Verisimilitude
“Easy A ba?”
“Magaling ba?”
These are the questions that Ateneans preoccupy themselves with during pre-enlistment period. Aside from making their “dream” schedules ahead of time, the question of which professor to take is one of the most critical choices for an Ateneo student.
But why is it that out of so many “kinds” of professors out there, we have officially categorized them into only two—the “Easy A’s” and the “Worth it’s”? We often hear of professors being too nice, too strict, too demanding or too lenient, but these classifications don’t just say something about the teachers; they also describe the kind of students who take them.
“Easy A” professors may vary from being boring to being too lenient but whatever it is, they are known for being the ones you don’t have to “try” as hard for. You come to class, sit, opt to listen, leave and ace the easy objective quiz the next day. Alas! These are the professors who don’t take the extra effort to go beyond the required text.
Then you have your “Worth it” professors who seem to be the most difficult batch to take in school. Usually, they are known as the “legendary” professors who run out of slots the first minute of the allotted time for first batch students during enlistment. As opposed to the Easy A’s, the Worth it’s make you realize that there is something more to what life is giving you. They make any seemingly irrelevant lesson the most significant you learn in college and, ask anyone, they may even change your life.
After almost three years in the Ateneo, I realize that there is more to the issue of choosing which professors to take for the semester than it already poses. The type of professors you choose is a reflection of the type of student you are, and the type of person you want to be.
Some students would prefer the Easy A professors just for the grade and probably to have a nice record to look back at. Others would take a leap of faith and trust that they will end the semester with something that they will cherish forever. More often than not, this decision reflects those who simply want to get success in life the easy way or those who yearn for the success and strive for it.
Ateneans are taught to value excellence but I also know that this philosophy of “excellence” we hear from our mentors signifies much more than a straight-A report card. The Atenean that we are taught to become knows how to take challenges and learn from them.
We are lucky enough to be given the power to choose our professors; we essentially choose what kind of life we are going to live every semester. Four years might seem long but when you’re a senior, you realize that you could have done something more than just to sit in class and bask in the glory of A’s. You realize that there is a certain kind of glory in risking a C but come away with lessons that you will once again remember when you’re trying to get through life.
It doesn’t matter if you have three years to go, or even just a few semesters until you graduate. What matters is that, you make your choices count. Not for the grade, not for a perfect record, but for the kind of Atenean we choose to be.
