with xavier 4th year high

I am so honored to be here and make this talk with you. Like the fairy creature Donkey, I love to talk. I send text messages a lot, and my outbox is five times longer than my inbox. I chat very well through the internet messenger, but it seems everyone else wants to place "busy" in their status line. I talk quite much in graduate school, in your Corrales campus; that is why one of your professors who happened to be my classmate has invited me to be here. Finally, all my blabber has paid off.

It is a great pride to be in fourth year high. You go around the campus and feel so mature and actually, you feel like royalty. You see the freshmen and you say, oh we’ve been there and we’ve done that. Most of all, you are going to be graduating soon – and you will have your hand at being an adult.

You know, nature operates in a funny way, and you will find out that sometimes it is in the end that we start from. Your four-year secondary education will soon finish and your next higher education will define your career. Your choice for your education after high school will help you identify not only your course subjects, but also the course of the rest of your life.

Each day the world turns, you are affected by it and you affect it. The business trends in our country and the international scene are beckoning you to make your preparations as you will join it in the near future.

So in what manner will you touch the community where you belong? How will you do it? I read somewhere that “all serious daring starts from within.” I share in the belief that no matter how your life is right now, the process of getting clear about the direction of your future and your life starts with some serious self-reflection.

Search starting from the inside. Big chances are your declaration of “what you will be when you grow up” from way back in kindergarten will not work anymore. It’s a big bonus if you still want the same thing, but nevertheless, you need to do a process check and this will start from within you.

What do you love? The best and most enduring career decisions ever made are those that considered your motivation and challenges, your opportunities and vision, your interests and priorities. You may hear a few who claim that they became successful through mere luck, but what if you do not get that lucky? Your future is too important to be thrown to luck. Prepare by knowing yourself. What are you hoping to achieve? What is your dream? How do you define success?

Do you know what’s happening to you, the youth, these days? Almost all of you enroll in nursing in the hope of getting that job in a hospital abroad. No problem, as long as you do not forget that we also need those who will work on research to eradicate viruses here in your country. A number of you will study engineering to construct that building in that piece of land. No problem, as long as you recognize it is equally important for us to have smart farmers who will produce more than enough for the people. Some of you will be in a business course so you can land in a marketing job with a car plan. No problem, as long as you remember that we also need those who will be entrepreneurs and establish new companies and bring in more jobs - jobs that could be for the classmate sitting beside you now.

As you prepare for your career, be glad to know that gone are the days when it was expected of you to be a lawyer, a butcher, or a pilot all your life. Today, there are many ways to carry a career and live a life, and there are many paths that you can take. You can be a soldier who writes children’s books. You can be a teacher with a farm to harvest in the weekend. You can be a dentist who will join the next swimming competition. Why, just between us? I am a CPA who would rather spend and make those expenses rather than account for them into straight lines in a book. But it sure does help that I know against where and how they are deducted.

Keep your mind and eyes open. You will never know what lessons and decisions you are going to meet in a given situation. These will help you mold the career and the life that you want. But then again, there is one thing that you must face. You must not be afraid to make decisions. Some of those you will make may not be correct at the time. See those boys making hoops? I think they only make a basket in every ten attempts they make, and they do not get everything right. But they're at it, and those were decisions just the same - and as long as you learn from them and become wiser in the process, then taking the risks is all worth it.

Also remember, you are unique: in the same manner that I keep on remembering it through the various career moves I made in my life. You see, I am keeping a career mosaic. You know what a mosaic is? It’s those small pieces of colored glass or stone arranged to form an overall design. My career mosaic is the collection of all my experiences – and so far, the design that I’m creating is not so bad at all. I have experiences (and these are not in chronological order because sometimes they overlap) with a university, two car dealerships, a USAID project, a national government agency, a small-town concert production, a power distributor, a radio station, a church volunteer association, and now, a business organization.

Maybe I love too much - and too impassioned. But nevertheless, I am clear on what makes me happy, and what I do well. My competencies and my choices may appear incongruent and unrelated – but they actually fall together perfectly in the roles I play in my life – as an MBA student, as a creative worker, as a business planner, as a person. Again, just like a mosaic.

It is a real privilege for me to be here. My excitement for the past two weeks has all come to this – my pleasure of seeing you and knowing that you are in good hands. Your families, your school, your teachers, your church, your friends, your friends who are more than friends: they all help you become the best that you can be. They will help you to be strong when you fly to the skies. But remember that the most important thing in the equation is you. It’s only you that knows your heart well.

So young ladies and gentlemen, I would not tell you that you are the future. You have been hearing that and you know that. Instead I will tell you to prepare for it now, and rightfully claim your destiny. But more than that - work on that inspiration and turn it into something concrete and definite. I would not know if this talk at all has reached you. But if you have felt a bit of curiosity raise your brows, a flicker of a passion spark deep inside you, a small seed of action grow in you - then I shall have done my job.

To all of you – there is so much ahead. Be ready, the world awaits you. See you out there and thank you very much.


* An excerpt from my message to the fourth year high school students of Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan during their December 15 career convocation.

Mosaic art courtesy of Therese Desjardin Studio