POV

since i’ve just come from my newswriting class, i might as well say something about the sinking feeling of dread that has found a home in my gut.

FOR THE RECORD, JOURNALISM HAS NEVER FELT THIS HARD FOR ME.

and to admit the fact is in itself embarrassing. i take pride in my writing and reading skills/hobbies/whatever euphemism you can think of, and to say that i am now having a hard time of it is shaming. i winged through three years’ worth of high school journalism, which i said was not even equal to a semester of college journalism in our first essay for mr. vic tirol on the first day of class. i hadn’t felt the pressure when he told us to write a five-paragraph essay; that is easy enough to do compared to what i went through in high school competitions long past. but now that the real investigative dirty work is beginning, i feel daunted by even the prospect of going out there and playing the neophyte reporter.

true, i’ve had training and it’s kind of an advantage. but golly, i didn’t know that this much was expected of me. and my being part of matanglawin doesn’t help on this count–it’s actually dooming. it’s like i grabbed the spotlight and swung it to shine full on my face, like a specimen under an electron scanning microscope. in his/her head (cause i have both sexes as professors in two different journ classes), the teacher goes “ah so this is a matanglawin member” and all sorts of associations and expectations pop up. which, frankly, i don’t know if i can fulfill or if i’d even be happy to try to do so.

but don’t get me wrong, here. i love a balance of mental ass-kicking and pure elation to keep me on track. before when i still had doubts as to whether i made the right decision about switching loyalties or not, i imagined my career options shrinking to the size of a raisin. but now! oh well. let’s just say that i regret not joining matanglawin a year earlier, then perhaps i would have learned more of the tricks of the trade as it were.

and i love my matanglawin orgmates. i mean, when i read their sharp articles in the publication i go ‘wow!’ all the time, taking into account the fact that these people write in tagalog and they don’t have such rigid red tape in the org. but now that i am an insider myself, i realize that they’re just plain people, plain friends and students who have to worry about theology just as much as i do. and that made me even prouder for and of them. 

i also like the way the org is run. it’s not like guidon, where i know only the people i work with because they’re my immediate co-staffers and friends. in mata i smile and wave and talk to everyone. they’re a pretty open and unpretentious lot. kuya jed, our editor in chief, is to me the image of everything matanglawin. i try to get under his skin to see the stuff that mata editors in chief are made of and i find nothing in there that’s unusual in the least. unless, of course, you count the fact that he’s grown a moustache cause all mata eics ‘have’ one. i dunno really. 

the girl beside me on computer 67 is viewing all these glamorous wedding gown photos. i wonder why she’s interested in that particular site, unless of course she’s planning a wedding in her head. hmm.

i learned something new today in newswriting class. you say biased if you’re for something and say prejudiced if you’re against it. nobody in the class knew the difference between the words and i presume that we all used them interchangeably until that moment when chay told us.