You're safe when you resist.

Ang tamad ng katulong namin!

Tumawag mommy ko, may pinapadala sa bahay ni lola. Tapos siguro ‘tong katulong na ‘to, sinabi na may ginagawa siya, kaya pinagawa na lang sakin.

Eh itong katulong naman na ‘to walang ginagawa sa bahay! Kung hindi nakikipagdaldalan sa mga tao sa labas for at least 30 minutes, nasa cellphone naman. Hindi na tuloy nagagawa yung trabaho.

Mga kama namin, hindi nakaayos. Kung anong iwan ko nung umaga, ganun pa rin babalikan ko sa gabi. You had one whole day to do that. What the fuck were you doing? Pag mag lilinis siya, magagabi na. Kung naglilinis nga, aabutin ng halos tatlong oras kasi nasa cellphone. 

May lakas lang siya ng loob na dumaldal sa cellphone pag wala sila mommy. Ang malala pa diyan, sobrang lakas ng bunganga niya pag nasa cellphone. Daig pa ang TV.

Tapos, diba wala akong uniform sa school? Kailangan ko ng damit araw-araw. Alam niya yun. Eh kung maglaba ‘to, maghihintay pa siya ng 2-3 weeks bago maglaba. Kaya yun, pag papasok ako, minsan wala akong pantalon, walang medyas, walang damit, etc. Ang tamad tamad kasi!

Minsan nga, kahit nakapaglaba na siya, sa sobrang katamaran niya, hindi niya yan paplantsahin o ititiklop. Maghihintay pa ulit yan ng isang linggo bago bumalik sa mga closet namin.

When I’m sad, I tend to make it worse. I like it that way. I don’t want someone there to cheer me up.

It’s just that I’m not sad every day, so when I am, I want to make the most of it, so when I’m happy, I make the most of it, too. I don’t think being happy all the time is good, because if you’re not used to being upset, your response to it would be worse than anyone else’s.

So when I’m sad, I want to be alone. For minutes. For hours. For days. Doesn’t matter how long it takes. I want to be sad so I can lower my expectations of life.

Hinintay lang ako ng DBTC umalis ng school bago sila biglang nagpaka-unkaboggable.

Haha, pansin ko lang. Kasi lately, I’ve been noticing how things have been looking up for my High School since I graduated. Inggit na inggit nga ako eh.

• Major renevations.
  Bago na ang desks and seats sa classrooms.
  Pinalitan na ang mga 100-year-old na blackboards with whiteboards.
  Pinalitan ang mga ALWAYS-BULOK aircons.
  Pinalitan ang mga bulok na wooden auditorium seats with theater seats
  Nag-expand ang computer lab, etc.
  
  Dito pala napunta yung pagkamahal mahal na tuition fee namin last year. 65k yata yun. Di naman namin na-experience ‘tong mga bagong ‘to. Nagdusa kami sa sirang aircons, sa vandalized desks na baku-bako, sa ingay ng mga kinakalawang na bakal ng auditorium seats, etc. UNFAIR!
   
• Major events. Highly publicized na yung mga event nila.
  May fashion show nga sila nung Thursday eh. Nagpunta ako. PUNO! “JAM-PACKED” daw, sabi ng ushers.
  Tapos andaming may alam tungkol dun, libo libo rin ang likes sa Facebook.
  Tapos yung visit ng Channel V’s Ang Dyip ni Juan, naganap din. KAINGGIITTT.

And meanwhile, in my college:

I still kind of regret enrolling to a school that isn’t well-known. It’s June, and over at Facebook, I’ve been seeing people getting excited about college since they’re going to a top university. When here I am, going to a school which people probably regard as “cheap” for being unknown, when in reality, my tuition fee costs a fortune.

Maybe it was unpractical, as my dad puts it, to reject De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde for iACADEMY. But I did this to help. I didn’t want my parents spending so much money for CSB when I’ve got a scholarship at iACADEMY.

I don’t know if I made the right decision. It would be best to wait until I finish these three terms until I evaluate if I really did choose the right institution for me.

