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.

Forgive me for not being able to talk or think about anything except grad school for now; I’m still over the moon about the news regarding the scholarship. For the longest time, I didn’t allow myself to feel excited about Columbia because I didn’t know how I was going to manage to pay for it—I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high, although I did what I could. I’ll eventually find my way back to earth, but please indulge me for now because I’m really so excited!

Taken during early spring last year. For some reason, I'm looking forward to being a student again.

Up until recently, I wasn't sure if I was going to walk through that lane to head to school *tears*

So that’s all for today. I just wanted to share some photos I took last year, when I visited the campus. I remember sitting on the steps of the library, watching the students go by, and thinking that I really wanted to study at the J-School. And for the first time, that dream is actually within striking distance.

Of course, I have better reasons for wanting to go to Columbia other than imbibing the stereotypical Ivy League student life, and I know that life will be far from easy when I’m there, but nonetheless, it feels really, really good to be able to be more happy than anxious about this for once.

Back when we were kids, a pretty popular commercial about “marshmallow kids” was often on TV. Children were given one marshmallow each; the premise was that they could eat the mallows right away, or have another one if they opted to wait. I was a little too old to have the marshmallow test done on me by then, but my aunt apparently did it on my sister Nikka, and she decided to wait a little longer for one more, passing the test with flying colors.

Unlike my sister, who was the type who studied on a Friday night, I’d never been much of a marshmallow kid. Back in grade school and for most of high school, my homework was done erratically, depending on the subject (I hated math, loved English, was on the fence about science because I was allergic to anything that involved computations but liked reading about how things work). Things changed in my freshman year at college, when I decided to take some responsibility for my life. I’m still nowhere near being totally in charge of things, but somewhere along the way, I grew up.

The past year was like an extended marshmallow test, except that I didn’t know if I was going to have one, two, or none at all at the end of the period. I was accepted to Columbia March last year, only to find out that there was no way I was going to be able to pay for the staggering cost of the tuition. I opted to defer for a year to buy time to look for scholarships (and beef up my credentials so I could actually deserve them). It was a crazy, crazy year, loaded with drama, self-doubt, and plenty of prayers.

A few days ago, I got an email from the school, telling me that I was given a substantial scholarship. I was in the pre-departure area of NAIA, waiting to board, when I got the news. Upon reading it, I broke down and started sobbing. I couldn’t believe the news! In fact, I was so paranoid, I emailed them right away to thank them, but also to confirm that the figure they listed used a comma and not a decimal. Today, I got their confirmation—and along with it, blessed relief.

The situation got me thinking: what if I had gotten the scholarship from the start? Would I appreciate it just as much, or would I have felt entitled to it in the first place? Would I have put in as much thought and planning into the process? Would I have wanted it as much as I do now? Probably not. Like I said, I was never a marshmallow kid. But circumstances forced me to be a marshmallow grownup, and I’m glad that I had to learn to be one. The payoff feels infinitely more rewarding.

I sympathize with the families of the three Filipino drug couriers executed in China, but Conrado de Quiros hit the nail on the head when he protested against their martyrdom by media. The Filipinos, labor and recruitment groups claimed, weren’t even OFWs: they smuggled drugs to other countries under tourist visas. “Drug mules make as much as half a million pesos per delivery. But such has been their transformation into victims that the government has been forced to commit to shoulder the education of the children they left behind,” de Quiros wrote. “What about the millions of honest souls who are toiling abroad who have been victims of disasters, wars and abuse? Why should government prioritize the needs of those who broke the law and not those who only break their backs for a living?”

For more than a year, the issue of money had been hanging over my head, primarily because I don’t believe that grad school is something my parents should pay for when they’re almost done financing the education of all their children—although now, my sister decided to go to med school next sem. But that’s her. It’s April, and I still don’t know how exactly I’m going to pay for the multimillion peso tuition; I’ll find out in a week or so if I’m getting more financial aid from Columbia. For a whole year, whenever people talked about money or expensive items, I automatically translated them into to grad school funds (“I just bought a condo in Salcedo Village” = “Holy cow, that can support several years of living in New York;” “I’m planning to buy a Birkin” = “Geez, woman. That’ll fund my tuition and more.”) I even bet on the lottery. Clearly, that didn’t work out.

My point is, the drug couriers weren’t on the brink of ruin and desperation. Television footage showed that their houses were decent, and that in some cases, their children had already grown up and left the coop. And even if they were on the brink of ruin and desperation, why take the easy way out and in the process, help ruin other peoples’ lives with illegal drugs? I’ve seen people cheerfully make the most of what they have, opting to make an honest living instead of supplying contraband goods. Better to sell bottled water on the street than illegal drugs.

Of course, J and I aren’t exactly mired in poverty, but I’d like to make a small example. For months, I’d been watching him struggle to pay off a credit card bill for a MacBook that was stolen from his house a mere two months after he got it. He finally just started working for PAL after a year of waiting for a slot, but before that, he accepted freelance writing jobs, primarily to pay for the stolen laptop. That’s what infuriates me the most: when criminals use their poverty as an excuse for the atrocities they commit, but never caring about the people they leave to suffer in the wake of the destruction they inflict.

While going over the op-ed pages in today’s Inquirer, something about the Youngblood essay caught my eye. The writer’s one-line bio read, “Carissa Duenas, 29, is an investment analyst considering entry to the Columbia School of Journalism. She works in downtown Toronto.”

