Reunion with Dean Ruben Eugenio in Los Angeles - 14 October 2005

To My Alma Mater With Love
(excerpts from Homecoming 1997)

There was a certain feeling of déjà-vu as I passed through the gates of my alma mater. It seemed like time had abruptly stopped as I looked around the campus that it propelled me back from the moment when I first enrolled in the School of Foreign Service in 1963 until I graduated in 1967, sin laude. Having experienced some vicissitudes of those unproductive years wandering from one vocational course to another after I finished high school in order to find which one would help to get me started professionally; I was always haunted with the thought of my future without a university degree. Although the common belief that the prestige and quality of the academic institution weighed much as a professional reference in obtaining a decent job, I rationalized that it was more on the criteria of the student’s intellectual capacity and ability what really counted.

University of Manila (U.M.) was not among the top in my list, but it was a compromise for its proximity from where I worked and its accessibility by foot during the late afternoon rush. I was having second thoughts on my choice the day I presented myself before the enrolment committee at the hall of the administration building. I felt a knot in my stomach and couldn’t make up my mind. As I was about to abort, I accidentally came face to face with Dean Eugenio whose opening words “may I help you young man” did the trick. He must have sensed my tormented condition, but his kind and sympathetic approach suddenly eased the tension. He spontaneously took time and helped laid out my schedule of courses for the semester.

From then on, U.M. became a sanctuary during those long and intervening soul-searching years after I left high school. I could hardly forget the sound of laughter that still echoed along the corridors. Somehow, there was a strong feeling of longing for the past that left me with a trace of melancholy as soon as the present crept in. How I wished so much that I could bring those moments back and relive them over and over again, only to discover how I was missing my alma mater all the same. I think it’s selfish and unfair on my part to ignore and forsake her now that I’ve already realized my dream and succeeded in my life. She turned a scholar out of me, and I turned out three in return! It would, therefore, be fitting to giver her due credit, wouldn’t it?