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Monday was stressful because I knew that I had flunked Teacher Ganda’s mid term exam even when my classmates say that we all shouldn’t be such pessimists.

I honestly enjoy my classes to a certain point. But times like these, I wish I could shift to PhD Literature. Two things keep me here, however:

1. My instincts tell me that PhD Communication is going to be very useful. The way my BA in Behavioral Studies, BS in Information Management and Master in Information Management have served me well. A GDAP (Game Developers Association of the Philippines) representative already named the degrees needed to help launch Game Dev as an actual curriculum in the Philippines and I want to be one of its first proponents.
2. You can only get 6 units credited when you shift. Bummer. I already have 15 units to my name.

The learning process is killing me because it reminded me of the times I hated being in Behavioral Studies, which was in complete contrast with how I loved being in UP.

Carlolo said something about me being adept at theories. That’s funny because I wasn’t always like that. In college, I barely survived all the theory-peppered exams. I never could sit still and listen, unless I like the professor. The weird thing about UP is that it’s in complete contrast with APC: I loved my minors more than I ever did my majors (except for Anthro 187: Sex and Culture). APC students rarely take their minors seriously. But in UP, the minors were the only things keeping my GPA afloat. With the minors, I can be as creative as I want to be and professors like Pia Arboleda encouraged it. (*gasp* She’s actually the only prof I really remember! Oh, and she was the original Teacher Ganda. The only other prof I recall is _____ and that’s because he was manyak.)

So I told Carlolo, the reason why I seem to be adept at theories is because I learned them backwards. Not in college. When I re-read books about theories — I was just starting out as a professor then — it all made sense because I had already applied them in real life.

I have to see it work before I can begin to understand what it is. If I just read it, it won’t make sense. This is the same reason why I had learned programming by virtue of looking at codes and not by reading technical books (I hate technical books). This is also the reason why, when I was at a loss for words during the exam, I ended up drawing two diagrams to answer the question: “What is the difference between overgeneralization and selective observation?”

Now I’m back to studying things that I cannot begin to comprehend because they’re all abstract statements. But see, I found that I enjoy this course because I learned some of the theories by reading 14 theses/dissertations within a week. No matter how technical a dissertation is written, you cannot remove the narrative elements from it. I see stories unfolding and frameworks/models explaining the phenomenon.

That is so much better than having to read through hundreds of pages of materials that, to me, have no meaning. (Hehe, that’s Semiotics for you.)