The past three days have been a rush, not just because of the amount of schoolwork (the semester’s coming to an end, finally!) but because a video I made over a month ago for a project somehow went viral. It went on New York magazine, the Gothamist (twice, even), Buzzfeed, and the front page of AOL, among others. I’m amazed by how much buzz it got; New York Post did a follow-up article on Tracks, the 25-year-old candy seller who was the subject of the video, and did a short interview with me in the video that accompanied their article.

It’s interesting to be on the other side of the fence in terms of press coverage; I’ve seen bad examples of aggregation on sites that failed to credit me for the video and simply put screen shots, such as The Daily Mail. But then again, I’m not surprised. I also saw how the press tends to milk the most they could out of a story like that. I also encountered journalists who put extreme pressure on me to give them the number of my source so they could meet a deadline, and got very sulky when I couldn’t respond right away or gave it to their competitors first. I couldn’t exactly explain to an impatient journalist that no, I couldn’t get out of my media law class to talk. I hope to not repeat their mistakes when I’m working again.

At the same time, I couldn’t help but hope that my video could help me score a good internship (or job, why not) after grad school. I’m really excited to dive into more multimedia storytelling next semester; that video I did with Tracks was actually the first one I produced on my own, so I got very, very lucky. Being in the J-School is such a rich learning experience, I’m almost afraid for it to end.

The last time I found myself crying inside a bus in the line of work was on a rainy night in the summer of 2004, when I was working as an intern for Seventeen magazine. I wasn’t doing it for school (I just wanted work experience), but I was coming home late every night, and struggling to maintain an honors standing in school. That summer was also the time I learned how to commute on my own, and having been brought up in a private subdivision and driven to school every day, the experience proved to be a huge culture shock that overwhelmed me at times.

Looking back, those were some of the most character-building times of my life, and proved to be more useful for my career than my college degree in journalism probably did (don’t get me wrong; I learned a lot from school, but the years I spent as an informal intern did a lot more in introducing me to the industry). I pulled out clothes from stores and styled shoots, checked pages, went to events, met people, and most importantly, got articles published on a regular basis. I wrote my first magazine cover story that year. Sure, I wasn’t getting paid for most of my first year in the industry, but I skipped the entry-level positions when I graduated from school and worked for a magazine back home. I enjoyed it, but after a few years, restlessness and disillusionment with fashion magazines set in, and I hied off to grad school.

This was me at 19. I did a fashion ed for YStyle which featured me as a journalism student from UP, back in ye olden days when I thought I wanted to model. I feel old now.

Now, I’m 27 years old and not as energetic as I was when I started working at 19, but certainly in the same position as I was in on that rainy evening seven years ago. I had spent several hours running around in the Bronx, was late for a meeting, and frustrated by my inability to produce stories for my reporting and writing class for the J-School. Then I realized that I had missed my stop, and the express bus was coasting down a dark highway. So right there, in the middle of a bus bathed in fluorescent light, I burst into tears.

I was still puffy-eyed when I arrived at the meeting, but the attendees graciously ignored my “allergies” while I took notes. In the middle of the discussion, my reporting and writing class professor emailed me her midterm evaluation, which turned out to be a lot better than I hoped. She called me out on spending too much time on certain stories and getting discouraged when they didn’t pan out (guilty as charged), and that I needed to discipline myself in writing news stories, but tucked in between the stern lectures were glimmers of praise and hope. At the end of the 700-word evaluation, she said: “Bianca has all the raw talent, and the desire to do this well.”

At that point, my pretend allergies were at a fever pitch, and I batted my eyes repeatedly to prevent the tears from falling and embarrassing me further. Never mind that at 27, with a few years of editorial work under my belt, I’m still considered a “raw talent” in this part of the world. That professor’s assessment of my skills was honest, a little brutal, encouraging, and at the end of the day, hopeful. She was rooting for me, and I never needed someone to believe in me so badly.

Absorbed in my thoughts on the train ride back home, I initially didn’t pay attention to the subway musician strumming on a guitar and singing in Spanish. It took a minute or two for me to realize he was a possible source for a story I wanted to work on; had I seen him three hours earlier, while I was drowning in self-pity, I might not have noticed him at all. But bolstered by hope, I went up to him, smiled, and introduced myself as a journalist.

I’ve been in NYC for almost three months now, and the summer-green leaves are just starting to turn yellow around the edges. The city feels like home now, but I still find myself staring at people and places with wide-eyed wonder. I haven’t been taking the city (or even the school, for that matter) by storm, so I’m trying to figure out what I can do to change that. It’s a Sunday night, but I’ve been in the school for the past eight hours, writing articles and editing videos.

Last week, I turned 27. I didn’t celebrate with a bang; I visited the MoMa and had some birthday cake and Korean chicken. The lack of fanfare (didn’t even get to talk to James, he was off on a flight) made me realize just how much I’ve grown up, maybe in ways I don’t always welcome. Being in the J-School has been nothing but an extremely humbling experience so far, with my years of work experience proving to be more of a liability than an asset in a city full of young, hungry upstarts. Many of the people in school are younger than 25, unsure of themselves, dipping their toes in professional journalism for the first time in their lives. The late Steve Jobs said that the key to success was to stay hungry, and to stay foolish. I’ve been a little too cautious and wary, and that’s something I’ll need to shed.

For some reason, luck hasn’t been on my side lately. I’ve been heading to my beat, looking for stories, with little to show for it so far. Yesterday, a long visit to the Bronx (one that involved going from house to house, talking to locals) got me one precious bit of wisdom that I’m not quite sure what to do with: prostitutes and raccoons are some of the biggest problems in Fordham. Some batch mates have been covering the Occupy Wall Street protests and gaining hundreds of followers in the process; I’ve gained some too, but I’ve also lost a lot for tweeting stuff irrelevant to Philippine followers. I’m caught between two places, and belong to neither.

