The High-Grade-Hungry Monster Now Just Wants Coffee
A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.
Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups-porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite-telling them to help themselves to the coffee.
When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.
Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups. And then you began eyeing each other’s cups.
Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live.
Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup,
we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us.”
God brews the coffee, not the cups. Enjoy your coffee!
“The happiest people don’t have the best of everything.
They just make the best of everything.”
Live simply.
Love generously.
Care deeply.
Speak kindly.
Leave the rest to God.
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I read the above story in one of my friend’s comments box while browsing her page. And it seemed to have given me the answer to all my questions about my life right now.
For several years now, I have been depressed about a lot of things going on in my life. But what makes me very sad of all those is my academic standing. OK, you can tell me I’m a geek, a total nerd. It’s not that I failed in any of my subjects. *knocks on wood* I’m pretty much doing OK. It’s just that for quite some time now, I haven’t been excelling as I did earlier (translation: getting high grades and general weighted average). And that’s been making me VERY miserable for almost TWO years now. I lost self-confidence. I (now) think of myself as mediocre, even stupid. I have become so negative about everything. 
People have been telling me that I shouldn’t focus on the grades, that I should concentrate more on what I learn in class. I keep telling myself that but somehow that desire to earn high grades keeps seeping in to my veins. It’s almost like an obsession, an addiction that I can’t fight (if there’s a rehab for such kind of addiction, I would gladly submit myself to it). Why am I like this? How did I turn into this high-grade-hungry monster?
I guess it all began when I started going to school. I’ve been brought up to be quite competitive academically. I was made to feel that my worth, my quality as a person, my intellectual capability and the things I can do are equal to getting high grades, being in the top ten list for the entire batch and graduating with honors. Sometimes, it wasn’t even enough that I make it to the honor list–I had to be the best! In my younger years, I was made to feel that people would only love and appreciate me if I get high grades. Sadly, those erroneous beliefs have been stuck in my head too hard that it’s now as hard to shake them off.
But now that I am slowly learning to just see and look at the essential things in life, I hope and pray that I get to finally free myself from this disease. It keeps me from being happy. It keeps me from enjoying and appreciating the real things that matter in life. It’s an additional source of stress (Man, I am already stressed out from the demands of school! I can only take so much!) thus endangering my health (I’ve been hospitalized twice this year). It keeps me from bringing out the best in me. (Yes, it may sound contradictory, but it is not…because the more I try to push myself so hard to excel and be the best, the more I falter miserably.) Finally, it makes me cranky, not-in-the-mood, irritated and masungit all the time! (My high blood pressure shots up for the smallest and most trivial of reasons!) I feel sorry for my victims when I am in my masungit-for-no-apparent-reason mode. Hehe.
This is not the first time that I have been miserable because of grades (what a LOSER, noh?). There was one point in my school life when I didn’t do so well. I felt the same way as I do now–very depressed. Zero-level self-confidence. Lost. I would write down notes on some pieces of paper and declare, “I AM THE DUMBEST OF ALL THE DUMBEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.” When I was able to “recover” (I make it sound like getting passing/average grades is a malady), I obsessively made it my mission to get just one kind of grade–HIGH GRADES.
But I am older now and I should be wiser. I should know better. I should stop being so SHALLOW. I should focus on what matters more in life. I should start LIVING MY LIFE, ENJOY IT, APPRECIATE THE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE THAT SPELL TRUE HAPPINESS while I am still young and able-bodied and stop consciously aiming for high grades! Sure, good grades can be your pass to a lot of job opportunities but what meaning do they hold when, in pursuing them, they keep you from living life itself?! And it’s not the only way to get a great job. In fact, I know an eminent legal figure who didn’t do so well in law school and wasn’t a bar topnotcher (Justice Peralta–he told us about it himself), but is now occupying one of the highest positions in the Philippine judiciary–Presiding Justice of the Sandiganbayan! On the other hand, I heard of some honor students and bar topnothchers who now have lousy careers. Sorry. So why obsess about high grades when it’s not even a sure way to success? Why let it destroy your health? Why let it add more years and wrinkles on your face? WHY LET IT DEPRIVE YOU OF FINDING TRUE HAPPINESS, OF LIFE ITSELF? God, for some time, I have told myself that I am stupid and dumb for not getting excellent grades. Now I realize that I am so stupid and dumb for even letting it take away my life! I’ve been such a LOSER for so long! Haha! Instead, I should be GRATEFUL to Allah for all His blessings. I should be thankful that I have no failing grade (and I hope and pray I will not have any until I graduate Inshaallah, Ameen). I should be thankful that, despite my personal problems and difficult circumstances (which most law students do not go through), I still have managed to stay in school as a regular student AND juggle heavy school work with my Law Review duties. Not bad, eh? 
