Lessons I learned during my first year of class

Binhi sang Pagtuo

June 7, 2010

Dear Centralians and Friends,

Greetings!

Today is the official start of classes at Central Philippine University. The campus is full of students from Elementary to College. When I saw the faces of new students, my mind flashback to when I first entered the university. A lot has happened from that time until now but I learned a lot lessons on my first year as a college student that has become life lessons for me. Let me share it with you.

First, we must have the constant eagerness to learn and unlearn. First time students have a great passion to study and discover things. Yet, this passion would later wane off for some of us. We become bored and just go through the rituals of life. Later we just found out that we have missed a lot of things. This is the time then that we regret the things that we have not done.

Hopefully, this lesson can be learned until it’s too late. Psalm 90:10, 12 says, “Our lifetime is seventy years or, if we are strong, eighty years, Teach us, then, O Lord, how short our lives really are so that we may be wise and live according to your purpose.”

Second, we must continue to gain new friends for life becomes beautiful when you share it with others. Most of us can probably remember how we became friends with our current friends. They were probably our seatmates or someone walking in the campus road towards another building and we asked them directions where our class is located. With these newfound friends, we share food, study together, sleep over in their boarding house or their homes. Then we would later agree to take the same class schedules in the next semester until we graduated. And soon after, without us consciously knowing it, these first year in the school students have become our friends for life.

Let it be that we will not stop making friends. Jesus once said to his disciples, “I now call you friends.”

Third, we must work hard because a good life is not handed to us in a silver platter. This lesson is learned when I first got a rating of INC (incomplete). I have to work doubly hard in the next semester just to complete my term papers and other assignments. Those who do not learn this lesson would get a lapse subject, and have to re-enroll it. Worst, some would drop out of school.

This lesson teaches us not to give up and to continue to work hard. Let us remember that God honors an honest labor.

May God bless us all!

Sincerely,

Pastor Francis Neil G. Jalando-on

Assistant Chaplain