Graduation (II)

I just found the page I used to scribble down my 45-second-speech at last year's Pil-Grad:
Here it is again, typed up, in case you can't decipher my penmanship:

To Mom and Dad, thank you for all your love and support even though I only called on the 1st of the month and came to the house to do laundry. Thank you for coming to see me in Cal Band, PCN, and gospel choir; it meant the world to me. I love you.

To Grandma Connie, thank you for always letting me visit, bringing me to Crazy Buffet, and giving me pants. Because of you, I had a full stomach and plenty of clothes. I love you.

To Grandma Nellie, thank you for your support from even though you're thousands of miles away in the Philippines. I always felt your love despite the distance. I love you.

To Grandpa Selmo, I know you're proud of me from heaven. I love you.

To Grandpa Sequiel, I took your name in your honor. This degree belongs to you. I love you.

To Nate, Carla, and Casey, thank you for letting me watch Jeopardy! and pass out on your couch. You're my family here. I love you.

To my Ading, April, we're perfect for each other in every way. Same cheesey smile. What more can I ask for? Being your kuya has been the most rewarding relationship I've had. I love you.

To everyone else I've never told, I love you!

Graduation

One year ago today, I graduated from UC Berkeley. I repeat this but I don't believe it.

Tomorrow, I will attend Pilipino Graduation and see that newborn Class of 2010. Perhaps then I will realize that now there are alumni younger than me - perhaps that will be my closure...

But before I close the loop, I think today is an appropriate time to share with you all, once again, last year's Pil-Grad speech.

You very well may not remember what I said, but don't worry...I won't hold it against you, haha. In fact, if you have forgotten, it might be a good exercise to read through some of the points I tried to make and see how it it speaks to you right now, a year later.

I don't claim that this is the best speech ever, but still, I would like it to be remembered. Remembered not for my sake, but for us...our community. Our voice.

Family, friends, and distinguished faculty:

I am here to inspire you with some words of wisdom as we graduate today, the Pilipino Class of 2009. But in trying to find the words to inspire you, I can’t help but recall the words that have inspired me during my time here.

At every commencement I have attended, I have seen scattered individuals wearing this Pilipino stole, and I have received compliments on the beauty of its design. Today, all of these scattered individuals have creeped out of the corners of their departments to come together, and let me tell you, nothing is more beautiful than that achievement. What am I talking about? It might’ve been difficult for us to appreciate while taking those 3-hour finals or writing 20+ page papers and reports…but just the fact that we are here today and we are together is an achievement in itself.

We have studied with some of the best researchers and teachers in their fields, and it is their job to push the limits of knowledge every day and bring us along for the ride in their classes. However, as I’m sure we all know, the ride to graduation also comes with many bumps, twists, and turns. But it is because of the support of this community that we are able to pick ourselves up when we fall or find our way when we get lost.

The ride is rough because our professors do not make a living by merely accepting what they’ve been told or what they’ve read…and this is the mentality that they have instilled on us. Let me share a scenario: The professor asks a question, and several bright students spit out the answer right away. Then the professor responds with, “Yes…but why?”

The class is silent while everyone ponders the new riddle…until some brave soul volunteers to try to hack together some explanation.

You see, I like to think that our professors did this not to frustrate us but rather to get us used to questioning if the first answer we get is really sufficient—to train us to push the boundaries and think like we need to think to be successful in whatever we do after today.

This brings me to my first “words of wisdom”. Being here at UC Berkeley, everyone loves throwing around the term “#1”—for example, “#1 public university” or in my case, “#1 department of chemistry”. But how did we get to be #1? Well, Alex Saragosa from the Chicano Studies department answers that in the form of a negative as he says, “You don’t become #1 by just going along with the status quo. You don’t become #1 by just accepting what everyone else says is right.”

As members of the Pilipino Community on the UC Berkeley campus, we can understand the power of these words because it is only our nature to analyze, question, and even be critical of what we have been told, both in our academics and the solutions that have been presented to us to solve the issues this community faces—issues such as representation in the student body, affordability, and a curriculum relevant to our history. Being #1, then, is not just something that we can brag about but really a responsibility, a sort of continuing duty to one another.

To graduate in the year 2009 means we are being released into a different world than even just one year ago. This is a landmark year for all underrepresented communities and people facing inequality in this country. “Change” is now a fundamental word in the country’s vocabulary, but graduating today means that we are the first class to be the change that everyone else is talking about.

So all we have to do to be this change, then, is simply do what we’ve been trained to do—question the answers we get, push the boundaries, and continue being #1. Easy enough, right?

Ok, so maybe solving all our nation’s problems or the problems we face as a Pilipino community won’t come just that easily…but we must still maintain our commitment to improve the quality of life for all people. Earlier, I mentioned being at the “#1 public university” and talked being “#1”…but what about being public?

UC Berkeley being a “public” institution means that it inherently belongs to the people, to ALL people, not just the populations who are more privileged than others. Now, as some of you might know, I worked with CalSO, our orientation program here, for three years. Being the face of the university while being part of this Pilipino community, I had to find that middle ground between celebrating the “diversity” of UC Berkeley and the struggle to increase Pilipino representation in the student body. And I think that the discussion between the two has been an important part of my experience here.

But working for the university, I learned a notable statistic, my second “words of wisdom”. We have more students from low-income families here on this campus than all of the Ivy League schools combined and one-third of the student body are first-generation college students. The Chancellor brings this up almost every time he speaks, just like he did at General Commencement yesterday, but he has a good reason. When we compete with those other institutions—with Harvard, Yale, and yes Dad, Stanford—we represent the people who, otherwise, would remain unrepresented.

To say that this school is the perfect public university of all people is quite the exaggeration, but what is certain is that no other school’s student body looks like ours and our experiences have supplemented our education in ways that can only occur here at UC Berkeley.

Through learning from one another and supporting one another, we have become each other’s voices. When we graduate today and go off to change the world, we must remember that we represent not just ourselves, not just the Pilipino community, but now we represent every person who has influenced us. We are the voice for our parents, our grandparents, our friends, and the communities all of us have come from, especially those communities who do not have the luxury of having a voice.

And what gets me most excited is knowing that we are going to go take this voice and gain positions of influence and power. When we do, we will be advocates for the communities brought us there. My last words of wisdom is a phrase that I know the Pilipino community has passed down for years, and the first time I heard it was at Pil-Grad a couple years ago. The phrase is, “Lift as you climb.”

So when I say to be an “advocate”, that doesn’t mean that we all have to dedicate our entire lives to political activism, although I’m sure some of you will and will be wonderfully effective. But to be an advocate and to lift as you climb simply means being aware of who you are, what you represent, and where you have come from so that our voice is present in whatever position you hold—be it doctor, lawyer, engineer, scientist, project manager, teacher, or graduate student. This is probably the last time we will all physically be together, but it is our voice that will always keep us connected.

So now when we say that we graduated from the #1 public university, we’re not just bragging; we’re stating an awareness of our social responsibility to one another and our ability to improve the quality of life for the Pilipino community and for all people in need of a voice. When we graduate today, we graduate not just as individuals but as one beautiful community, sharing all our achievements.

These are the words that have inspired me throughout my time here, and I hope I’ve inspired you in one way or another to go out and, in turn, be the inspiration for everyone else. Just like when our professors asked us, “Why?” we encounter a new riddle in our lives by graduating today. But this time, let us not be silent. Let our voice be heard. Congratulations Pilipino Class of 2009! Thank you and GO BEARS!