I first met Jose “Kim” Bunag when he was an incoming senior of the Ateneo de Manila High School.  Together with some of his most talented peers in the country, Kim attended the Ateneo Junior Summer Seminar (AJSS) for six weeks.  The AJSS is a program offered by the the college Office of Admission and Aid, to give these good students a taste of university studies and university life.

Kim did quite well in my AJSS Math class, and afterwards, I remember him telling me that he would very likely choose to enter the Ateneo University for college.

Sure enough, two years later, Kim was in my Psychology 101 class, this time as a full-fledged BS Psych sophomore.  He performed well in Psych, even better than he had in Math, and afterwards, I remember him telling me that he would most likely become a doctor someday.   He had chosen BS Psych as a pre-med course.

He was also active in Kythe, a psych-based organization that cared for children with cancer.  Kythe is a group dear to me, and even if I had never become a full-fledged member, I have appeared once in their calendar, posing with a dear child wearing a jaunty pink hat.   A few months later, she passed away.

A few weeks ago, I met Kim again, this time during the interviews of candidates for this year’s valedictorian.  I asked him point-blank about his future plans, and I was surprised to discover that he had decided to become a priest, rather than a doctor.  Evidently, his family was religious, and with their blessing, and the support of theology and philosophy classes, particularly Jesuit mentors, Kim had undergone a lot of discernment.

Kim still wanted to help people — but this time, he would heal their souls.

The Ateneo valedictorian is someone who embodies the university ideals.  Of course, excellence in academics counts, but so do service and commitment nation-building, and in this case, dare I say, also remarkable personal growth.

Kim, you make all of us proud!  May you remain steadfast in your chosen path.

As we meet with our international partners, we notice an increasing interest in immersion experiences.  Students, faculty and administrators (especially those from the first world) from our partner schools want the Ateneo to serve as a the structured environment in which they can engage with the problems of the developing world. Usually, these visits are short–two to six weeks. Recently, though, some universities have approached us for semester-long immersion experiences.

When the Ateneo Center for Social Entrepreneurship was launched, I remember Rudy Ang saying that this was a way of playing our strengths.  What is it that the Philippines can provide that some other countries cannot?  Engagement with poverty.  Our partners seem to agree, so while the Philippines may not have a monopoly on povery (thank God), we do have enough of it to make a visit interesting.

Another case in point: Mark Lawrence Cruz of Gawad Kalinga was telling us that GK accommodated approximately 200 international visitors last year, each wanting to work at a GK site.  The interests were diverse.  Some were here for the usual builds.  Others, however, wanted to make discipline-specific contributions.  Engineers from MIT, for instance, were looking into designing a better grass cutter that didn’t require fuel.  There were students specializing in sports and recreation management helping one GK village design eco-tourism packages.

Aggregated, these events signify a growing interest worldwide in service learning and “translational” (the new and politically correct term for “applied”) research.  Get the students out there. Let them engage with real problems. Let them discover the connections between classroom and real world.  With any luck, they’ll become better people in the process, and the world will be a better place. In Ateneospeak, I guess this loosely converts to “professionals for others.”

In 2006, Adam Sandler starred in a movie entitled Click. The movie was about a man who was gifted with a magical remote control that enabled him to manipulate his life the way you would manipulate a DVD.  He could fast-forward, rewind, even include subtitles.  Sandler’s character ends up fast-fowarding through his life, impatient to get to “the good parts.”  In doing so, he bypasses key moments that build and strengthen relationships.

I’m not an Adam Sandler fan, but I watched the movie because the premise piqued my curiosity.  After the movie, I was even less of a fan.  The premise made me decide, though, that if these devices actually existed and I had one, the one function I would use is the pause button.  For instance, I would love to be able to hit pause in the middle of the day, take a nap, and then get back to work.  I’d love more time to read.  I’d love to hit pause on my dog so that we can give him a bath and groom him without making too much of a struggle.   

I don’t know why anyone would hit fast-forward.  As it is, life goes by too quickly already.

When I was growing up, my elders provided me with tons of advice regarding boy-girl relationships.  It was all well-meant and well-taken. The sentiment, though, didn’t make the conversations any less awkward, partly because much of the advice was grounded in an old world sense of values and pre-women empowerment gender stereotypes.  (The man was considered to be initiator and provider, while the woman was supporter, adviser and counsellor. Stuff like that.)

In all the advice, though, I noticed that my elders suffered from at least one expert blind spot:  They never discussed scenarios in which relationships between genders was platonic. Because that simply didn’t happen.  Men and women can’t be friends because, well, they just can’t. 

Fast-forward to my daughter’s generation. Although she and her classmates study in an exclusive girls’ school, they do have male friends. They text all the time. They stalk each other on Facebook.  IM and SMS are the new telebabad.  As a mom to this generation, I wonder what the new rules of engagement are.  Th 131 has given us an updated but still grounded set of principles.  What are the implementing guidelines?  What are the quality assurance metrics?  Specifically: How many text messages are they allowed per person per day?  How much time can they spend on the computer?  How many people should be in a group before they’re allow to go out?  How old should they be before they can go to an unsupervised party, prom, or soiree?