There’s just this huge feeling of REGRET that never goes away especially when I see where my batch mates end up in. Maybe I’m just jealous.

I hope to God that someday this institution will make a name for itself and be regarded for how good it really is. It’s just that people like to make fun of other colleges just because their university has a name.

But whatever, I still swear by my belief that excellence is within the student and not entirely up to the institution. After all, I’m a scholar, right? haha.

I hate to say this, but I have plans of transferring to CSB next year. I KNOW that it’s too early to think like that since I’ve not even started college yet, but everyone says CSB would’ve been a better choice for better education — especially since I have an Arts course. I’ve got my sights set on the SDA Grant, an Arts scholarship which I don’t even know if I could apply for since it’s only for freshmen, but I’ve started working on my portfolio. If I get this SDA Grant, then my biggest dream has just come true. I’ve got what it takes, right? I’ve been working for a good future all my life.

But then again, I still remember what I said about CSB in the past [read]. “I cannot imagine myself in the prestigeous, busy and huge atmosphere of CSB,” which is true. Plus, there are HUNDREDS, if not thousands that are enrolled in Multimedia Arts — most of them not even having basic skills — so I was thinking what it would take to be noticed as a student with great background in arts in such a HUGE school. Feels like a fantasy.

These are kind of private thoughts — but I really need to rant.

I work my ass off 6 hours a day during the SUMMER BEFORE COLLEGE for my high school yearbook. If the work is not enough pain, my adviser is a nightmare. Sure, he’s cool. He’s nice. But he’s so inconsiderate and meticulous. I pour my heart out in the designs of these yearbook pages, only to see him rejecting all of these designs. This would be acceptable, honestly, because as a designer, I should anticipate things like this — but trust me, this person is worse than a client. If he dislikes one element of your design, he will reject THE WHOLE THING. This didn’t happen just once, it has happened at least seven times. HE HAS NO TASTE, simply put. I do believe I am a decent designer, having studied art and design for a long time. My adviser, on the other hand, has no experience with art and design, so I don’t understand how he has a say on this.

When I present a new design to him, I make it a point to ask with “Is this ugly?” because when I don’t ask that way, he will bluff and sugarcoat his comment. He’d say “It’s… eh. You could probably change something, but I’m not really feeling it. I don’t like it,” when inside, he just wants to say “It’s ugly.”

We have a bunch of other designers on the staff. They’re not really “designers” since their stuff are a bit amateurish. Their ideas are good but they are poorly executed. Somehow my adviser seems to like these POORLY EXECUTED ideas in the design more. He likes amateur designs. He likes designs that would look like they were created 30 years ago when art was nothing like it is today. I mean, he LOVES the default Photoshop black and white gradient (he asks the other designers to use it everywhere), but HATES soft gradients. He LOVES borders/strokes on text, but HATES minimalist designs. He’s all for tacky-looking designs. He HATES designs that would jive with modern art that artists truly appreciate. He LOVES designs that look like were done in Powerpoint. I mean look at it this way, it’s like he loves Comic Sans but extremely hates Helvetica.

Every time he rejects my work, he asks me “we’re friends, okay?” in a teenager-like manner, to assure that I won’t get pissed off. Well, you have not only pissed me off, but you’ve ruined my fucking self-esteem, talent and image.

So yes, he’s getting the fuck on my nerves. He knows nothing. This yearbook is looking worse and worse. He is a fucking CONTROL FREAK WITH NO FUCKING TASTE. I am sick of him and I am disinterested of ever coming back for yearbook editing. This yearbook sucks and people will think it’s my fault and liking since I’m editor-in-chief.

Fuck this yearbook. It’s headed for the worse.

I feel like summer is almost ending for me. Even after graduating, I’m still bombarded with school work. Tomorrow is yearbook editing. This is expected to last for two weeks. Not too long after, I go to college, so that’s weeks of preparing more shit too.

But then again, I have already graduated, so this yearbook isn’t exactly an obligation. It’s not like I’ll get shit for not coming.

However, this is a great responsibility because I have a position for this yearbook. So, goodbye to staying up late.

Speaking of this yearbook, check out the cover. I made this last night. Hopefully there will be those shiny emboss things for the text when it gets published, so the 3D effect will look better.

