I went back to DLSU on an official business trip: To submit payment and finalize confirmation that my office is joining their Job Expo... The same Job Expo that gave me my first job in Chinabank. The last time I was in a DLSU Job Expo was when I was one of the students collecting application forms and hoping for a free pen or candy from the companies (anyone remember accenture and their cute pens? haha). Now, we're the ones giving out application forms -- I'm not sure of the freebies though!
So then from the moment I got past the guard in South gate, it was a trip down memory lane for me... Luckily I blended with the students since I was wearing the standard school outfit of jeans, baby tee and flip flops. I made a quick stop at the Alumni Office to have my DLSAA card renewed. I relished waiting in line at the accounting department when I paid the Job Expo slot and the DLSAA card renewal fee. I had to shuttle back and forth between the buildings to submit receipts for the Job Expo and stuff. Then I became aware of the one thing that was distinctly different from the time I was there -- it was looming over me, and I was properly impressed by its presence...
The Yuchengco Building.
I vaguely remember it being basically complete while I was doing my undergrad thesis. But it just dawned into me I have never been inside it.
Past it, I managed to take a shady picture of the SJ walk... one of the spots where I used to just sit with my friends and people-watch...
It was the same... after all this years, the feeling was still the same... I couldn't believe I was there, and I could have been easily one of the students on their first week back in school... Looking for textbooks and writing notes in their new filler notebooks (for those who actually make notes, like me).
I don't know if other people could relate, and I'm fairly sure it's normal to have a torrent of emotions flooding through me at that time.. It was surreal, because I started to take in the familiar surroundings, I started to feel like one of them again, one of the students who had to face textbooks and quizzes and machine projects... I clearly remembered me and my friends walking through the very halls I was walking on, going to get something to eat in breaks between classes. I haven't been able to go to our building itself since it was far and I had limited time, but I bet it would all the more be surreal.
In a burst of Animo spirit, I bought a little something I've been meaning to buy: a DLSU jacket. I got the one from the Marketing department, a track jacket with modern DLSU initials...
Oh, and catch the renewed DLSAA ID. Hah. I could now go anywhere I wanted to, on campus.
So there. I may have left school to conquer (conquer? more like creep into) the corporate world. But I realized, all the more at that time, that unless the experiences were traumatic, you never really leave your college life behind...
Somehow, it will still be there, ready to be re-lived and resurrected even with a simple sniff of old college campus air....
Animo La Salle!!!
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