Off the Record
bcupin@theguidon.com
Freshman year seems like so many years ago. I barely remember the short stories we read for Lit 13 or the types of soil, as discussed in ES 10. I do remember, however, the three days of madness more popularly known as OrSem.
There’s nothing quite like going around campus, finding out why B is not Bel, understanding how a banana figures in Ateneo and hearing the “best of the best” spiel from Father Ben himself.
Then there’s the running. It never seems to stop of course, as wide-eyed freshmaen finds themselves being shuffled from Henry Lee Irwin to the College Covered Courts. It’s painful, tiring and possibly unnecessary. But this year, a strange phrase echoed throughout the Cov Courts—“MOB… but don’t run.”
Parents didn’t want their children to run around because of the weird weather. Which is all well and good; after all, we don’t want sniffling freshmen during the first week of school.
But part of me can’t get over the fact that Ateneo Batch 2014 didn’t go through the usual crazy OrSem experience. The freshmen of 2010, just like many other Ateneans, were deprived of the chance to do something arguably more difficult in a list of options.
And the same story rings true for the upperclassmen of the Loyola Schools. There persists a culture of taking the easy way out. We take the u-turn closest to the Gate 3.5 exit even if it means risking an MMDA violation. We cram for an oral examination we know shouldn’t be crammed (myself included). We’re so used to this notion of getting things easily that it’s sometimes easy to forget that instant gratification doesn’t always work for the best.
We like taking the easy way out, especially when it comes to things that take us out of our comfort zones. And just what is that comfort zone? For our generation, it’s social networks and social media. Probably a quarter of the school population has a Facebook account and maybe half of those are on Twitter. Everything is easy on the social media world—links are shared without batting an eyelash, comments come and go.
Social media is a wonderful thing that our generation must be very grateful for; but we’ve also grown so desensitized that there’s a danger for many of us to believe that social networks are the end-all, be-all of social involvement. There a few, and I hope they remain to be a minority, who seem to believe that social media involvement equals social involvement.
Do not talk to me about Philippines politics if all you’ve done is “like” a witty Facebook group related to the recent National Elections. You are have no right to be an advocate of the RH bill when all you’ve done is join a pro-RH bill Faceboook group and nothing else.
It’s so easy to be sucked into being “involved” solely through social media, of taking the easy way out of our responsibility as our generation’s “cream of the crop”. But here lies the challenge of every Atenean, of anyone our age.
To the batch of 2014, you may have been given the free pass to walk briskly instead of run, but avoid the mistakes of your predecessors and please, run when you mob.
