About UP Los Banos:
Most of our instructors and professors in UPLB were highly educated and competent to guide and inspire us through college. Rather than just teach, they created in their students a hunger for knowledge. Many of them were open and accommodating, but not to the point of spoon-feeding us; they didn’t provide the fish, only the fishing rod and the net. Others were strict and exacting, slave drivers who would settle only for excellence. Still, a number of them one could casually meet in org meetings, in school activities, or at the church choir.
We had this elderly professor in Steam Engineering who would ask us about our ideas on how Zuma escaped from the “kumukulong kumunoy.” Wacky, true, but it gets your imagination abuzz. And I will always remember one of our advisers Dr. S who offered sensible tips to remember when meeting our prospective life-partners upon our assignment to far-off provinces for our Mill, Refinery, and Distillery Practice.
Our university mentors also had their share of eccentricity in the so-called “terror” teachers, those who you met in class only once a week, or another who lectured to the blackboard. Nevertheless, whether one counted the teacher as a friend or a foe, what eventually mattered were the lessons learned from the encounters in class.
Having lived in the community for a long time, I felt that the UPLB campus was more like a home extension for higher education. In spite of some instances of violence from student activism and frat extra-curricular activities (wars, for short), the school was conducive to studying and self-discovery, and I believe this will remain so for a large number of students in the coming years.
My current job:
My first job was as a cadet engineer/trainee with a large azucarera in Negros Occidental. The assignment that my boss, who was a chemical engineer, gave me was to “learn everything” in our part of the factory where cane juice was converted to raw sugar and it's by-products.
Once I overheard him talking to his staff, “Our company is a great training ground, but why are our bright, young men leaving us?” He was referring to the new hirees who would move to or get pirated by other sugar centrals. I thought that I fitted the description as well, and though one year was too short to absorb even just a small bit of “everything, ” I applied with a neighboring azucarera.
Handling people for the first time marked my next job as a shift supervisor reliever. I leaned heavily on my sugar tech lessons, stayed awake during the graveyard shift, studied a couple of local dialects, and was soon promoted to shift supervisor. Although my second boss had a bitter rivalry with another department head, a fellow ST graduate, I lasted 3 ½ fruitful years with the company by sticking to the work at hand and avoiding office politics.
Afterwards, I moved back to Luzon and joined a pharmaceutical and healthcare toll manufacturing company in Laguna as production section manager The job entailed supervision and training of personnel involved in the manufacture and packaging of a variety of medicines such as syrups, suspensions, creams and ointments, lozenges, antibiotics, as well as veterinary solutions and premixes.
It also required close coordination with service departments including quality assurance, engineering, materials management, and warehousing. At one time, part of my assignment included operating a mini-plant that made non-pharma and powdered products, while providing clients’ repackaging needs. I recently left this job after 25 years.
How long did it take to find a job:
About a month before graduating, I sent out application letters (emails weren’t in use yet) to my top 10 choices of sugar centrals, and closed the deal for my first job within 2 weeks after graduation. After 2 more weeks, I was on the plane to Negros to report for work.
It is important to send out one’s applications early to get the ball rolling. In the cases where I was unable or did not need to go to the interviews, I made sure to write (you can email nowadays) them to explain the circumstances. Who knows, you may meet them again or conduct business with them in the future.
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