This is my piece for the incoming graduating class of 2011.  Although school starts in June, here are my thoughts for them...

I have always been a non-conformist in my thinking.  Whereas 99% of people view situations from where they currently stand, my next response after doing the same, which is but natural, would be to let my mind rush ahead 500 meters down the road and visualize how I am being viewed at my current position from that standpoint.  I guess the golf illustration of that would be this...most golfers, before taking a shot, view their target (the pin) from where they are at.  I would like to assume that only .5% of them golfers would visualize how they are being viewed from the pin.

This exercise helps me formulate a solution to the problem at hand.  It's like solving a maze starting from the end part.

Enter the students' dilemma of tuition fee increase.  We've heard news of how the kids of PUP have been staving off tuition fee increase and how some went over the edge by wrecking school property.  Kids, wake up!  Talking to you now.  Before there used to be this saying, "There are only two sure things in life - death and taxes" .  I'd say today, there are three sure things in life...death, taxes, and tuition fee increase.  So kids, you will have to change your mindset and think of the solution and not dwell on the problem!  "Tutulan ang Pagtaas Ng Tuition Fee!" is so seventies (ugh!).  There was no internet then where you could sell on eBay, write a blog and earn on Adsense or NuffNang.  There was no cellphone wherein you could instantly be a "portable businessman" by selling prepaid load from the thing you hold in your hand.  There were hardly any opportunities to do a part-time job because there were no McDos or Chowkings to do a few shifts.

I say this passionately to you kids because I was there too.  Did I whine about the problem? No!  I just found a solution.  In my first year of college, I ditched my lifelong dream of being an architect due to the untimely demise of my late father.  I left UP and went home to Bacolod to take up Fine Arts instead.  Just like any family who loses a breadwinner, our finances took a hit.  Solution...look for jobs/projects to take on.  Design a logo, do some layouts, get paid on a piece meal basis.

Fast forward to 1991-1992, I was stuck in London for my second round of schooling.  Couldn't take a part-time job because I did not have a work permit.  No jobs anyway because UK was in recession.  Solution?  Have SLR camera, will shoot your wedding (God knows how much I hate shooting weddings but I did it).  Solution 2 for extra cash, went down to Whitechapel, bought a few plain shirts and I silk screened the school logo on them.  Sold them to classmates.  Also saw the opportunity at the time a Filipino fiesta in London came around.  I printed shirts with "100% Filipino" emblazoned on them (looong before there was all this rush about being a Pinoy overseas).  Got through with it.

There is a solution if you want to create it.  But of course, I don't blame you.  It's also your prerogative to whine.  Let me just tell you one thing.  If this is your mindset, you have a great chance of being a whiner at the workplace.  You can be a good union leader.  You'll get pogi points from your co-workers for being their champion, but the reality of it is that union leaders hardly get promoted.  Ultimately, you may consider being an entrepreneur instead.  Then when you are an entrepreneur, you will say to yourself, "why didn't I become one when I was in college? ".

"Tutulan ang Pagtaas Ng Tuition Fee!" is so passe.  Don't get me wrong, How I wish tuition fees don't escalate.  But there's no stopping it.  "Tutulan ang Pagtaas Ng Tuition Fee!" did not exist before the seventies.  Our parents just supported their way through school being shoe shine boys, messengers in the post war offices in Dewey Boulevard (now Roxas Blvd.), working any possible job that presented itself by night and then go to school by day...or work by day and school by night. Did they whine about the hardship?  I don't think so.  Today, they are the retired captains of the country's economy. 

"Tutulan ang Pagtaas Ng Tuition Fee!" is not only passe, it is also irrelevant for today.  Not because we can't stand up and fight it by demonstrating, but because the solution to the problem is to view it 360 and then slay it with positive action.

Kids, did I tell you about my 10 year old daughter?  She sold her first painting to a stranger about a year ago.  She earns by the produce of her own hands.  She also buys a pack of polvoron from the supermarket and resells them per piece to her schoolmates.  But, that's another story.  You guys need to get going and be busy with something. ;-)