Interested, I read what she had to say (I usually just gloss over Youngblood because the writers usually talk about the same things). In the essay “To Be A Dancing Star,” the writer wrote about her application to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, but as someone who worked mainly in finance and technology, she was afraid that her work experience wouldn’t be considered relevant. “Why should [publishing's] gates be opened to this outsider?” she wondered.

She went on to answer her own question: “The truth is, it is an honest response to a life crisis, the quarter-life crisis. And I am in the midst of it.”

I applied to Columbia as a result of my own quarter-life crisis (and created this blog, too). My application was driven primarily because I didn’t know how and where to go next. Having started working in publishing at 19, I was on the brink of a burnout, and needed a solid direction. I submitted my application on the day of the deadline, and three months later, I miraculously got an acceptance letter.

Most of my friends (who know the whole story and are tired of hearing me overanalyze it to death) know the story between now and then: I deferred enrollment for a year to think things over and to find a way to raise the funds for graduate school. So here I am, still waiting for word on scholarships and grants, steeling myself to go to New York this year, regardless of what happens. Part of me is scared because I’m deathly afraid of loans, and don’t want to go into debt for a good part of my adult life (especially not after being so careful with my savings!), but I just know that if I don’t go to Columbia, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering about what-ifs.

It’s good to hear about stories like Carissa’s, which make me realize how darn blessed I am to have that spot in the first place. Reading her reasons for wanting to go into publishing remind me of my old students, bright-eyed high school kids who said they wanted to write just because they wanted to inspire. I used to say the same things, but the chip on my shoulder grew into a heavy block that made me feel like Altas himself. I’d like to get rid of that, and simply learn to tell good stories again.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to Paolo, another writer who applied to Columbia. “If I ever get accepted, I’m going to spend the next few months not using my brain,” he half-jokingly told me. “I’m going to celebrate and party until I start school.”

In retrospect, I should’ve probably spent more time celebrating instead of worrying, but I can’t help it. Carissa quoted Friedrich Nietzsche, who said, “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”

It’s all chaos inside of me now.

This photo was taken more than a year ago, at my pole dancing class recital at the Rockwell Tent. It was the only time I did pole dancing in public; had you told me two years ago that I was going to slip into gold hot pants and strap a toy gun to my thigh and act like a Bond Girl, I would’ve laughed you out of the room. My friends once called me Prudence McPrude, but I’ve outgrown that girl.

At the same time, I don’t know exactly how different I am now from that gold-clad girl with big, wavy hair and an air of mystery around her. As I write this, I’m sitting at my desk, a tumbler of tea beside me. I’m waiting for the clock to hit five so I can go to the gym, sneak in a quick workout and head back to work again. It’s going to be another long night of copyediting and checking pages in a cold office, so I decided to be practical and wear jeans, a white shirt, and a gray cardigan. I used to never wear jeans, but I wear them *gasp* once a week now. (But that’s all I’ll allow myself).

I’m a lot more practical than I was say, three years ago. Most of my clothes are stylishly neutral (or so the fashion pages say), although I still wear a lot of cotton candy pink. Yesterday, my pole dancing instructor called me up to demand to know the reason why I hadn’t been showing up for months. I tell people who want to know why I stopped that the studio is far, that the classes end too late, and that I’ve been putting in a lot of late hours at work, but aside from that, it’s because I don’t know if being associated with pole dancing is a good thing for me.

Of course it isn’t a problem now, but how about when I go to graduate school? How do I explain that pole dancing is just a form of exercise to people who don’t know me at all, and just see me as a girl from an Asian country? Will the people at Columbia still take me seriously? What if it counts against me in a future job, in a city that’s not as small and familiar as Manila? In a world that sees Filipinos as domestic helpers, exotic dancers and contract workers, it’s hard to be yourself sometimes.

All these practical thoughts suddenly evaporate when I wistfully listen to my friends talk about the new tricks they learned in dance class. Then I think back to that time when I gleefully swung around a pole, applauded by friends and strangers, confident about myself and the world.

It was a topic I didn’t want to bring up myself, but I wanted to discuss it. After all, my parents already knew that I was somehow—miraculously, I think—accepted to Columbia University’s grad school for the Fall 2010 term, but for some reason, they weren’t talking about it when they got back from Hong Kong earlier this evening. At all.

Dinner was filled with small talk, as I agonized every other topic that was not related to what I wanted to say.

“What can be done in Singapore?” my dad asked over bites of dimsum.

“Erm… Night Safari?” I suggested.

“Yes,” he said thoughtfully, nodding to himself. “I’ll look it up later.”

It was maddening. No one, not one, seemed to care about my making it to grad school when I thought it was the biggest deal in the world, primarily because I never even expected to pass at all. Every time someone asked about the colleges I applied to, I always started with a disclaimer: “Hey, I just applied to Columbia just so I could say I tried. I know it’s a really long shot, and I’m not expecting anything, but there you go; it’s too much of me, right?” I would say in a nervous, rushed whisper.

Finally, 40 minutes into dinner, I gave up waiting for someone to say something. I was wondering if the grad school acceptance was actually an overblown event in my mind, and not really something to run, jump, sing and dance about. There was only one way to make sure.

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