And how do you, the parent, know when the relationship has crossed over from just friends to not just friends? Ah, that is the question.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier to lock my daughter in a tower and let her out when she’s 40.  That would be bad, right?

I’m scheduled to go on my Sabbatical next year.  Because of work commitments, though, I’ve decided to split the Sabbatical into two, so I’m basically taking the next two second sems off.  I will still be here in the Ateneo, working with my students. (I’ve been warned that that may be a mistake. Really?  So, the Sabbatical doesn’t render you invisible?)  I’m hoping that the extra time will enable me to keep an even closer eye on their work, and having just typed that I’m realizing I may be scaring them away.

The other part of the plan, that I did not write on my official leave form, is to spend more time on the little things.  For example, I’d like to get into a structured exercise program. Francis Gealogo of the History Department is in Moro Lorenzo every morning.  So is Jumela Sarmiento of Math.  Eddieboy Calasanz and Rofel Brion walk around campus on some the evenings.  I need to get into something like that. 

I’d like to cook more.  After watching the movie Julie and Julia, my husband, Redg, bought Julia Child’s cookbook and started having at it, one recipe at a time.  Everything has been delicious so far.  My own experiment from the cookbook was to bake eggs in ramekins with cream and a few other delightful surprises.  The result was delicate and dreamy, leading me to wonder what other delights we’ve yet to attempt. 

I’d like to take a creative writing class.  This kinda was the plan before I moved into OIP.  Remember my dream of writing a trashy romance novel?  It’s still alive.  I still want to do it. I will need a few lessons, though.  Rofel once kidded about offering a 3-unit course of Filipino erotica.  Rofel, if you ever do offer the course, you have one student right here.

Oh, and on a related note, I would like to write more, creatively.  Years ago, I was reviewing the dummy of a children’s book I had written that was going to press.  A colleague saw me and asked, “Why do you do that stuff?”  Because there are people you want to reach, things you want to say, and ways you want to say them outside of the scientific and empirical community.  Besides, it’s fun!

While I do fully intend to use the sabbatical to move my research forward, I would like to use some of the time to do the things that have fallen by the wayside.

Having said all this, I now wonder if my leave application will be approved.

I know of people outside of the Ateneo whose philosophy is decide what conclusion you want from your experiment and design the experiment accordingly.  Mine is quite the opposite.  I collect data, sift through it, and then bahala na.  As a result, working with me means engaging in experimentation that is exploratory, where “exploratory” is our euphamism for not knowing for sure if we will find anything. 

One of my colleagues here expressed concern over this approach.  What if you don’t find anything? What does that do to your students and their thesis requirements?

In my non-empirical gut, I believe that there is something to find. While some lines of investigation might come up empty, it is unlikely that we will come up empty all the time.

For the times that we do come up empty, what is important to me is that the data collection and analysis process are conducted with integrity.  It is also important to me that the students understand what they did and why they did it.  They should come away from the experience with insight as to why what they did did not work and what other approaches we can try to bring the research forward.  For an undergraduate thesis, this is usually enough to satisfy at least my need for rigor. 

This year, for example, I had two undergraduate groups that pretty much ended up with nulls.  In both cases, there was no doubt that the problems’ difficulty levels whooped the groups’ collective butts and, while the groups did their best to whoop the problems back, the problems won. The good news is that anyone who decides to pick up where these groups left off will have at least part of the way smoothed out already. I dare say the next gen is sure to succeed. One of the panelists suggested that we fail the current groups so that they’d have no choice but to finish (joke!).  I think we should just charge the next gen money for taking over these theses (joke!).

For a graduate thesis or a doctoral dissertation, the bar is higher.  Non-null results are preferred, of course, yet a null result may be acceptable depending on the extent to which the problem space was explored.  In one particular case, I had a student who was fearful of a null result.  One of the panelists said that he wouldn’t been satisfied with a null unless he was convinced that she “threw a heck of a lot of stuff” (obscure scientific terms there) at the problem.  She negotiated a search strategy with the panel. The panel that if, despite the search, the answer was still null, the effort expended would have satisfied the requirements for the degree.  I should add that this particular doctoral student hasn’t finished yet, so while she has tried “a lot of stuff” she has not yet reached the “heck of a lot” level.

I guess what we have to do as mentors and panelists is to separate process from results.  Do we expect one or the other or both?  My opinion?  Results without process is unacceptable. Process without results is good.   Process with results is best. 

I also think we have to consider our research as continua, not as independent pieces.  One student’s failure to produce results becomes a stepping stone for the next, for as long as that student’s process is carried out honorably.   A few nulls along the way are part of the process.  If the research continues, we have nothing to fear.

