EVANESCENCE

Confessions of a Former Student Journalist

by Lady Edding

The school paper adviser did not publish the article I wrote. All of my classmates  knew who I was, the teachers talked about me after classes, the student-teachers feared me—I was the girl who corrected the teachers if they got their English grammar wrong. 

I wasn’t self-taught; It’s just that I consumed cartoon shows and films mostly in English since I was a kid. Maybe that’s why I was better in English compared to my peers. It came naturally to me. As a kid, I never understood why my classmates just couldn’t get their English right. It was so easy! It was more frustrating hearing student-teachers force themselves to speak in present tense all the while they’ve been using the past tense form of verbs. They should’ve been better than me. I cringe every time they get it wrong. Do they not feel ashamed having a 10-year-old kid point out the inconsistencies of their tenses? 
 

Because of this notorious behavior, my teachers and classmates, even my parents, urged me to join the school paper’s official team. I was only in fifth grade.  I wasn’t entirely sold on the idea besides

the fact that my sister used to competitively write, even reaching nationals. She was something akin to an inspirational figure to me. Competed in writing contests and won. Competed in Math competitions and won. A student leader and a consistent academic achiever through and through. I didn’t just look up to her—I wanted to be just like her. So I joined the school paper. Perhaps it was because of my English sensitivities reaching the adviser, or the glorious legacy left by my sister who attended the same school I did, but I got accepted into the club. I don’t remember ever writing an audition piece. I attended a few writing workshops organized by the club to prepare us and better gauge what the students’ strengths and weaknesses were when it came to writing and preparing a newsletter. That is to say, I originally wanted to be an editorial cartoonist, or the layout editor. But in a room filled with one classmate that was insanely good at drawing and an upperclassman known for his creativity and execution of ideas, I was stuck with writing news articles.

I had no problems with writing. Like I said, English naturally came to me. Writing was easy. Or so I thought. My classmate who also joined the club had shared with me that he had to submit an article due that afternoon, and I was like:
 

“They already gave out assignments?”

Mind you, I was officially accepted into the newspaper club. I wasn’t aware they had a meeting for assigning articles to be written already. I had to go and approach the editor-in-chief at that time in the Grade Six building and ask her what I could do. I had my first task assigned to me; write about the recent victories of the Elementary Department elections, especially an interview with the newly elected president. I didn’t account for the fact that writing news and writing in English would be so different. While my shy self went to the effort to interview the equally shy president, I didn’t know what to do next. I was in a slump, agonizing over how the hell I was going to write all the things I asked in the interview into a coherent news article. The problem too was that I asked the lamest, most childlike questions only a clueless fifth-grader would ask.

“Are you happy to win as president?” (He answered yes.) 

“Do you have plans during your presidency?” (He answered yes. He didn’t elaborate. I didn’t ask for any clarification.)

“Are you proud of yourself?” (I think he laughed a little then answered yes.)

So I wrote the article with only these answers, all workshop lessons for journalism suddenly erased. I remembered feeling embarrassed over submitting an intermediate sized piece of paper with only half of it filled with my words, compared to my classmate who had his printed and put in a folder. I knew it was still a draft. I was sure of it. The school paper adviser was going to call me into her room and ask me to rewrite the whole article. She was going to point out my mistakes and areas that can be improved. 

Months had passed and she never asked for me. Nor did I hear anything about the upcoming newsletter. Imagine my surprise, after months of anxiously waiting for someone to point out my mistakes, and being handed the already printed newsletter with all the published news articles. I looked for the article I prematurely wrote, only to find out they didn’t publish my article. Instead, as if pouring more gasoline into the flame, they wrote an entirely new article, but kept my name as the writer of the article. I am pissed. But during that time, I kept quiet. Even when my classmates teased me about my news article making it to the front page. Even when my parents congratulated me for writing my first news article. I kept my mouth glued shut. I didn’t have the heart to tell my parents that I didn’t write that article. I couldn’t bear the incoming barrage of questions I’d imagined from my classmates if I told them the only words that were mine in that article was my name.

I still don’t know why they did that. Looking back, I shouldn’t have applied for the journalism club again if that was how they acted towards writers that didn’t fit their standards. Obviously there are standards, but that club was supposed to be a space for students to hone their journalistic skills. I should’ve quit that toxic space, but instead I made it my mission to make sure that the news that was going to be published was entirely mine, both my name and the news article itself. 

