What a room, river, and event have to do with my university education

Last February, I attended two orientations organized for my university's academic scholars and their parents. On both events our university president Fr. Jett's hardsell pitch seemed oddly familiar to me, and the connection clicked with a word: transcendence. That word brought me back four years ago to the beginning of any Ateneans' university life, OrSem (Orientation Seminar).

Those two days were a blur, and what stuck with me after all the awkwardness and wild dancing was the word "transcendence" said also by Fr. Jett (what a plot twist I know). I forget the exact words and context with which it was mentioned, but what I do remember are the moments when the very word "transcendence" haunted me throughout my college life, coming up in the most unlikely places, least of them another speech. Perhaps in revisiting some of these places where the word "transcendence" resonated the most I'll be able to find out what my university education has meant to me, and come full circle.

The 2m by 4m room

The first that comes to mind is a 2m by 4m room in the middle of Seoul as it simmered in the summer heat. I lived in that room for two and half months, working as an intern in a Seoul-based marketing agency for startups. I was back in Seoul a semester after my JTA, but things were different.

No longer a student, no longer with a roommate, no longer with fellow Ateneans or Filipinos, it was, at times, lonely. Sure I enjoyed working at the agency, in the company of fellow foreigners, and living at the sharehouse, in the company of the kind Korean family that had taken me in, but moments of doubt came whenever I'd come to that room. Especially in the first two and last two weeks, when my friend also interning at the same company had yet to arrive or had left already, my nights were flooded with questions like "why did I decide to work here for the summer?", "what was the point of all of this?", and everyone's favorite, "who am I?"

The real struggle that summer was not adjusting to the workload or the work culture, dealing with the 40 degree heat, or keeping tabs on my expenses to make sure I had something to bring home. It was living alone, with my thoughts, not speaking Filipino for days on end. Fortunately, in that same summer, I found spaces where I could transcend my loneliness.

I had grown up going to mass every Sunday with my family, and attending the 9 am English mass at Myeongdong Cathedral made them feel present with me, along with other Filipinos I was sure to see. Aside from Sunday mass, the Han River running through Seoul became a healing place every weekend. The liveliness of the families, couples, and friends hanging out on the banks with the refreshing summer breeze was infectious. I would go the river to catch the sunset, and lie down on a mat bought from a nearby convenience store as the orange hues of light meet the blue streaks of horizon.

Both spaces taught me how to enjoy being in the midst of things. We live in a world that teaches us to spend our now's thinking what to do next - what Netflix series we will watch next, what org project we will work on next, what will go on our Instagram Story next. During that summer, thanks to Sunday mass and walks along Han River, I learned to enjoy being a Filipino working in Seoul, coming home to the 2 by 4 room.

In a way, I felt a fraction of what it must be like for my dad, who has been working abroad for several years, and many OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) around the world. The moments of loneliness never went away; instead they became rooms to simply be here and now - to walk for the sake of walking, to think for the sake of thinking, to pray for the sake of being with God. We all need those rooms in our lives.

Crossing walls

Back in a river closer to home, some of my Theology 141 (Liberation Theology) classmates and I found ourselves standing on a bridge as Ms Genie from Manila Observatory, Dr Emma Porio from Sociology, and Fr Balchand, our professor, talked about how the river is slowly changing, how the lack of long-term urban planning was not prepared to deal with this shifts, and how the poor living along the riverbanks are the most vulnerable to the risks posed by the river. We were on Tumana Bridge overlooking Marikina River.

The sight of the river from the bridge brought back memories in a classroom, where my friends and I were conducting a science communication workshop for high school students. We were dissecting journal articles on environmental issues and climate change, and I realized just how lacking our discussions were in the face of the reality. It's one thing to talk about graphs and charts with catastrophic predictions, another to actually see the effects of climate change unfold before our eyes.

The trip with my classmates also brought us to the Buklod Tao community a few kilometers south. Led by Ka Noli, they were informal settlers who had taken it upon themselves to respond to climate change - fiberglass boats, recycled tetra-pack weaving, and participatory mapping. These projects enabled the community to adapt to climate change risks, generated income for them and allowed them to teach other vulnerable communities in the country. For Buklod Tao, climate change is not just terminology on a journal article, a news clip, or a science lesson. It is everyday life.

As the van traversed the Marikina river to Manggahan floodgates (which lead to the Laguna Bay) and back to campus, Dr Emma kept bringing up "cross-pollination," referring to interdisciplinary projects in the university, like the multidisciplinary research on jeepney drivers bringing together physicists, health scientists, sociologists, and environmental scientists.

In a world with problems as complex and contextual as climate change, the convenience a Google search nor passion of a social media status will not suffice. To reduce reality to a matter of 280 characters, a like and a share, and aimless, often antagonistic threads makes it easier to reach many but the silos and echo chambers still remain.

That trip along Marikina River was a call to transcend the walls that divide us - disciplines, backgrounds, and social media's algorithms - and go out of our comfort zones and into the world together. Ka Noli has been doing it for many years now, ever since he first reached out to his neighbors across from the walls of the subdivision he had built a life in. What are the walls the keep us from reaching out to our neighbors?

The long game

There's an evening event in Makati City I have been going to nearly every last Thursday of the month since 2016. There the Manila startup community gathers after a hard day's work and make new friends. There is always an invited guest speaker, often a founder, who talks about the problem they're solving, the entrepreneurial journey, or a recent company milestone. It's become a course of sorts for me as a student, where I not only get to learn from the guest speaker but also from other people in the audience, who all have their stories to tell and wisdom to share.

Having talked to many entrepreneurs over the past three years and seen some succeed and many more change direction or stop altogether, there's a pattern that becomes apparent. While in every entrepreneur there is a sense of urgency to solve a problem, the ones who last also have a sense of "the long game." The product or service they've rolled out now may no longer be the best solution in the next few years, and then they have to pivot, or go under trying.

The ones who last are those who commit to problem or space they've entered regardless of the failures that come their way, transcending any one solution they come up with. The algorithms that run the hours of our lives and business models that turn our pesos into experiences or improvements in our lives were not as complex years before, and will likely not be as complex as what the future holds. The same can be said for the challenges we face today, which are ever-evolving.

The unlikely moments of being with

Wait a minute. What does a 2m by 4m room in Seoul, the Marikina River, and a startup community event in Makati have to do with a university education? For me, those places that taught me about transcendence, about going beyond loneliness, echo chambers, and failures, are my university education. These places are different for every student, but we all had those moments where the fog of misconceptions cleared, our eyes opened with realization, and we were slapped in the face by reality.

In all those moments I've shared I was a student regardless of where I was, and those same moments were not left in the archives of memory to be dusted every few years. I took them with me in classes, projects, and cafeteria conversations with friends. I'm thankful for Ateneo creating spaces for these unlikely moments - be it an actual program like JTA (Junior Term Abroad, my university's exchange program), a school activity like immersion, or simply free time in between classes.

Of course these weren't the only experiences that made an impact on my college life, but these are representative of what my university education means to me. It was an education on transcendence, which seems so out there and beyond the practical use of our daily lives, but could not be more real than any other truth or skill we can learn.

The room taught me to be with myself in solitude and reflection, the river with others in the midst of ever-changing problems, and the event with whatever it takes to solve these problems. That is how I came to understand transcendence - as being with.

With so much noise in the world, fast pace of change, and the endless barrage of information, it is more important than ever to transcend what we feel and think, first impressions and biases, one-liners and punchlines, and spend more time being with.