If you haven’t already done so, you should read “Overheard at the Ateneo de Manila University” on Facebook.  The description says it all:  The good, the bad, the epic, the WTF’s and the FTW’s. 

Some anecdotes are touching, some are inspiring, and many just are plain hilarious. 

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From Jic Pineda:Some natsci students asking Mang Rog to help them identify plant specimens by their scientific names and after a few common specimens….

Students: Mang Rog, ano naman ito?

Mang Rog: Ah yan ba? Indicus alamus

Students: Thanks!

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From Angelo Villasanta: When I was in Bellarmine, going to Ateneo High for something……
Guy 1: Pare ano yung Magis? Hindi ba yun yung tutoring center sa Katips?

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From Paul Adasa: On the day of our LS125 Mock Defense our prof was saying his comments on our presentation…

Prof: Why don’t you improve on your Harry Porter’s Five Forces?

hehe should be Michael Porter.

***Go visit the page for more.

Mike Gonzalez (CS’05) is probably my favorite socio-political commentator.  He writes beautifully and he is very sensible.  He recently wrote about the decision he has made regarding the presidential campaign and upcoming election.  This is worth sharing.

One of the functions of OIP is to do background checks on people and institutions from abroad who want to partner with the Ateneo.  No, we do not have a team of spies or PIs taking pictures and rifling through bank records.  We send out polite emails to people from the same country.  We ask common partners.  We contact the references that they provide or the people they say they know.  And we ask Google.

When Google comes up empty, though, what does that say?  Case in point:  We had to do a background check on someone who claimed her expertise was on topic A.  However, when I Googled her, what I found was one set of publications on topic B and another set on topic C. I found nothing on topic A.  Clearly, hers is a popular name. 

I’m now at a loss.  If a professor doesn’t blip on Google, does she exist?  Or maybe she does, but is she worth inviting over?  A mutual acquaintance vouched for her.  Still, to not be Google-able is a big minus.

Yesterday, I had just come from a session with my guidance counselor when I was told my UP acceptance letter was already available. I signed my name in a checklist, and then I returned to my classroom, clutching a thick stack of documents that represented my acceptance into one of the top universities in this country. This, together with the blue and white Ateneo envelope, which sits comfortably on my desk beside me, holding my acceptance letter to this university, represents a difficult choice I’ll have to make in the next few weeks. College is just around the corner for many of my batchmates and myself. All everyone seems to be talking about nowadays is “What College are you going to?” or “What course did you pick in [inset name of university here]?” After the initial frenzy of the acceptance results to many of the top universities of the country, as, after all, the results to DLSU, UST, Ateneo and then UP results came one after the other in the span of three weeks last January, the phase we seniors seem to all be going through right now is one of quiet discernment. College prospects ahead or not, it’s a little crazy to be thinking about all of this and then still balancing school work.

But, before the inevitability of college, and the choices we have to make regarding that, there is the finish line that’s also known as high school graduation. That, is in a little over a month and a half. It’s quite hard to believe that for my batch, less than three weeks of academics remain. For many, it’s three weeks that can’t go any quicker. And I admit, it seems to be going at a faster pace than usual. But, the reality, as my Math teacher reminded us today, is that it is nevertheless still three more weeks of academics. There are still all the projects, all the long tests, all the quizzes and presentations and homework to do. My Math teacher had noticed the lack of effort on my class’ part the past few days, and she felt she needed to give us a wake up call. Three weeks is still make-or-break time. For some, it will be their last chance to pull up sinking grades. For some, college problems lie ahead. For some, these three weeks could be the difference between graduating with honors or not, or graduating or not. Suffice it to say, we’ve got a very important three weeks ahead. And this ultimately does not apply just to seniors, but to all high school students as well. Summer is just around the corner, yes, but there is still a lot to be done.

The name of this project escapes me, but every now and then I visit a small jar that can be found right outside the St. Stanislaus Kostka Chapel in the Ateneo High School. Inside are small rolled strips of paper, each with a small quote from the Bible meant to inspire one into discernment. Usually, I get really nice food for thought. Today, it hit home. In the rolled piece of paper I randomly picked up from the jar was a quote from Ven. John Paul II, which read, “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” I myself have been having problems with the amount of work and the last three weeks of high school, and this simple, short quote reminded me that if I wanted things to change, I had to begin the change right there and then.

“The future starts today, not tomorrow.” This is a quote every high school student can probably take with them as this crazy yet memorable school year comes to a close. Three weeks to go before finals, yes, and three weeks to go before all of us are set free into the seemingly endless horizon that is summer vacation. It’s a countdown, especially for the seniors, as we approach the end of our final year. Change, the new you, without the bad habits you want so badly to let go of, has to begin today if you want to meet your own little goals for the school year and beyond. Do you want that honor card? Today, not tomorrow. Do you want to prove you deserve to march on March 28? Today, not tomorrow. “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” The countdown to the end has begun, and I can’t wait to see all of you when we all reach the finish line.