It’s been over a week since I started attending classes at the University of Santo Tomas. The feeling of being a clueless freshman wandering around campus without having the privilege of knowing anyone, it’s an amusing but all too familiar feeling. It brought back memories of being a high school freshman in Ateneo and a college freshman in UP Diliman. And I missed that feeling. It feels likes starting anew in a different environment with a clean slate, and I have the privilege of starting it right, of being anonymous, of just being another face in the crowd, with lessons learned from mistakes of the past.

The Sampaloc campus is also quite beautiful, with its paved walkways, manicured gardens and plazas, old and new buildings. It may not be as expansive as Diliman or Loyola Heights, but its very compactness makes one feel like being embraced by a small but diverse community. Walking to class in the late afternoons has been a pleasure. I find pleasure walking among hundreds of students loitering around the gardens and plazas. In Diliman or Loyola Heights, I can walk around campus without bumping into anyone. I walk out of the walls of UST and I find myself in the busy streets of Sampaloc, Manila.

These are of course, impressions of face value. In the next four years (or more? might even be less?) I will surely experience various disappointments and struggles. As I’ve mentioned in a previous entry, there will come times when I will find myself in conflict with university rules, though, it’s not a prospect that I fear, confident of a sense of judgment of what is right and fair. There will come times when I will find myself holding on to my motivations for wanting to become a lawyer, there will be times I will want to just quit school for various reasons. But for now, here’s to looking forward to being a “Thomasian”.