It’s final exams season, that time of the year when law students spend sleepless nights cramming case doctrines and provisions into their heads a few days before the exams.

Tonight, half the class had dinner together, after our Friday night classes, at some makeshift barbecue eatery along Asturias right behind our university. It felt like some last supper of sorts, before we go into finals week. This is not the first time I am going through this, of course, as I have spent more than two semesters in UP Law and have had my share of final exams in law school. But it still feels just as stressful doing it all over again.

Sometimes I think, the hell with these laws! These laws will become irrelevant in a generation, or even sooner, as we go through the process of shaping a more just and progressive society in this country. But in the interim, as it is still the prevailing system of justice, it is imperative to know how to use it against its own. As an activist, you get to think about all these contradictions, personal and otherwise, quite often. This is certainly not the highest form of serving the people. So bakit ito ang ginagawa ko? Is it because I don’t want to feel that we are helpless when we are confronted with the entire legal machinery of the status quo? Yes, perhaps. At this stage of our struggle, is being a lawyer and an activist still important? I guess, perhaps. I am not presently ready to go into that discourse thoroughly and sufficiently.

Anyway, yesterday, we also had our formal class picture taken right before our Political Law class. Apparently, all college blocks/classes in the university have an annual picture-taking either in front of the “Arch of the Centuries” or in front of the statue of Miguel de Benavides. We didn’t have things like this in UP.