I know myself. I know what I can do. I know my capabilities. If there’s anything to be proven, I have proven myself already. I know I am an intelligent young woman. I am blessed. And I know that, with hard work and Allah’s guidance, I WILL BE SUCCESSFUL. I NOW don’t need high grades to tell me that I am smart and to let others know about that. (Who cares what others think, anyway? For as long as I know myself and I know that their opinion about me isn’t true or doesn’t define me, I don’t give a damn.) I don’t need high grades to assure me of my IQ. I don’t need high grades to assure me of how much I know. I don’t need high grades to define the person that I am. I am SMART, PRETTY and TALENTED! (Please forgive me for this narcissistic statement. I just need to convince myself and stay optimistic! Hehe.) I don’t need high grades for anything. It’s just an ornamentation, an accessory that can be dispensed with. It is not and never has been essential to my normal functioning as a human being. It is not and has never been and never will be essential to my existence. I DON’T NEED HIGH GRADES TO LIVE LIFE AND BE HAPPY. I DON’T WANT AND NEED HIGH GRADES. I don’t need high grades to pass the bar exams (because it’s back to zero when I get there, Inshallah). After all, I just want to become a lawyer. I AM NOT IN LAW SCHOOL TO EARN HIGH GRADES. I AM IN LAW SCHOOL BECAUSE I WANT TO BECOME A LAWYER. PERIOD. In the context of the coffee story mentioned above, I am not after getting the best porcelain cups. I JUST WANT MY COFFEE! 
(Hell, I can even drink it without a cup! I can drink directly from the pot if I want to! Haha!)
*Ya Allah, please enlighten me, always, as You have today. Shukran, ya Allah. Ameen.*
Welcome to My F*CKED UP World!
Another f*cked up day in a f*cked up week in a f*cked up month in a f*cked up year in a f*ucked up life in a f*cked up world.
God has forsaken me. I might as well die as life, for me, needs to be renamed–MISERY.
A Tale of the Egomaniacal Monsters in the Torture Chambers of Usterolgolachria
Law school is the ultimate place where a person’s character is truly tested. A person in such place is mentally, physically, emotionally and even spiritually tested, or should I say tortured. To elaborate on the latter statement, to be gifted with extraordinary intelligence is not enough; one must have a healthy body to support one’s sound mind for what use does an Einstein-like intellect have when half of the body is paralyzed? A good friend of mine recently got an anxiety attack for too much worrying about her grade in one of her review subjects. I, on the other hand, fainted twice this year: June 18 and October 22. In both occasions, I was hospitalized for three days. The doctors (I had THREE this time: an internal-med physician, a cardiologist and a neurologist.) diagnosis? Possibly hypothyroidism and arrhythmia (irregular heart beat). And they were unanimous as to the culprit: STRESS. My illness quite affected me, school-wise. Especially my pending works for the law journal. Anyway, that’s a wholly separate story.
Even then, it is still not sufficient to be mentally and physically well; one must be emotionally ready to face the challenges, some of them unwarranted, that come with being in law school. Emotional stability, I think, is one of the most important tools that a person should have to survive this jungle euphemistically called the college of law. Many of those who gave up on their (elusive?) dreams of becoming a lawyer cited grounds as vague as, “I need to find myself” or as obvious us “I can’t take the pressure/stress anymore”. It’s the emotional aspect of oneself that really gets tortured, honest. Everyday, a law student is subjected to great degrees of pressure and stress, which variably stem from the need to finish voluminous readings in just 10 or 8 hours (Huh, eight hours? That’s more than enough!, you exclaim in utter disbelief. Trust me, honey. It’s NEVER ENOUGH!); daily recitation where the professors usually subject you to uncalled-for humiliation, intimidation and “terrorism”; expectations from your family, relatives and friends; class competition and at times, self-imposed competition with yourself. The latter form of competition is the more dangerous type, especially if one is in a place where one has practically no control over how he performs in his subjects.