I didn’t ask for help, not even from my role model. I only took her past newsletters and read each and every single one of the news articles there. My little mind digested every single quirk and writing styles in the newspaper. Pretentious as it sounds, I started watching the evening news with my dad as well. I read the newspapers that were used as wrapping paper for the eggs. I don’t remember ever taking writing as seriously before the private humiliation. I only ever consumed media, never the one to make it. I didn’t really need paper and a pen. I already had my mind and imaginations to write my stories for me. But as I got a hold onto more newspapers, more news articles, I was eventually exposed to the literary folio of my former state university’s newspaper called “Tejido”. It was its own small book filled with prose, poetry, short stories, illustrations, and photography from the university’s student body.

If I wasn’t so serious about writing before, I was more than serious after I read the entirety of Tejido that I snatched from my cousin after it spilled out of her backpack. As I read through the pages filled with prose and poetry, I realized that I actually didn’t know how to write in English. I know the standard English that any teacher would be happy to read. But I didn’t know how to utilize English as an instrument to make something more. More than a sentence. More than just a simple phrase. I wanted to write poetry. I wanted to write short stories. But that was a bit too far of a dream for a girl stuck in journalism. I instead wrote feature articles that were notoriously known for using too much “flowery language.” I didn’t care, it was storytelling practice for me. 

And I got away with it. I was known for writing the good “flowery” articles. My articles got published in its entirety with no edits. And I was a better writer than my fifth-grade self. She would’ve been proud of how far I had come.

But I knew I couldn’t stay in journalism forever. I realized soon that it was too competitive for me—both outside and inside the school gates. In junior high school, I vividly remembered writing five articles for the newspaper, only for two articles to be attributed to me, while the other three articles were attributed to the newbie writers. I didn’t have the strength to get mad anymore. I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever system was running the journalism circle at school was fucked up and I didn’t want any part of it anymore no matter how much prestige and opulence they advertise their club to be. My remaining time in senior high school was clubless, and as a STEM student, I enjoyed creative writing and contemporary literature the most given that they were only one semester each.

I enjoyed the thought of writing, but never the act of writing. Maybe because of journalism, I always thought of writing as a laborious job. For the most part of the pandemic and my first year in Political Science in UP Cebu, I never lifted my pen; but my mind was working overtime, thinking of story plots, potential writing material as an escape from the stress coming from the deadly virus and the degree program. I remembered doing an assignment for the course GEOG 171, also known as Political Geography, which asked us to draw out an ideal state. Out of all the reaction papers, reflection papers, and even synthesis papers, this activity was the one I put most of my efforts into. I drew out a map with my colored pens that otherwise would have dried up if I didn’t use them. I wrote down a comprehensive layout on what my ideal state’s people could do with the geographic landscape they had. I invented a train that could go all-terrain. I realized I might have done the assignment wrong but all that mattered was that that assignment made me finally realize that I couldn’t go through with Political Science.
 

For that one year in UP Cebu’s online classes, I convinced myself that I’d come to like Political Science. I deluded myself, fully accepting that some people just don’t get to have their dream programs in college. It was more difficult for me because I didn’t have a dream program. I chose degree programs based on my STEM strand, or what (apparently) made the most money. My dad wanted me to take up Political Science as a pre-law instead. So I did. I was confident in my writing but it was being tested every single day in PolSci that I just shut down in the middle of the semester, barely passing all my classes.
Soon, I decided that I’ve had enough of PolSci and decided to look into English programs within the UP System. I wanted to go back to my roots. I wanted to go back to where I was comfortable and confident. Thus I found UP Mindanao’s BA English program, majoring in Creative Writing. Had I known there was such a program that existed, I wouldn’t have applied to UP Cebu in the first place. It was the most perfect degree program I could’ve wished for. It was everything I wanted for myself—I wanted the assurance for my dad that I was still on my Pre-Law track (English), while taking up something I’ve since wanted to do (Creative Writing). In an orange-themed powerpoint presentation, I put in the reasons why I wanted to shift to BA English and transfer to UP Mindanao, saying: “bcos of the pandemic, i realized na life is too short to be forcing myself to study [in] a [degree] program that i have no interest in.”

