Making history and breaking orthodox confines

We are an awesome foursome dweebs (probably to the rest of the world) who took the boldest step many educated person will more likely dread. Bea, Chitchat, Jenny and I, we belong to two batches of UP-CMC's centinneal PhD in Communication students, but strange serendipity brought us closer. Woh! We are just in sync, in the same wave with our own eccentricities that we became a clique!

Let me chronologically pull this awesome experience we had together. Bea and Chitchat got in the program on the 1st term of AY 2008, while I and Jenny were accepted in the 2nd term. The first two went ahead to take cognates without completing their coursework, while I and Jenny started (right) with the prerequisite refresher courses.

First term of 2009-2010, we became classmates in quantitative and qualitative data analysis. We would criticize each others works, in the class and sometimes behind each others back. Then we would lounge to do some rethinking about our lessons and a lot chatting on non-school matters. Term break came, we took the qualifying exam together. Not all of us made it on the first try, but we all manage to see each other again the next term.

Second term of the same year, we were classmates together plus 1 and 2 minus 1 students on two classes. Incidentally, the two electives we enrolled then had the only one professor handling. We conferred to ask if the two classes could just be fused on single but extended meeting. Luck and logic gave us the opportunity to stay from 6 to 10 pm at school, but once a week, plus our cognate in other colleges. What a dweeb we are!? Because despite the odds we maintained scholarly standing.

While no working students then dared to enroll nine units, we did and we got through with it very well. On the 1st term of our second year, we were classmates on one elective again. That probably bonded us more closer as the course required us to go places and give some meaning and understanding about them. Bea was on her last term of coursework. While the three of us needed one more term.

In the last term, we agreed to take the comprehensive exam together, right after the semester. I thought I could not make it, because I didn't have time to enroll residency for summer so I can be eligible for the candidacy exam. But, Chitchat did a heroic act to save my ass and put me in the turmoil of taking 4 days of comprehensive exam this summer. In return, these slave drivers made me errand to file our application for the said exam.

That was a first, because previous students (according to stories told) took the exam single handed. Other stories (that seem fantasies) tell that a proctor would sit during the exam and even go with the candidate to the restroom on wee breaks. We know and we respect the value of that exam. Without the proctor, we knew and practiced self-regulation.

We responsibly understood that it intends to measure not our memory capacity but our competence to organize our thoughts and put them into writing as an evaluation exercise of our fitness to write our dissertations. Humans and friends that we are, we could not avoid to ask how we are doing and how we are feeling during the exam.

Given to make sense of an infinite universe and tasked to put that understanding into writing for a whole day, definitely tired our fleshly bodies. Our spirits though had the strong will, as we are motivated on checking each other as to how many pages or how many words had we written so far. It was brain draining, the four days of exam, taken two and two, afterward just put us looking up the sky and staring blankly on the wall. Humans as we are, we would wring, contract our bodies, pull our curled legs up and stretch.

I'd go out with Chitchat and smoke, of course we would talk. Bea would follow sometimes though she doesn't smoke. Jenny when she needed would sit also with us outside. We'd talk about the difficulty of the question, but guarded by our commitment to keep the integrity of the exam, we'd avoid talking about our answers. We'd just laugh out the difficulties we felt and boost each other's steem to relieve us of the anxieties and stress that go with answering the questions.

Anyway, the questions differ for each of us. Rational us we are, and scholarly as we are trained, we have confidence that we know the answer, and we know what to say, it's just that we are greatly challenged how to make whatever we have to say in a logical and sound manner and the whole day-exam was really washing our physical strength out. So, we made another history, to surprise one teacher as she noticed our informality, unexpected non-verbal languages as we get tired, and our frequent breaks.

Such violated an "expectation" never set before us to cause cognitive dissonance to an observer. But the observation was construed as a precondition to a presumed untoward incidence that was extended to suggest invalidating the exam. This goes to show how fast the mind thinks and process visual information than actually confirming those inputs as to what they mean.

I have to raise my legs, because they are tired and I want to keep my blood flowing to move to my brains. I don't want to have varicose veins at an early age, so charge for me for vanity, and blame me for that informality, because I did not want to wear Barong with my skinny jeans on. We are 100% sure that whatever we inked in those exams are our thoughts and of course others' that we met in the empirical thinking world whom our professors introduced us with.

We know we can't qualitatively place a margin of error on this exam because we all wanted to push through with our dissertation right away and finish it the next school year. This is another history we want to make. We are just passionate learners, we are just normal people who enjoy communication and learning together.

We are so casually informal, because that is our way to keep at ease and focus on the exam. That is how different we are and that's how we made those historical moments towards our PhD candidacy. Blame nature then for it selected us to be the way we are - wonderful people, excellent scholars, awesomely honest friends. I am esteemed to have you in my great education, Dr. B., Dr. C. and Dr. J-O, and our wonderful professors who are part of who we are now.

P.S. This is not a valedictory address, (yet? meganun?). Dissertation isn't over yet, I'm just draining the little juice left out of my brain.