Denis Santos
- UP graduate ditches his graduation day
- Lemuel Magaling takes internet by storm
It started with a photo of him holding a bottle of beer.. with a caption: “It’s more than a beer.”
Intriguing?
Ditching graduation day
Lemuel Magaling, a UP graduate, instantly became the talk of the town when he posted his speech explaining why he chose not to attend his graduation rites.
“I boycotted my graduation. I know it will be overrated and I don’t want to fool myself for the last time,” he started off.
Talking about foolishness, the 23-year-old confessed that he made himself believe that studying in UP for 6 years could mean something great. It’s not. After all, UP is ‘just another institution where we spend our energy to maintain the world as it goes around the direction benefitting those who run it’.
“But to be a UP student should mean more. I am not against those who attended the final rites and were proud of it. It’s okay, if I were happy like you guys, and I’d do the same. You haven’t fooled yourself. This is just my subjective understanding conditioned by my own experience as well as the others. I’ve been a complete stowaway and riding the ship first-class and a ticket to watch the last full-show is not my usual cup of tea,” he commented.
Beer as a symbol
Beer. The only thing that keeps him sane all throughout his stay in UP. It’s way too funny that ‘drinking’ can be associated with negative things. But for Lemuel, it’s something else. Used as a symbol of triumph and everything that came before it, the beer also signifies the special people in his life.
To his professors…
“This beer signifies the professors I have drank with. The professors who served as guide and real teachers because real teachers teach even outside the classroom. Inside the classroom, that’s work. Outside the classroom, that’s passion,” he recalls.
his friends…
“I only consider my real friends, my real enemies as the truest people that I could ever have on the face of the earth. They aren’t nice but it’s a wise decision to have them. They are the best and worst people in my world and the contradictions that we had, made us better-worse persons.”
his family…
“I love them and I love beer. Well, that pretty much sums up everything, although, they don’t want me to take up any vice, but I did and there’s no point in saying sorry now. I want to protect them and I need to protect them from me.”
and a metaphor of himself…
“I’m always alone in the corner of our small “coop” reading books like I’m always alone in the corner of a bar. How a wish I was born in the best of conditions but no; I was born in the hardest conditions but I loved it and it has become a natural thing for me to love the bad, the dark, the worst and the hard and the difficult. In a word: Struggle. It’s about finding the unity of opposites, imagining a world beyond what we have right now and to assign faith where there is no hope. The world is not a bad place for me. If the world is bad, I’d be worse.”
Wisdom
Ending his powerful speech is a powerful bang that will leave you thinking for the rest of your life, especially when you are studying in UP.
“Yeah, I’m just a student in the god-forsaken premiere University from a country that could be hardly seen on the world map. But it has to change. The situation has to change. There’s no easy way out and some people have to have the courage to face this reality. Reality is hard, changing reality is harder but we have no other options. And being left with no choice but to change our destiny is our occupation. Our forced and chosen destiny.”
This post alone can start change, impact lives. It’s a matter of what you believe in and how we act on them. Kudos, Lemuel! May you inspire more people and cheers to more bottles of beers!