I was a freshie again. A first year in a degree program I chose, in another unfamiliar university, but this time, in a city I have never visited. I had the misfortune of experiencing the anxiety of having to introduce myself in front of new people again. Even with the online setup, speaking was still not my strongest suit. I worked hard on making writing my number one talent, I gave it all of my attention. Which backfired drastically when CW 100, Introduction to Creative Writing, and ENG 23, Introduction to Shakespeare, forced me to act. It was one thing to stutter while speaking, but having to act out emotions while speaking? I was already drafting an email asking the University Registrar on what would happen if I dropped out. In my head, majoring in English with a focus in Creative Writing would only entail, well, writing. I expected the reading because, what is a writer if they cannot read? I did not consider acting though, or that creative writing included writing plays, screenwriting, acting them out. My heart already pounded hard whenever a professor or a lecturer told us to introduce ourselves, what more at the thought of acting?  My mind might as well break down first before it takes over my whole body. 

I really considered it. Dropping out, or, after thorough research, applying for a leave of absence. Might as well make another orange-themed presentation, just to be nostalgic. Imagining my parents' reactions to my wanting to drop out made me more stressed than the heavy readings and projects my courses demanded. I just shut down for the most part of my first year as a BAE student. I barely attended the classes, workshops; I was spiraling down a very deep hole with no way of getting out. If you asked my blockmates how I was during the first year, they wouldn’t know what to answer because I was never there. 

For the first time in my life, I was doubting my own writing. Something I’d worked hard honing to almost perfection was slipping through the cracks of my own insecurities. My doubts were enough to cloud my thoughts that I missed the chance to tell my parents of my other plans. In a blink of an eye, I was in my second year in BAE, already in my third year in online classes. There was news that face-to-face classes were already permitted on campus. But I wasn’t expecting too much since an online setup could still be doable in our program, not unlike STEM programs who needed to be in laboratories. As much as I liked writing, I’ve come to realize how much joy there was to reading. A late realization, nonetheless, the readings for the classes unintentionally kept me from leaving the program. It was a joy to read short stories and poetry, to hear my instructors and blockmates talk about them. Again, I was content with consuming what I could. I took a pause in creating. I felt that I wasn’t completely ready yet.

Then CW 110, Fiction 1, happened. Writing short stories. I remembered feeling a mix of excitement and horror because one, I wasn’t ready, and two, I was excited to try writing again.

That was what it was all about in the BAE program—to try. Time and time again the professors reminded us that nobody was born a perfect writer. Writing was a learned skill, honed through writing and writing endlessly, and more on reading. Even when you don't know perfect English, you try. Even when you don’t know how to seamlessly transition your scenes, you try. And when you don’t know how to end the story, you still try.

And I tried. Pushing past my insecurities, I wrote my first short story about a girl having a dilemma on whether she should skip her finals exams or take care of her ailing father. It wasn’t a strong plot, per say. The professor and my blockmates complimented my seamless grammar. And I thought that was all there was to it. I was the girl who was well-acquainted with English again. So I tried better. My second story was about a girl doing everything she could, even risking sketchy online deals, just so she could attend her favorite KPop group’s concert. It was born from a list of imaginations I had written down, and I presented these ideas to my professor in a one-to-one consultation. He had picked that idea out from the rest, saying I should write about that since no one has ever tried writing about KPop experiences before. It was a stronger draft than my first one for sure. It needed revisions but I was satisfied with how it initially turned out. Still there was a creeping sense of not being good enough stuck somewhere inside me. 

Somehow, in my signed copy of Sir John’s book, Armor, from his book talk, I realized that I would never be good enough. And that was okay. Because what mattered more was that I kept trying and improving myself to be able to call myself a writer. In the first pages of his book, Sir John signed and wrote: “Dear Lady, you are a writer. Please write more stories!” I held onto this small little compliment. This was my last straw. I finally decided to continue writing. I decided to stay in the BA English program. It didn’t have to be a perfect score or a perfect draft, instead, it only took someone believing in me and my capabilities as a writer to restore my faith in my own writing.

I was finally here. In BAE where I get to be the writer of my own delusions and imaginations. Where people respected your writing and didn’t attribute it to someone else. Where people would encourage you to write more, while pushing you to be better. I was finally at a place where my writing was mine, not written by somebody else nor given to someone else, but entirely mine.