I need some place to rant. Don’t have anywhere else but Tumblr, so yeah.

So, it’s March. Last month of the school year. Scratch that. Last month of senior year. Scratch that, again. Last month of High School.

When I thought of the last month of High School, I was expecting it would be sad where I’d be spending so much time saying goodbye to everyone and being sad just for no reason, but no, I’m ten times as busy than I’ve ever been in my 12 years of school life. Why? It’s completion week. I need to have my clearance signed or I don’t graduate. I have kind of always seen this happening, missing requirements and all, but I didn’t expect being this burdened with SO much school work. I have projects here and there. I should be working on them right now, but I’m too lost in my thoughts and I feel like I’ve done way too much for tonight. Additionally, I’m quite pissed.

I need to:

• Finish a House Model for Computer-Aided Design. I’m almost giving up on this. Tried to work on this for so many hours, but I cannot f*cking finish anything as much as I try because I don’t understand one thing. I probably would know how to do it if I wasn’t out of class all the time. Nobody can even help me, since they’re all busy on theirs. Additionally, I was inspired doing it tonight. So, I downloaded AutoCAD for God knows how long. I started constructing the house and when it’s all too late, that’s only when I realized I need AutoCAD Architecture. I couldn’t finish it now. Spent hours Googling why I can’t find the Content Browser and everything. Sucks big time.
• Complete my notes for Social, Trigonometry and Algebra class. This won’t be hard, since I regularly take notes down in class, but I missed out on a lot. Not to mention this is really time consuming. I hate teachers who require notes for clearance.
• Complete my thesis with uncooperative group mates for English class. I hate this. This is the biggest burden for me right now, since I feel like I’m doing all the work. My group mates suck ass. They’re not helping. Feels like we’ll never be able to actually finish this. So in case we never finish this, I’ll cut a bitch since it’s their fault. I’ve done all the work. Efforts and all. These three other group mates are just sitting there. I might consider demanding to graduate in case we get held up for graduation. I’ll be glad to print proofs of my hard work and everything as well as my group mates’ slacking. Just a few moments ago, I wasn’t able to calm myself so I typed out an almost-screaming ‘pep talk,’ telling them to move their ass and be aware of the lack of time we have to finish. We still need about 8 papers which are hard to make because of the uniform formats and given time.
• Edit the video for our Computer class project. I finished this this morning. It was so much trouble. I thought I could get away with it with Windows Movie Maker since I don’t really care much about it and the editing never really matters, but no. I feel like I got trolled since it’s .mov and Movie Maker can’t detect its audio track. Additionally, it needed captions and stuff. So I had to use Sony Vegas. I have this on my computer, but activation is a pain. I spent an hour trying to crack and patch it and everything, but nothing’s happening. So I had to wait bazillions of minutes just to download the software AGAIN. Wonderful. I never really used Vegas before, so this was a first real thing. I couldn’t figure out a thing at first this morning and I felt like punching the screen, but thank God I finished it.
• Make a connections binder thing for CLE class. This would be SO easy, but motherf*cking me don’t even know how to do it. There are about 10 topics to make a reflection about, but I don’t even know these f*cking topics. SO YEAH, I’m fucked.

On top of that, I have to study for our final exams on Wednesday. This is gonna be SO hard to study for, seriously. These are FINALS, and so much depends on them. If I fail, it’s gonna affect a lot. Plus, I don’t know most of the lessons, so I really have to study.

Can I just graduate now and get away from all this shit?

Oh wait, that’s just me. <3

No one would probably be interested at all in reading this — but, over the weekend, I made a very important decision about college.

You may remember me ranting about being torn between two colleges — iAcademy and De La Salle-College of St. Benilde — saying that I can decide because of prestige, or proximity, or quality of education. Well, since the start, my heart has been saying iAcademy and my sights were set on it for a very long time until I thought of considering CSB. I took exams at both colleges, passed at iAcademy while I’m still waiting for CSB’s results.

Application at CSB was tough and demanding. In my mind, through it all, I thought, “all for my dream school,” or “this is worth it.”

