Looking forward to graduation day

By Herbert Vego

BASED on data from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), over one million college students are expected to graduate in April.

Do they have what it takes to land a job?

There was a time when I met with Mass-Com students who had sought me for advice. The only question I asked of them was, “Can you write?”

Everybody either nodded or enthused, “Yes!”

I wish they can.

As a retired editor of a local daily, I had interviewed applicants – all Mass-Com or Journalism graduates — answering our “wanted reporters” advertisement. Very few made it.

They should not have passed the course in the first place.

On second thought, nothing has changed since the late 1960s when I was a Journalism student. In those days, our professor was often reminding our class, “If you can’t even write simple news, you have no right to be here.”

After our graduation, I could not even count on my ten fingers my classmates who had landed a newspaper job.

Conversely, we have active newspaper reporters today who have had no formal education in journalism. They are here because they have the talent and the aptitude.

Have you ever heard of a school that discourages students from taking a “wrong” course?

A personal experience I would like to impart occurred in my first year in college. I was enrolled as a Veterinary Medicine student to appease my late father who had attempted to lure me into the course because of the “big demand” for veterinarians.

Fortunately, as soon as he discovered I could not even inject our pig, he asked me to shift to my choice: a four-year course in Journalism. Thus, I “demoted” myself by moving from the prestigious University of the Philippines (UP) here in Iloilo City, to Manuel L. Quezon University (MLQU) in congested Manila.

It is not for us parents to dictate what course our children will take in college. If we dictate and they don’t have what it takes to become a good lawyer, a good doctor, a good engineer or a good teacher, then we would be pushing them to a miserable future.

May I cite the moral lesson behind two flashlights?

Two men walk the road late in the afternoon. One of them shows an expensive, glittering flashlight while the other keeps quiet, hiding a cheap plastic flashlight in his pocket. When the night falls, the two switch their flashlights on. The rich man’s flashlight fails to light up while the poor man’s cheap flashlight shines brightly.

So, which of the two flashlights is the successful flashlight?

A verse in the Bible quotes Jesus, “Walk while you still have light, lest darkness come upon you.”

I remember the late President Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III, whose “Daang Matuwid” speeches to the graduates during his term (2010–2016), focused on the welfare of the nation rather than self-interest.

-oOo-

BANKER FORESEES MORE POWER-ILECO 1 ‘JVA’ 

MY good friend Leopoldo “Doods” Moragas – a native of Miag-ao and retired senior assistant vice-president of the Philippine National Bank (PNB) – foresees a “joint venture agreement” between MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) and the Iloilo Electric Cooperative 1 (ILECO 1).

That sounds prophetic from someone who now lives with his family in Seattle, Washington.

Well, Doods, MORE Power President Roel Z. Castro has already revealed in radio interviews his willingness to ink a joint venture agreement with ILECO 1.

So far, no response.

Without such joint venture, MORE Power would compete for customers who already belong to ILECO because of Rep. Janette Garin’s bill expanding MORE Power’s franchise to her district which includes the municipalities of Guimbal, Miagao, San Joaquin, Tigbauan, Tubungan Oton, and Igbaras..

The bill is now in the Senate for deliberation.

There are 80,000 ILECO 1 customers in the First District.  But some of them wish to try the new player.

MORE Power already enjoys the patronage of 105,000 households in Iloilo City.