Teaching or projects?

I realized I am enjoying working with private companies especially consulting firms. Many were asking why I don’t pursue teaching, to pursue what I have achieved in college. I answered them as always, “teaching will be my last resort in terms of career”. However, teaching will always be part of my every day living, everywhere I go.

“Pero sayang ung mga pinag-aralan mo.”

I admit, somehow it is true. But apart from my course I also focused on the extra-curricular activities like the college publication, the student government, interpersonal and intrapersonal development groups, arts and culture clubs, English clubs and others. These endeavors imparted necessary knowledge and skills which I am utilizing nowadays. Meaning, my four-year stay in college didn’t go to waste. God had a purpose.

“Ayaw mo ba ng mas stable na job?”

My life in projects is not stable. I know. But I suppose, it’s too early for me to be permanent in a firm. On the other hand, consultants are encouraging me to engage in NGOs and private entities while furthering my education and taking care of my name while I am still young.

What’s the point?

Well, there is a greater advantage since there are greater possibilities of getting into different projects. You may be indulged in mine site plannings, resettlement schemes, urban infrastructure development, educational improvement, poverty reduction and institutional enhancements, capacity building assistance and many others. It might be local or international. Thus, more travel, more learning, more fun and more more.

In addition, I might be a better teacher if I start with these endeavors, isn't it?

Thoughts after farewell

I’m a little MBUSSP-sick.

My stint with the project has ended but I’ve learned I should sustain my attachment with the whole team. Or shall I say, “I must!” Who knows? I’ll still be working with them on other projects later on.

Naturally, I miss the whole MBUSSP team, and also the LGU functors of the Mindanao Region. Working with them was a wonderful learning experience, a taxing challenge and a blessing in my early professional years.

But the other side of me gives me feelings of guilt – guilt of leaving one of my favorite consultants. On the approval of the supplemental budget for the last remaining months of the Mindanao-wide assistance, they offered me the official project assistant slot of Project Component C. But earlier than the offer, I already accepted the invitation of my previous leader, Tita Bing, for the Mindoro Nickel Project.

The guilt is part of the reality I must accept. I bet there will be more farewells. More to the fact, Tita Bing was the first consultant who hired me for my first ever professional engagement. She trained and molded me and paved the way to brighter opportunities. I would be so mean to reject the invitation.

I'm in Antipolo, Rizal right now and excited for a fresh endeavor and experience in Mindoro Island.

He carried it

It has been more than 4 months since my last post. Because my job in Mindanao is a wrapping up assignment of the JFPR project which started in 2003, it was too busy that it didn’t give me a chance to create posts. Tita (she doesn’t want me to call her boss because we are in a development project) and I worked even in Saturdays and Sunday afternoons.

September 8 – I stepped out the plane at Davao Int'l Airport asking my self “what am I doing here?” The project didn’t give me proper orientation and briefing on what the nature of the job is, who’s who and what’s what. I didn’t know the facts behind the project at all. I was a blank sheet. It seemed driving in an unlighted highway in the night without headlight. I got no local vertical – no direction.

I only got acquainted with the project during the first workshop at Harbor Lights Hotel in Cagayan de Oro City. There, by God’s grace, I was given light of what I was doing there.

There have been vast challenges, struggles, boredom and tears along the way.

1. The job is multi-tasking. You got to print documents while sleeping and communicate with coordinators while eating. During workshops and writeshops, you need to take the minutes and encode while facilitating the LCD projector and while taking pictures. Finish your documentation while downloading reports sent to your email.

It was exactly rendering technical assistance ‘no matter what’.

2. We didn’t have to miss a week for a consultation and writeshop to eight (8) LGU sites since we were given short time to finish the needed requirements. We were only having land trips using the office’s service vehicles and travel goes through several hours. Though, I love to travel, you can’t deny you’d go weary upon arrival. But you can’t just relax in the hotel since you can’t neglect the preparations for tomorrow’s events. So you’d really stay up late with toothpicks on your eyes.

3. It was my first time in the job and there are still a bunch of things I really do not know about it. Well, yeah, it naturally happens with a novice and I now know how it feels.

For a couple of times, I experienced Tita’s reprimands and scolds. There was early one morning thinking it was a good day, while I was enjoying the music from the laptop, when I was eating a delicious food. It was as if one sack of rice dumped over me and shoulders sulked.

Negative thoughts came into my nutshell but I didn’t give up. I just listened and later knew she was right. All her words were. She knew.

4. It’s Mindanao so we were traveling from place to place, passing through Muslim communities and areas, in the midst of the battle against the 2 opposing groups. We were traveling in the face of terrorism.

If you heard about Kidapawan City bombing just this November, 2007, we were shopping in that mall 2 days before the main gate was bombed. And before we went to Cotabato City, a carenderia was bombed.

God spared us.

5. Hitting two birds with one stone was not a joke. I engaged in graphic designing sideline for a company via email so I got to budget my time between my work as technical assistant and as an amateur graphic designer. It was hard, but it was all worth it. I have adjusted and now I am enjoying it.

It was tough as I recollect.

But evidently, God was there standing beside us, walking behind us and leading us.

I surpassed my first set of challenges in my first ever professional engagement – and HE was there.

God carried it.