The campus was supposedly named Diliman after the thick forest that was once there. By the 1950s, however, the campus was practically treeless, with tall cogon grass being the only vegetation. The administration drew up a greening program, and on Arbor Day 1953, my classmates and I planted the saplings that are now the overhanging acacias that shade the campus center. I myself planted two of those in front of the Vargas Museum.

Economics professor Dr. Castro, also business manager of the Philippine Collegian, got me my first-ever paying job (₱30/month) as assistant business manager. My duty, it turned out, was to see to it that everyone got paid. I had to trudge all the way to the Administration Building and bring papers from desk to desk. I never even saw the staff room, but I got 10,000 steps once a week for sure (no ikot rides yet).

The campus parish priest was the charismatic Fr. John P. Delaney, S.J. He built the University of the Philippines (UP) Catholic Chapel and was adviser of the UP Student Catholic Action (UPSCA). Campus politics were superheated, with UPSCA and fraternities vying for control of the student, senior, and junior councils. There was plenty of rumor mongering and fake news. I won as a senior council UPSCA candidate. On the weekend before council organizational meetings, UPSCA winners were sequestered in the home of House of Representatives Speaker Cornelio Villareal, father of an UPSCA winner, lest anyone be kidnapped and prevented from voting for council officers.

I saw my first opera, “La Traviata,” one morning at the UP Theater, then in a large hangar-like Quonset hut where the short wing of the Engineering Building now is. The UP Dramatic Club presented plays at the LA Theater, and I watched some, including Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

Graduation was in June 1957, held behind the Administration Building. There was more pageantry then, with the Cadena de Amor, where graduating women ceremoniously handed over to incoming seniors, a long chain of greenery decorated with pink and white cadena de amor flowers. It’s been discontinued, but I suppose today’s Oblation Run more than makes up for the loss.

So on graduation day, 1957, I got my BSBA diploma. The faculty was less generous in those days, and we only had one summa cum laude, about a dozen magna cum laudes (ahem, including me), and not more than 30 cum laudes, not the 241 summa cum laudes, 1,143 magna cum laudes, and 985 cum laudes of 2024.

I applied for a job at Procter and Gamble, then the employer of choice. I passed all the preliminaries and was all set to audit salesmen’s reports in Mindanao when I was told that my lungs were below par, sorry. It’s been seven decades since, and I’m still breathing reasonably well. I wonder how life might have been had I begun my working life checking expense accounts. Curious how physical exams bookended my undergraduate years.

As it was, my first job was UP Assistant Instructor ad interim at the College of Business Administration, with the princely salary of ₱245/month.

Classes were to start in June, and I decided to spend my jobless two months taking a couple of courses in the UP summer extension program in Baguio. One of my professors was the Pines Hotel manager, and our classes were at the hotel terrace, a nice change from Patria Inn on Session Road, where I stayed. We were about two dozen lodgers, each assigned a cot in one large room. Among my dorm mates was the anti-establishment Jose Ma. Sison, who in time headed the Philippine Communist Party, and Oliver Lozano, who later was President Ferdinand E. Marcos’ lawyer. One of my Pines Hotel classmates was Priscilla Reyes (later Pacheco), who now runs Aristocrat Restaurant. What better cross-section of Philippine society can there be than JoMa, Oliver, Priscilla, and I?

The summer ended with a trip to Banaue. A busload of us set off one morning, passing Trinidad Valley, then all strawberry and vegetable fields, and then the romantically named Mountain Trail, actually a narrow dirt road hugging steep mountain sides. I had a right-hand window seat that gave great views of pine-covered valleys and of the rocks a long way down.

We arrived in Banaue after dark, sticky with yellow dust (no air-conditioned buses then) that we washed away in the freezing stream downhill, after which it was sweet dreams on the floor of Banaue Elementary. The next day was all hiking. Then it was back to Baguio, still via the Mountain Trail, the lowlands, and the uncertain future.