Malcolm Hall

I went to get my admission slip from the UP College of Law last Friday. Coming from the Shopping Center, I took a longer route by entering through the front doors of Malcolm Hall. There, I was greeted no less than by the famous adage of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Massive, bold and chiseled to be the focal point of the building's interiors, it's one of those signs that were built to beg attention.

History has proven that this message is larger than itself. The business of a law school is to teach law in the grand manner. Perhaps it was this grand education that propelled the brilliance of many a nation's political figures, from the recent presidential candidates like Sec. Gilbert Teodoro and Senator Richard Gordon to the more rooted names which we memorized from our grade school history books. Names like Ninoy Aquino and Ferdinand Marcos. Whether they used their education for good or evil is another matter altogether but in the next month, I am to receive the same kind of education as them.

This begs the question as to why I will study law in the first place. Am I here to become a human rights activist, a professor, a tax adviser, a partner in a law firm, perhaps, a politician out to spend millions on election campaigns for a position which pays no more than Php 50,000? Blame it on an overdose of optimism, but I am picking the beauty pageant answer: that I am out here to change society, including my own self.

Pretentious as this might sound, I don’t blame you if you think I can’t do it. In a judiciary system as tainted as ours where laws are often played around technicality, who can change society anyway but the rich, the mighty and the powerful?

Even as I type this (pathetic) little declaration of hope, who knows what my future has in store for me? For all I care, I might end up as a power-hungry, money-grabbing technocrat who doesn’t give a damn for the concerns of the masses but prides herself instead with a law degree, gaining both criticism from her peers and acclaim from the petty relative who only has a fetish for titles (Atty. Engr. Dr.)

This is why I leave thinking about my future for tomorrow. I have actually taken up spontaneity as a new hobby. Because while I am thrown in disarray by the profundity of my questions, I still have to think about more practical and more short-term concerns regarding law school. Like getting my admission slip for instance.

If there was one thing I learned while working after graduation, it is that idealism can only get you so far. Knowing exactly what is out there arms you better than slipping off reality, dreaming of utopia.