This is my world.-Charis

the oasis: graduation

My junior and senior years in college felt like a bone-dry desert: occassional church presentations, zero week-long spiritual feeding (read: number of IVCF camps attended-zero), rare long talks with KC mates (Wench, Kuya Frank, Ate Ida, Kuya Mayk, Nong Gedi and Nong Jai lang) and IV staff (Ate Ging, Ate Mutya and Ate Chiri lang din) and the almost over-powering sense of urgency to immerse myself in school work and nothing else…hence, the desert.

I was on “urgent call” by the chairperson of the Accountancy Department, Assoc. Prof. Baldevarona, one morning. Getting inside the office, she told me to apply for the Alton Bigelow Memorial Award. Being a true blue Centralian (by blood and consanguinity; hehe) myself, I knew the prestige of this award on campus. Reluctantly, I applied, knowing that one of my classmates had been planning to apply for the same award years ago. As sure as I was ( basing on my grades from first year to 1st semester of SY 07-08, I was 55% sure) that I could graduate cum laude, I felt that graduating with honors was a very welcome blessing for me. When I was in my first year, I never expected to graduate with the degree of BS Accountancy, given the strict and strenuous retention policies of CPU’s Accountancy Department, much more graduate with honors!

I had quite a challenging time managing my time during those last few weeks of school. I had a six-day school week to attend (with a whole Saturday dedicated to Accountancy board exam subjects), a feasibility study to finish, a mini-movie to complete (this was part of our Humanities project in which I had to play the part of a fairy godmother…grr…), a case study to brainstorm about and then defend, and to top that all, I needed to search-and-rescue certificates of activities I had attended (which I wasn’t careful to keep) and signatures to collect as proof of my participation in extra-curricular and church activities to complete my application for the Alton Bigelow Memorial Award.

God’s grace is indeed so sufficient, because He provided my father with means to buy me a brand-new laptop, which I used to complete my Alton Bigelow Memorial Award application, my group case study and feasibility study. And to add to that, I knew His hand was working with me in my application because I found my two hard-to-reach teachers talking with each other in the New Valentine Corridor on the exact day I had allotted to collect the needed signatures. This was very meaningful to me because I had only allotted one day to collect signatures because I was working on a very tight schedule. And, my father had come home for his vacation to help me and mother do everything that I had to get done.

My heart was not fully in it however, because I felt that a Christian should not be lauded publicly for “displaying” excellence in academics, in extra-curricular activities and in church involvement, because didn’t God command us “whether we eat or drink, do it all for the glory of God?” But as I received news from reliable sources that I got the award, I knew with my heart that God intended it for me because I had a purpose to accomplish in receiving the award: I was given the task of delivering a response in behalf of the graduates during the Baccalaureate Service, and I was to glorify only the Lord through it, and not myself.

The Lord pieced together my thoughts in such a way that I felt that whatever He wanted me to say, I had stated in my speech. (I had published my speech in a previous blog entry.)

Graduating cum laude with a degree in BS Accountancy was one of the final phases of the completion of God’s plan for my tertiary education. We struck a deal once, that I would take up Accountancy and do my best in my studies of He willed that I get across the retention policies without failing a qualifying exam or repeating any board-related subject which had cutoff grades.