You see, law professors are, in themselves, characters. They are proud airheads who think they have attained the status of a god just because they have before their names the appellation “Atty.” or titles such as “Associate Solicitor General”, “Prosecutor” “Judge” and “Justice”. And because of this exaggerated self-adulation and self-reverence, they do not want their students to be at par with them. So what do they do? They give barely passing marks, even if the students clearly deserve a grade of 90%. Or if they are the type who like to give low grades with ostensible justification, they assign 40 cases per meeting and give very difficult questions in the exams (as if the study of law is not already complicated). This is one of the things I totally hate about law school. The system or the tradition has tolerated these eulogy-hungry professors to let their egos escape from their heads and haughtily run around to the detriment on the quality education of the students. This must be changed. Law schools must cease to be a playground for this kind of professors who justify their presence therein to ostensibly “teach” when in truth and in fact, they are there to play as the great Leviathan. Given this kind of environment, sometimes, one cannot always expect himself to do as excellent as he expects himself to (guilty as charged). But not all of them are like that. They just irritate you in some other way.
Case in point: Just a few hours ago, I had my class in a certain commercial law subject. Lucky me, I got called on to recite. We were discussing about this law journal article, analyzing the applicability of traditional theories on physical property to intellectual property. The professor asked us questions about the Lockean theory on property as discussed in the article.
“What are the two interpretations on the Lockean theory?” he asked me.
“The normative and instrumental interpretations, Sir.”
“And what are these?”
“Under the instrumental interpretation, it is posited that reward must be given in order to obtain labor, while under the normative interpretation, it is posited that labor should be rewarded.” (see http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/tfisher/music/Hughes1988.html)
He made me repeat my answer a number of times until he said, “You interchanged the two.”
WTF? I glanced down at my notes. What I said is just a replica of what is written in the article. Confused, I just listened to what he had to say. And what came out of his mouth afterwards absolutely made me so…ANGRY—HE JUST REPEATED WHAT I SAID!!!
The next question he asked me was whether or not idea-making is considered labor (in relation to the connection between the concepts of property and labor under the Lockean theory, i.e., that it is the labor we exert upon a property that justifies our ownership or legal title over the same).
“Yes, idea-making does involve labor.”
“Why?”
“Because before one can come up with an idea, one must conduct labor—gather information or do extensive research.” (ibid.)
He asked another student to answer, indicating that I was wrong. The discussion as to whether or not idea-making is considered labor dragged on until he elaborated them through situational examples, where the fair inference that can be drawn therefrom is that idea-making is labor because it is an unpleasant activity under the “Avoidance View of Labor Theory”. (ibid.)
Is that it? That’s just it? His question wasn’t even worded this way, “Under the Avoidance View of Labor Theory, is idea-making considered as labor?” He asked it “in general”. WHATEVER.
I don’t mean to sound like I have a better understanding of what were discussed in the article in relation to that matter but I think it takes total shallowness to conclude that idea-making is considered labor just because it is unpleasant. In the first place, the character of unpleasantness does not define or provide the essence of the concept “labor”. It is merely descriptive of the concept. If you would be asked to define labor, do you say “labor is unpleasant”? It is therefore quite logically off to say that idea-making is considered labor just because it shares the same character of unpleasantness with labor. It is a flawed conclusion, to my (cluttered) mind. To illustrate it through analogy, it is similar to saying, “Mary Anne is beautiful. Jennifer is beautiful. Therefore, Jennifer is Mary Anne.”
Secondly, not all idea-making processes are “unpleasant”. Fashion designers, for example, not only come up with new ideas of style because they have to so as to earn them a living; they do because they love coming up with new idea-designs that they can apply on their latest collections. They love playing with their creativity—and creativity does involve cognitive processes. It is this love for, yes, designing (that is, coming up with new ideas) that make them fashion designers. They do it because for the love of it. Any pecuniary benefit only comes in secondary. At least as a rule.
I wish I have the freedom, as a student, to raise these points to the professor. Unfortunately, the law school system in this jurisdiction does not recognize such freedom. You are not in Harvard Law where the students are free to challenge and question their professors, I remind myself. So I guess I have to wait until I become a lawyer to argue with these egomaniacal monsters.
P.S. I know, the title sounds retard-insane. I’m just trying to make it sound LOTR-ish or Chronicles-of-Narnia-ish. I originally wanted to entitle this “I absoFUCKINGlutely detest you, Sire” but I reckoned I might get into trouble.
Hopes and Prayers
I hope and pray that Allah (SWT) will listen to me. I hope and pray that He bring me peace of mind. I hope and pray that He give me what is best for me and not necessarily what I covet if the latter will not do me good. I entrust everything to Him. Ya Allah, please guide me, always. Ameen.
