The STI Career Factor Challenge:

I was taking the invitation to the STI Career Factor: College Survival Adventure for Media as a personal challenge.

 

Through some feat of psychic gimmickry, they had found out the truth that despite my claims to the contrary, I was indeed a very sad young man who spent his Saturdays sprawled in front of the television, a can of Pringles in one hand and a remote control in the other. And if that wasn't insult enough, the invitation even had the audacity to taunt me.

 

"Do you remember the time between high school and college?" it asked. "It's a time of nervousness and excitement when you are about to leave a familiar world for a new one. Now you can relive those days of wonder because STI is wholeheartedly inviting you to join the STI's Olongapo-leg of Career Factor, a unique fun-fulled activity that will allow you to be a teenager once again."

 

I found myself scoffing at its promise of adventure, justifying in my mind as to why this foray would not be a productive one to undertake.

 

"I'm only 21!" I thought to myself. "It hasn't been that long since I was a teenager! Heck, I'm practically an infant! I don't need some college to allow me to be a teenager again. I can be a teenager whenever I please!"

 

The fact that I can only recall two times where I've actually acted like a teenager was a tiny detail I kept safely tucked in the back of my head. The fact that I got hit on the head with a beer bottle on one of those occasions was yet another detail that was safely behind the lock and key of my subconscious.

 

After a lengthy internal debate that consisted of me pacing around my family's two-room apartment and constantly telling myself that I did have a life when I was in high school, I finally decided to throw caution to the wind.

 

"Why shouldn't I have a little fun?" I muttered to myself while I packed clothes and toiletries and whatnot. "I mean, fun that doesn't involve me being conked on the head by a random beer bottle?"

 

Besides, I figured that if for some unspecified reason that this three-day trip ended up being a bust, I could simply plug in my discman and tune out everybody around me.

 

March 18, 2005

 

The curse of being terminally punctual is that you often end up looking like an overeager probinsyano . Since the invitation stated an 8 o clock call time, I was already clambering onto jeepneys and buses at the crack of dawn, ostensibly avoiding the stares that fellow early birds directed the oversized bag that made me look like a runaway or a member of the Akyat Bahay gang.

 

That the meeting place was in Makati – the STI Makati campus to be precise – was a detail that I forgot to factor in. It's only in hindsight that I realize how silly I looked: stepping off the bus with a heavy bag slung on my shoulder, craning my head up to look for the STI building like some backwoods ingenue. Picture that in your mind and you'll understand why I'm cringing right this very moment.

 

Thankfully, a security guard spotted me from inside the building and asked me to come inside the campus. Whether he actually thought I was part of the media or he was just taking pity on some poor, uncultured hick, I never really bothered to find out.

 

* * *

 

Once everybody was in attendance, we were all herded up to the fifth floor of the campus, asked to take our seats, and wait for further instructions. We were then left to our own devices, and I felt like I was in high school already.

 

For one thing, I immediately found myself reverting to that shy, introverted individual hiding behind a shell, which was basically what I was during my first year of high school. Jokes were being tossed around; sophomoric, childish, and absolutely hilarious. As everybody gravitated toward their already established cliques I felt huge orange neon signs rise up around me declaring "Beware: Social Misfit."

 

It was a good thing that the paper I work in believes in having all their bases covered. After testing the waters, I was able to discover about six other reporters from the Manila Bulletin, all covering this same event but for different sections of the newspaper. It was easier to establish rapport by then, and we managed to entertain ourselves by fiddling with the mannequins inside STI Makati's hospital simulation room to find out if they were anatomically correct, in all senses of the word.

 

We only came back to our seats when the instructor finally arrived to give a short briefing to the new participants to STI's Career Factor challenge.

 

"First launched in 2003, Career Factor is a yearly undertaking organized by STI for fourth year high school students preparing for college," the facilitator droned. "Utilizing active training – where students are made to learn by playing in a friendly competition – the students are given activities that will prepare them for college life.

 

"The idea is that through these games, students will discover that they already have the skills within themselves to survive college and to attain a higher percentage of success in whatever career path they chose to take in the future."

