SORIA, KENT EMMANUEL C.

IV APS-MSE

Service: Never Giving Up

I will forever be indebted to the scholarship grant I was able to get from Ateneo. For
the past 4 years, I was able to learn all sorts of things related and unrelated to my degree. I
was forced to mature in my stay here. I learned to take responsibilities on my own without
interfering with the affairs of other people. I learned that patience and perseverance are things
that people need to learn and that things don’t always go as planned. However, just because
things don’t always go in the ways our minds may imagine them, we shouldn’t give up. We
have to try and still give it all our best shot. ‘Whatever it takes’ as they say.

In the past 4 years, I have experienced a lot of hardships and struggles, both work-
related and personally. I have had my heart broken more than once. I almost failed quite a
few subjects that would have endangered my scholarship quite a few times. There were times
when I just wanted to give up. I was crying and because I didn’t know whether I was going to
retain my scholarship. I had serious doubts whether or not all of these were worth it in the
end. Physics is a very difficult subject. It ‘s not like it was just going on memorizing stuff.
That’s easy. Physics requires analysis combined with a good grasp of mathematics. No
amounts of smarts or ‘retained knowledge’ would allow me to pass Electromagnetism or
Quantum mechanics. If I didn’t study enough, I was not going to pass.

I came into the moments of doubt starting my third year college experience. Third
year, first semester was the hardest semester ever. All the maths that I just studied one or two
semesters ago were now ready to be bombarded back to us again. During that semester, I took
3 Physics subjects at the same time: Classical mechanics, Electromagnetism 1, and
Electronics. Electronics should have been the most bearable, since it only required basic
linear algebra, but my professor’s exams were not quite the same as others. It was all or
nothing. If you get a decimal wrong, or didn’t write the correct unit, one got a zero over ten.
And it was very easy to get things wrong. It didn’t matter that one’s solutions were almost
correct, if the final answer was wrong my score would be the same as if I didn’t even try. EM
and CM were really difficult subjects. I spent hours and hours studying and solving problems
yet when the exams arrived, more often than not I still could just barely pass. While I was
listening to my roommate complain about getting a B instead of an A, I was on the other side
of the room being worried on whether I was going to survive all my subjects, and my
scholarship at all.

I was able to adapt later on. I realized that the world was not going to change for me, only I
can change. Men from the past have lived through harder times, I am sure. I have imagined
what it would be like for cavemen who barely survive, spending their time hunting for food. I
imagined what it would be like to be serfs working for landlords just to be able to get by. I
knew I was privileged for having the opportunity to be able to study for free on a premier
school in the country. I shouldn’t disappoint and I have to do my duty.

I also realized that the things that I was doing was not all for myself. More importantly, the
labor that I was doing was going to be for the betterment of society. I am not like other
people who have political power or cultural influence that let’s them affect change. But if I
am able to use the scientific knowledge I have learned, if I am able to conduct research that
would ultimately be of some use for the technology that we have today, I believe that all of
my efforts would be worth it. Albert Einstein once said that we shouldn’t aim to be men of
success but rather men of value. When all my efforts are done, I asked myself what sort of
legacy I would like to leave this world. I realized that it was only in Science, particularly in
Physics that I want my legacy to be in.

Once I graduate, I am going to be working for a while. I plan to learn valuable marketable
skills that would allow me to be hirable. I want to be a real scientist, making discoveries ad
publishing papers as I go. But I also plan to continue my studies. I will take my master’s
degree so that I will be able to learn more things that I wasn’t able to learn in college. I plan
on spending my days learning more and more about Physics and Materials science, as well as
trying to create or discover new technologies as I go. That I plan to be the legacy I will leave
this world.