I feel a little cheated that I’m limited to a certain neighborhood in the Bronx. I know, I know—I can always head out and do my own coverage, even if it weren’t for class. And I’ve tried my best; when Steve Jobs died, I went to the Apple flagship store to take photos and videos.  But then I get home and look at the stack of work I still have to do for other classes, and the meager handful of Bronx-related news I’ve covered so far, and die a little every day.

I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t discovered the kind of journalist that I want to be just yet. When I encounter fellow students in the corridors, I wonder if they’ve got it all figured out. At 21, I thought I knew who I was, and who I wanted to be. At 27, I’m a lot less self-assured, but I’ve also learned to be patient, especially in the last couple of years. Three months is a huge chunk of a 10-month grad school program, but again, it’s also just three months. I know that somewhere in there, I have a lot more to give than what I’ve shown so far, and I’m not going to let that remain buried deep.

And have just been preoccupied with grad school, so the blog that’s getting updated is this one. Still, I want to tell stories of my life, not just news in New York City, so I’ll be posting once a week from now on.

It hasn’t even been a month, and the ugly pangs of distance are starting to needle their way into my relationship with J. The thing with long distance relationships is that you get to go over only the major, necessary details when you tell someone about your day—that is, if you get to talk at all. I’m grateful for the invention of Skype and the Blackberry, but even those aren’t of much help when what you want to share is all mundane.

So far, my life here is on the dorky side. I’d never been much of a clubber and I can actually be quite shy sometimes; add the fact that I’m basically supporting myself for my living expenses, and you’ll understand why I can’t hit the bars as much as many of my classmates do. I felt really lame when J started telling me about his day while he was nursing a hangover. Everyone seemed to want a piece of him last night; I got a text message from him at 4.30am telling me that he was just on the way home. I spent half the day online, waiting for him to call, and when that failed, I headed out to Marshall’s and Staples. The trains took ages to arrive. On the way home, I dropped by the grocery and got a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s because it was the last day they were going to be on sale.

Today, I barely recognized myself. If you had read that last paragraph without having an idea of who I am, or what I do, or what I look like, your mental image of me must be this: a fat, lonely girl waiting by the phone (or laptop), gorging on ice cream and aimlessly flipping through TV channels, going to bargain emporiums and office supply stores.

The thing is, I live in New York. I go to grad school in one of the best universities in the world. I hop from dress size 2-4, depending on the brand. I have fantastic family and friends who love me. My boyfriend loves me.

That’s what I’d like to think.

Being in a long distance relationship can shake your core and make you doubt a lot of things you value and believe in, because you’re no longer physically—and sometimes, emotionally—close to the person who is supposed to be nestled in the center of your being.

A shot of our group at the international student orientation scavenger hunt by the Alma Mater. Racing around the Columbia campus and its surrounding area was exhilarating—like seeing the sky after a long period spent in captivity. My classmates intimidated and impressed me, and I’d like to be able to prove that I belong in their group. Now, if only I can get started on this paper due on Monday..

I’ve been in New York for just over a week, and I’m already starting to count pennies. The city bleeds you of cash like few other cities can; it’s difficult enough as a tourist, more so when you actually live in it. “The rent is too damn high,” complained Jimmy McMillan of The Rent Is Too Damn High party. I can’t complain too much, because I live in an apartment in Harlem where the rent is reasonable by Manhattan standards. But the other things—groceries, utilities, transportation, other little necessities I never thought of—do tend to run up. Of course I can live comfortably for as long as I have to stay here, but I’d gotten used to having a respectable amount in the bank. Looks like that may change for now.

While I was at the subway this afternoon, loaded with bags after running up another $50 tab at Trader Joe’s, I started to wonder if I really knew what I was getting myself into. Of course I had no idea what it would all entail when I first applied to Columbia; I just knew I wanted to go to the J-School. I went through a period questioning that as well, and here I am on the eve of my first day at school, questioning my intentions once more.

I’m 26; at my age, some friends are settling down, getting married and gearing up to have kids. I’m living in a rented apartment for the first time in my adult life, sleeping on a mattress set on the floor, sharing a common space with strangers (who are thankfully very nice), shopping for secondhand furniture. Actually paying rent on my own. It’s a strange new life, one that involves self-assembled furniture and doing the dishes as often as I pick up something to eat, and I’m entering it with anxiety as well as wide-eyed wonder.

For the past couple of months, I’d been filling out forms, doing research, and basically spending a small fortune on couriers for various visas. The first one is a Schengen visa for a trip I’m taking to Bonn/Cologne, Germany for a media forum this June. The other is for my U.S. student visa, which required a lot of back-and-forth paperwork with Columbia before I could even schedule an appointment.

It’s happening all too quickly; I’m on my last few days of work with Metro, and I leave for the U.S. in a month and a half. The checklist of things to bring is getting longer, just as the time spent here with family and friends is quickly ebbing away. There’s barely enough time to spend with J, who’ll be leaving for Bangkok before I get back to Manila from Bonn; he’ll be returning a day or two ahead of my departure for New York. Whenever people find out he’s a pilot, they’re dismissive about the distance, saying that he can easily fly to visit me. Not really, because PAL doesn’t fly to the East Coast in the first place.

I’m excited and apprehensive, because for the first time in what feels like forever, I feel like I have direction again. I still don’t know where I’m headed for the next few years, but this feels like a leap instead of the baby steps I’d been making for the past couple of years.