 

"Career Factor promises to provide key learnings in communication skills, organization, logic, leadership, energy, group skills and entrepeneurship," the facilitator continued. "At the end of the adventure, high school students will read the word college in two meanings: That it is a level of study that you go to after high school, and that it stands for sure-fire skills to survive and succed in college and beyond."

 

While the facilitator was rambling on, the past participants of this little game were already getting a tad restless, and it was starting to rub off on everybody else. It seemed like fun was the operative word in the past versions fo STI's Career Factor, and if there were any of us newbies who were still doubtful, now would be a good time to throw those doubts aside.

 

But we weren't given an opportunity to rush headlong into the fun. First off was a "fortune-telling" session, and I use fortune-telling in its broadest sense when I talk about this session. We were led into a darkened room lit only by candlelight, and for a moment I felt like I was once again in one of those roving peryas that I used to go to as a child. I was then made to sit in front of a student who pretended to read my palm and told me that yes, I was indeed a writer.

 

"That's a surprise," I muttered beneath my breath.

 

"You write for the IT section," the student said in a breathy voice that reminded me of an asthmatic hamster. "You will be famous someday."

 

"Erm..." I replied. "I don't write for the IT section. I'm from the Youth and Campus section."

 

"Oh," the student said.

 

An uneasy silence then ensued, followed by instructions to remember a string of words which, of course, I promptly forgot once I got out of the room.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

As luck would have it, it turned out that those string of words I was told to memorize were an integral part of the next activity we were going to take part in.

 

As soon as we enter the room where we came from, we are handed face masks and are instructed to put them over our eyes so as to effectively blind ourselves.

 

A sliver of dread runs down my spine. For a moment I fear that we will be made to get down on our knees as STI instructors flow in from outside, brandishing paddles that will be used to give us a thorough hazing. I tell my overactive imagination to shut the heck up as we are given yet another set of instructions.

 

"Remember those string of words that you were asked to memorize while you were being told your fortunes?" the facilatator asked. "I hope yoou remembered them, because now that you've been blindfolded you have to listen carefully. Follow the voice that will be chanting those string of words that I hope you haven't forgotten once you got out of the fortune-telling room."

 

It felt like he was speaking just to me.

 

Immediately, a chant starts, and in the gaggle of voices screeching god-knows-what I head towards one voice that seems to be saying something vaguely familiar. I keep on heading towards it until I collide into another warm body in front of me.

 

"Now you can take off your blindfolds!" the facilitator enthused. "The people you've been grouped with will be your partners for the rest of the Career Factor challenge!"

 

I looked around and smiled weakly at my groupmates (Joel, Elsie, Noel and Edison), who all looked much more competent than me.

 

"But first, you guys have to come up with a group name, a banner, and a song!" the facilitator announces.

 

I felt the blood drain from my face and form a huge pool around my feet.

 

OH. DEAR. GOD.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

There are a myriad of reasons why I never took particular interest in the athletic standing of the university where I obtained my college degree. For one thing, I am severly lacking in the hand-eye coordination department, and have often been found on the wrong end of inanimate objects. For another thing, screaming and cheering in unison with hordes of people I don't actually know gives me nightmares of being part of the Borg Collective. For a third thing, I just plain hate performing in front of an audience.

 

So you can just imagine my relief when we finally finished our song-and-dance cheering routine, which included hobbling around like a horse and displaying our makeshift banner like a demented version of Vanna White. We were also asked to explain the components of our banner (manila paper and art paper), an aspect of the activity wherein I was blissfully tuned out.

 

I come out of the experience relatively unscathed and my dignity intact — or at least I like to think it still is — and I decide that cheering, logo making, and team-building activities really aren't all that bad. But you'd have to shoot me in the foot if ever you catch me in one in the relatively near future.

 

All of us are still catching our breath when the facilitator pops up again, three envelopes in his hand.

 

"Okay guys," he says, a deceptively cheerful smile on his face. "I have three envelopes here stating your next destination. Don't open it until you reach your designated van. Are you guys ready?"

 

"Yes!" we all shout in unison.

 

And thus, on a relatively sunny day in Makati, the STI Career Factor challenge was begun.