My education

The year was 2011. I spent five weeks in the States learning about new media and journalism at Ball State University in Indiana, the alma mater of Letterman, the creator of Garfield, and the original Papa John. You’re probably thinking who studies in the States and goes to Indiana? But the school had a stellar journalism program and for one summer, I got a full ride.

My professors were former CNN producers and Peabody Award winners, and we didn’t have to call anyone Ma’am or Sir. We had state-of-the-art equipment in the classroom, and we didn’t have to race against each other to borrow video equipment. We went around and interviewed, and we didn’t have to write ten letters and get ten permits.

It still is the best summer of my life—the romantic period from your youth that you will go back to when you’re old and jaded. The best part of that whole summer though will have to be the two days we spent in New York City. Some call the place cliché, overrated, but nothing prepares you for its seduction, its gritty beauty, its people who are from every nook and cranny of this world. Because of our university’s academic ties, we got to visit the mothership, The New York Times Headquarters, and I was one of those selected to attend its Page One meeting where the Editorial Board decides what makes it to page one.

I was all kinds of naïve so I thought that that was it; I had made it. That moment was payback for all the sleepless nights I spent hunched over the computer, editing articles, layouting pages, thinking of ways to get more people to read The LaSallian (TLS), at the same time, feeling feverishly tempted to quit. It was payback for all the enemies I made and the many times that I got called to the “principal’s office” for being bossy and disobedient (No regrets though!). I was 17 and I thought that I had found it, the intersection of what I loved, what I was good at, and what the world needed me to do.

And today, thinking about how sure I was of that and my sheer arrogance for believing that it will only get better from there—that I will keep on traveling and writing about things that mattered—makes me laugh and shake my head. I was so stupid! Back then, I couldn’t wait to graduate, and I already had one foot out the door. After the States, I was an exchange student at Singapore Management University, and the whole thing opened my eyes to the world. I was like a bear that went out of hibernation. Bad metaphor, I know, but you get what I mean.

And so after graduation, my eyes were set on leaving the Philippines. While I cared about my country then, I didn’t want to be a part of its mess. I wanted to make it big but not here. It was a heady mix of arrogance and cowardice, but life is a bitch and it has a way of kicking you in the ass.

I got a job doing social media management for a national network and those three long months taught me endurance and tenacity, and the painful but beautiful truth that life after college is never what you imagine to be. In short, it will be hard, my friend. I left journalism three months after graduation.

I started working for an NGO startup. Many other things happened at that time and it’s a whole other story but what happened was simple—I fell in love with my country the way the best kind of love happens, quite deeply.

Today, my battle is different and the questions that I ask have changed too. I will always have a journalist’s heart and maybe one day, when I don’t have to choose what will sell over what is important (Boy, will that day ever come?), I will go back to it. My work in the development sector has made me infinitely curious, more strategic and disciplined, and uncomfortable by leaps and bounds. And that’s good! I’m sweating it out and I am changing. Helping build the nation is many times, disappointing, but when it pays off, the joy is indescribable. It pushes you to do more and love more. Ah, I have obviously become soft-hearted because of it!

Working for an NGO and “trying” to work with the government has allowed me to make one relevant observation though. There aren’t many Lasallians in this space. I am still trying to figure out if there is something missing in what we teach our students. Why are we scared to risk it, to go for the meaningful and uncertain instead of what is secure and what will pay us staggering amounts of money we won’t know what to do with at our age?

I understand that we are known for our business and management programs but is it not that our mission is to serve this country? I am not here to shun capitalism. If marketing makes you happy, then go do it! But if you think that you can put your talent in government, in a social enterprise, in a tech startup, in an NGO, where are the support system and the formation that will encourage you to go do it? Other schools have it. Where is ours?

One of our former EICs, Meryll Yan, said in her guest column in 2009, that she got her diploma from La Salle but her education from TLS. The same happened for me; TLS taught me what I needed to know to survive life outside La Salle’s pristine white gates. It made the dots that led me to where I am now. But maybe La Salle can give both to its students. Maybe it’s about time it does.

Angel Bombarda was Editor in Chief of The LaSallian in AY 2010-2011. She has been working in the development sector since 2012, and she is no longer in a hurry to find her place under the sun.