A Fraction of My Academic Life

- May 03, 2020

Hi! I am writing this as part of my requirements for my online course entitled "What Future for Education?" offered by the University of London in Coursera. For the 2nd week, we are asked to reflect on how we are assessed academically and how we assess ourselves as learners. We should answer the following questions: During your own education, how has your "intelligence" been assessed? How has this affected the educational opportunities you have been given? What judgments have people made about you that have been affected by an assessment of your "intelligence"? Do you consider yourself to be a "learner"? Why?

I have spent the last 19 years of my life in continuous education. For the most part, intelligence was measured through quizzes, exams, and projects. During elementary, I had been an outstanding student, always one of the top performers in the class. I was often a placer in our math, science, and spelling bee. In high school, my most prominent experience was being a consistent participant in the Metrobank-MTAP-DepEd Math Challenge, an annual mathematics competition joined by elementary and high school students, and had been given the opportunity to represent our school. College allowed me to reach farther places when I presented my thesis to conferences in Dumaguete, Baguio, and even in Penang, Malaysia. I enjoyed being in the academic swim where after months, or even years, of hard work and experimentation, I would be finally able to present my study and meet eminent professors who are in the same field. The academic pursuit seemed so fruitful that after I graduated college, I went straight to getting my master’s degree.

And behold, for two whole years, what I experienced singularly encapsulates what it’s like to be in a roller coaster ride. I experienced yet the best and the worst things that could happen in my academic career. I could write another blog of how I was physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted but suffice it to say that I had been exposed in a not-so-encouraging environment.

I would say I am someone who can learn and is willing to learn with all my heart and my soul. No words can describe how much I love to learn. More often than not, I try to make sense of what’s happening in my surroundings and explain them with the knowledge that I have. I want to explore things. I want to know how things work. However, I do not have the same learning curve as others. Add to that, I went to college in a different school and been under a different adviser, so it took me time to adjust to the environment. In most of my tasks during grad school, there are some concepts and theories that I have to have a prior knowledge on before doing the experiment. The biggest challenge was looking back to my college days, I had not really mastered that particular topic so I received a lot of scolding from my adviser that time, and the frustrated look in my adviser’s face made it feel more terrifying and degrading. There were a lot of crying during my grad school days, really. Yet, after some time, when I gathered my wits, I would continue to do experiments again and luckily, I was able to advance a bit. It was a seemingly endless cycle of breakdowns and breakthroughs.

In those years I felt incompetent. I often told myself, “I thought I was doing good.” Maybe I had just been under the supervision of someone who has high expectations and hopes for his student, hence most of the time he’ll push us to our limits to be able to have a wide variety of skills and knowledge as a budding scientist. In those years I felt that I failed myself and those who believed in me that I was good, because everything otherwise is what’s exactly happening.

In the end, I delivered and was still able to graduate just in time. (I know, I pushed myself as well because I really wanted to be free from stress already) The fruit of my hard work is when I had the opportunity of presenting my research in a chemistry conference in the UK. Looking back, I sure had a tough experience but I couldn't be a better researcher/scientist had I not taken the tasks given to me, so yeah I'm still thankful that my adviser really tested my capabilities. 😭Maybe I just had to learn the hard way. After I finally moved out of that workplace, I felt free, I felt competent, I felt relevant. So I know for sure that I am intelligent, but just not in the way that they immediately expected me to be. There are plenty of things that I know, but there are more which I do not know. The silver lining for all the bad experiences is that I now have a broader knowledge of my field and that I saw for myself that I am not a quitter.

Conference Gallery:

With Sir Paul and Ma'am Carmi at the Samahang Pisika ng Visayas at Mindanao National Physics Conference
Dumaguete, Philippines 2016
Photo credits: Phoebe Nicole Perez