Why did you take up Chemical Engineering, huh, JanMell?

BATTLING INNER WARS By JanMell Dugenio

It’s 7:00 pm. You’re hungry, and then you decide to go out for dinner. You’re walking along Tibanga highway with all the eateries and fast-food chains to flood your vision. You walk to, and when you seemingly reach Gaisano mall, you walk your way back again, and find yourself heading home. Then you pinch yourself, and finally settled on Jollibee. Never mind, you say, that you’re Php40 transmuted into a plate of shanghai rolls and the ever scant rice, a glass of fizzy soda, and one peso. You just needed a clean and well-lighted place, so you could sink your mind into something in need of utmost attention, it feels like your dendrites and axons would shred. You were just given an assignment; call it an onus, a yoke, a terrible joke in the form of an interrogative sentence. The kind of joke that makes you smile but your face reads worry. And then you hear it again—clearly now, quite dreadfully, in a very deep, terrifying tone—you’re teacher saying, “Why did you take up Chemical Engineering?” (Put maniacal laughter, lightning and thunder effects here.)

And then you’re in my shoes.

It was neither an accident that I took up chemical engineering nor was it because I let my index finger play into the course list with my eyes closed, and then I said “Stop!”, and behold, “I’ll take that!” I would have to blame my former third year Chemistry teacher, Mrs. Zyhrine Mayormita, for igniting that spark which fueled my interest towards Chemistry (which later on grew to a conflagration), and when she mentioned that Mr. Edmark Icalina (apparently one of her two favorite students, I am the other one. Ha ha) was taking up Chemical Engineering, my curiosity over the course grew. Moreover, my classmate, and one of my best buddies, said that he too, would take it up, and together with the name that sounds high profile, Engr. (attach name here), I decided to place ChE as my first choice on every admissions exams there are, even on one when ChE is not offered at all.

This is one book whom I've always longed to devour. The approach is fundamental, but not layman, and I believe every disciple of Chemineering must read this by heart if he wants to be good in his craft. Stuff toy not included.

But I never really thought of the deeper reasons behind my adventure. Surely, a teacher’s words and a friend’s enthusiasm are mere bagatelles. With only a year more before I finally finish my B.S., I was put back on a reality check with this assignment, (God, this is even more difficult than being questioned why, given that you are a cactus.)and in the rare event of rummaging through the recesses of my brain I found several reasons. I took up ChE because I thought:

1. Civil Engineering is so hackneyed it has become battered and bruised.

2. ME best suits big boys who can carry a car’s V8 engine, and probably the car, too.

3. I don’t want to be electrocuted. Plus, I find circuits too much of a headache.

4. B.S. Bio is so expensive, I pass out at the thought of paying PhP10,000 for a dive. (And in this category, I would never dare to mention B.S. Nursing. Oh, I just did.)

5. B.S. Chem is too feminine, and the Physics area is gloomy and exudes an air of diffidence that I vowed never to place myself near it.

6. All CASS subjects can be self-taught.

And probably, the one with most sense, and not based purely on whims of a 20 year old who thinks he’s still a child,

7. I think ChE would give me more job opportunities, will make me a dignified and exemplary citizen of the world (in short, rich) and will give me an air of immense intelligence such that when I walk by (put wind effect here), you could hear me saying “Get out of my way”, without opening my mouth, and then everybody says “Whoah!”

Basically, that’s it. I wanted to lift my family’s poverty and put some bills on the coffers. The closest solution that I could think of is to choose a college degree that would best serve my purpose, without squeezing me dry of finances, even if it turns my brain into a dried coral. You see, I am not really good in Math of which my course is teeming. In high school, my idea of the inverse of functions is snoitcnuf. But I toiled, and managed not without adventure, to reach 5^th year without losing the main momentum (euphemism for a GPA which is nice to look at and makes you confident to leave your COR open for anyone to gawk.) It is my family’s future, not just mine, which is at stake. I do believe now, quite seriously, that they are the reason why I took up Chemical engineering.

[06.22.10]