It’s time to wake up, Juan!

Our country has already had enough lawyers, accountants and nurses. Many nurses have been stagnant after acquiring a degree because of insufficient jobs for them which leads them to applying to jobs that do not utilize their skills and knowledge. Each year, more or less than 5,000 take the bar exams, which is unsurprising in a nation where lawyers are treated as rock stars. In my high school batch, many took Accounting as their undergraduate course, but few opted to choose the sciences despite being in a science high school. The fact is there are too many of these professions in our country but only few are encouraged and take the path to be scientists.

When I was in kindergarten my dream was to become an astronaut. I was fascinated to their weird-looking suit and the night sky. As I advanced to grade school it wasn’t Science but English that became my favorite subject. Come high school I hated the sciences. I remember falling asleep in my Biology class because of my old, monotone voiced professor; I despised the Chemistry class because I cannot perfect the balancing of equations. The only momentous moment I got was making an impressive blueprint of the General Theory of Relativity because I got caught by my professor cutting class. Even Technical Research class which is essential for investigatory projects was never met with gusto; I passed the subject solely with the help of my group mates. When asked to choose from Journalism, Statistics and Nat Sci as an elective for my junior and senior year I chose Journalism and got the Associate Editor post in our school paper. Maybe I was just busy with the school paper or maybe I was just stubborn enough to be different from most of my batch mates.

To cut the long story short I am now in the Humanities, far from being too preoccupied on seeking solutions to a scientific problem and come up with a novel conclusion that could land me to the elite Nobel Prize winners for science someday.

However, my passion for science was rekindled when I set foot in UP. For my math, science and technology course I took Engineering Sciences 10, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology 1 and Physics 10. These courses focused on the applications of science which was lacking on my theory based high school classes. Apart from the traditional theories taught in Physics, I learned new and interesting topics such as Complexity Science (as if Science itself isn’t complex) which can be summarized by “the whole is not a simple sum of its parts”. Now, it is also an ease for me to differentiate Special from General Theory of Relativity. How amazing it is to know that we are only separated on a maximum of six degrees and that a scientist in UP is making teleportation possible excited me even more. I can only imagine what science can bring in the future.

It’s time for Filipinos to cultivate research culture and scientific mindset. Developed countries like Germany and Japan rely greatly on science and technology to maintain their economic status. It is high time that the government put larger funds on research and education in the Philippines. More research equates more contributions in the field of science and technology which also equates to more investors investing in our country. And if money doesn’t matter at all what pride of Filipinos being in the ranks of Newton and Einstein in the field of science can bring. The mere contribution of knowledge of a Filipino to the world should not be underestimated (or in our case, underfunded), for this we could spark relevance in this vast, wide and expanding universe.