Months passed and I was still indecisive. I was still uncertain of which college to go to.

Honestly, I cannot imagine myself in the prestigeous, busy and huge atmosphere of CSB, however, I loved the prioritization that iAcademy gives to their students — even during application period, they prioritize us. We are remembered, we are contacted about invitations or scheduled interviews or concerns. However, with CSB, this wouldn’t be possible, since with the overflowing amount of applicants to the college, no one can be remembered or prioritized. The thought of being prioritized during college was really appealing to me. This gave iAcademy so much persoal ranking.

I really wanted to go to CSB for its, again, prestige. It’s really well-known and facilities are top notch.

For months now, my school mates — and some teachers — have been asking me about my college plans: where I want to go, what course I’m taking up, whatever. Everytime I get asked the “where” question, I answer “iAcademy and Saint Benilde,” then the person who asked would either laugh or ask what iAcademy was. Not enough people know about it, I understand, but when they laugh? I give them the classic “it’s up to the student to excel, and if so, the school doesn’t matter” answer.

January 10 came — it was a very special day where I made the ultimate decision. I came home from school when our maid approached me and told me about a text I received while I was away. She said, “iAcademy sent you a text, you were given a 20% scholarship.”

I asked for a sign; I was given more than that. I was given an answer. With that, I made the final decision to go with iAcademy — not because of the scholarship. I’d like to think of this scholarship as the ultimate way that I can make my decision. It’s hard to put into words, but the scholarship offer made me think that I was destined (too heavy of a word; cringing) for the college.

How did I get the scholarship? Well, it’s a long story. During my application for CSB, I knew all about their grants and scholarships, but I wasn’t exactly interested in any. It wasn’t until this month that I realized that I could have a shot for their SDA Grant: a scholarship for incoming freshmen students based on the applicant’s experience in the field of arts. Sounds a lot like me. I personally think my skills are well-developed and my experience is exceptional, so I thought of going for the grant.

The requirement was a 700-word essay. I did it in school and almost finished. The essay was flawless, it was perfect. It shared every angle of my experiences. I was confident until I got home that day. Not only until I got home that I found out that the essay for the grant was supposed to be passed along with the application requirements. I passed my requirements back in October. It was January. Bummer, I thought. I asked about it, and apparently, it’s still possible to pass the essay, but by doing so, I won’t find out if I got the grant or not until about March. I gave up on it. I had to make a decision about which college before February.

In turn, I asked iAcademy if they offered a scholarship similar to the SDA Grant. Then a few days later, I got the news about the scholarship.

It was a great turn of events. It’s like the door for CSB is intentionally being closed so I can realize how wide open iAcademy’s door is for me.

On the weekend after the scholarship news, I decided to place my reservation early. I’m 100% sold to iAcademy.

This week, however, my teachers are oddly concerned about college life of their students, and they kept on asking me. None of them knew about iAcademy, but was in awe when I tell them that I tried Saint Benilde as well.

I don’t take it as a shame, really. Like I said, it’s up to the student to excel, and if so, the school doesn’t matter.

I can’t wait for college already. I have a feeling I will excel, especially with the overflowing amount of inspiration and with the fact that Multimedia Arts and Design is definitely my passion. I just wish I could stay true to this, because I start a school year with excelling in mind every time, but it never happens, so hopefully, this time around, it will be different.

• A graphics tablet
  If I’m gonna be a graphics designer, this is a basic need. I need to master Illustrator, and I can’t do that without a tablet.
• A freelance design job
  My skills have been in the trash bin for the past few years. I’m undiscovered, I can’t use my skills. I don’t have clients, despite the fact that I’ve had a web design site for the past three years.
• A break
  Thank God this has been handed to me just today. Christmas break! <3
• A new computer
  If I won’t be getting a new computer next year, this one is going to be smashed. At least an upgrade, you know? This is one slow piece of shit. Again, I’m gonna be a graphics designer, I need a high end computer.

Apparently, I don’t want any material things this Christmas. It’s rather miraculous. I think this is a first. Let’s just say I’m content with what I have and what my life is like at the moment.