for science.
As early as in my elementary school years, while selling mangoes and watching people “eat plants”, I began to think about the possibilities of human photosynthesis, and how people would just go out and stay under the sun “to eat” when they are hungry.
We didn’t have any electricity at home but the fact that I had to study under a lamparilya made me realize this was how Newton and Galileo used to study and contemplate the universe, and it was never an excuse to come up with something great!
That also allowed me to make an intimate connection with the physicists who came before me.
Sometimes, I could not use my aunt’s CR if someone else was already using it before me, so as a child, I would climb a mango tree to poop. I was able to observe that the poop from cows and carabaos are formed the way they do because of the height from where they fell.
If human poop is dropped from a higher elevation, its shape would be indistinguishable from that of a cow or carabao.
I am telling you these experiences to emphasize how much my family needed money. Regardless of the circumstances I had while growing up, I was able to graduate valedictorian both in elementary [South City Elementary School in Mangnao] and high school [Ramon Teves Pastor Memorial Dumaguete Science High], and also as summa cum laude in B.S. Physics from Silliman University in 2009.
At Silliman, I was awarded the prestigious BPI Science Award. On top of the award, the Bank of the Philippine Islands offered me and the other awardees a managerial position in their bank. Hence, I had a hard time deciding whether I should take their offer or proceed to earning a masters degree and become a physicist.
The BPI offer was basically a ticket out of poverty which, for a poor and fresh college graduate like me, was very hard to refuse.
It was made much harder by a remark from a senior BPI awardee who told me that refusing the BPI offer and proceeding to take an MS would turn me into a Man of Sayang (obviously a wordplay on “Man of Science”).
I began thinking that taking a masters degree would be “selfish” since I would only be satisfying my own interests at the expense of my family’s needs and hopes to alleviate them from poverty.
I finally decided to take an MS nevertheless, though not without feeling some guilt of what would have happened if I decided to work in the bank. For starters, I would have had a clean haircut today, and probably be without a beard. I would probably be driving my own car by now.
But to take the bank offer felt like going against my principle, turning back against the very thing (science in general, and physics in particular) that defined who I am.
Years later, after having taught at the UP National Institute of Physics while taking my PhD, I realized that doing my graduate study in science has not made me a Man of Sayang at all. In fact, using one’s talents to create and disseminate scientific knowledge, as well as inspiring students to go study science is, in my opinion, much much more noble than using those talents for the betterment of a single company.
So for everyone here, especially those who are graduates of MS and PhD, remember that we are not Men and Women of Sayang. We are the Men and Women of SCIENCE, and I believe we have what it takes to contribute not just to our family, but to our country, and fellowmen.
