Kian Loyd Delos Santos, a 17-year-old Grade 11 student, was killed in an Oplan Galugad police operation in Barangay 160, Caloocan City on August 16. His death sparked outcry—and rightly so—as a CCTV video surfaced showing two policemen wearing civilian clothes dragging Kian with a cloth over his head. This is a stark contrast from…
With just a single bullet to the head, all that a person ever knows, all that they ever value in their life, ends. It’s been a year since the war on drugs started, but the very causes of it, such as the systematic trade and supply chain of illegal drugs, have not been confidently identified by government…
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind.” It’s the kind of quote you see accompanying vague, try-hard artsy pictures or posts on social media—overused, cheesy, and clichéd, maybe, but it doesn’t make it any less true. I had just finished my day’s work at my OJT in Makati, the downpour was fierce, and…
This year’s University Student Government (USG) General Elections (GE) has seen an engaging campaign period–only that the publicity it received was mostly negative. Since the start of the election season, allegations of corruption resurfaced and new scandals emerged amid calls for abstention. In what was the second GE following the Special Elections (SE) held in…
Last May, I attended an international conference called User Experience Philippines (UXPH) 2017: Design For a Better Philippines. For two days, Bonifacio Global City was host to around a hundred different professionals coming from diverse fields, as developers, graphic designers, psychologists, marketers, and government officials all came together to talk about “UX” or “User Experience…
For my business communication class, we had a mock interview to practice our communication skills. During the activity, I got a glimpse of the different resumes of my classmates and peers, and noticed that several of them were filled with lines and lines of the various co-curricular activities that we had participated in over the…
In one of my floating classes this term, my professor routinely gives us short quizzes to check if we’ve read the week’s assigned readings. These quizzes aren’t difficult; they’re made up of ten objective-type questions, and are checked right after we answer them—exchange with your seatmate, honesty system. I slowly got annoyed, however, when I…
A couple of years ago, I came across an article (whose title I’ve paraphrased into the title of this column) written on a website called The Financial Diet. It was entitled Why “Don’t Worry About Money, Just Travel” Is The Worst Advice Of All Time. In it, author Chelsea Fagan challenges the multitude of articles…
As one of my professors in Psychology bid farewell to end the term, he reminded the class that mental health problems affect all of us and it should be okay to talk about it. As that thought slowly sunk in, what surprised me was the honesty he had and the guts it took to admit…
As I write this column, at the back of my head, a tiny voice repeats the same words that are written on a resignation letter I just submitted. A few weeks ago, I found myself ranting nonstop to my brother about this job where I’d start the day with a bowl of being unappreciated for…
