Aiming for the gold was beyond the vain attempt for self recognition, but its main purpose was to give back to my payrents. I would be hypocrite if I said that I did not want to end up marching with the Latin recognition (for it has its perks, once I step into the "real world") but like I said, the award primarily must be addressed to my pay-rents.
The following essays pretty much encapsulated my thoughts on graduating with the distinction. With Honors and With Honor.
"It (graduating with honors) is something, but it is by no means everything."
***
With Honors
iThink
By JAMES SORIANO
March 21, 2012, 4:09am
(from the Manila Bulletin)
What does it mean to graduate cum laude, magna cum laude, or summa cum laude?
Literally, the Latin phrase cum laude means “with honor” or “with praise,” the latter being a more direct translation of the word laude. Similarly, magna cum laude means “with great praise”, and summa cum laude means “with the highest praise.”
So whenever we say, in a tone fraught with respect for the depth of meaning and gravitas that the original Latin term offers, that a student is graduating cum laude, magna cum laude,or summa cum laude, what we are saying is that the student is graduating with praise, great praise, or the highest praise.
The meaning of the term really says very little, so that perhaps it is a little disappointing to work so hard for four to five years to attain those famed Latin distinctions, only to find that they add very little, if at all, to the obvious.
But perhaps that is the beauty of it: that it says so little about who you are to the world that there is so much room for you to determine what it really means for yourself.
To the outside world, graduating with honors is the mark of an exceptional graduate: gifted, hardworking, intelligent, with all the tools to succeed in life and career. Yet all that graduating with honors really means is that one has performed well in the classroom: that one scores well on tests, participates in class, and makes good presentations. If one goes to school to study, then graduating with honors proves that one has been a good student.
On the one hand, there is good reason to believe that students who graduate with honors are likely to become successful.
On the other hand, if it is true that the classroom is an entirely different setting from the workplace, the community, and even the home, then graduating with honors might mean very little. In that case, to go from exceptional student to exceptional individual is a huge logical leap, and it cannot predict whether one will find success or meaning in his or her life.In the so-called “real world”, we find that this is the case. While there are many honor graduates who end up becoming rich or famous or otherwise successful, there are just as many graduates who may not have earned special academic distinctions at school, but have become just as successful as their honorable peers, if not more so. This suggests that in the bigger picture, there are multiple other factorsthat affect a graduating student’s chances of success apart from academic honors.
To have academic honors is to have a certain incentive or added pressure: one must succeed if he or she is to be worthy of the distinction. For some it might be nice to have, but it is a pressure or incentive that one can do without.
Graduating with honors means that one has a mind well-versed in logical thinking and critical analysis, tools that enable one to get ahead. But it does not measure whether one can engage in creative or divergent thinking, communicate well, or lead and inspire others, tools that enable one to get to the top. These are skills that are developed in a bigger way outside of the classroom: through extra-curricular activities, leadership positions, competitions athletic and otherwise, and engagement with peers and outside communities.
Graduating with honors in no way insures one’s moral character or scruples. Many honorable graduates have shaped and shifted industries and communities, for better or for worse. Many a valedictorian has impacted the history of this nation, for better and for worse.
Those of us who are graduating with honors cannot assure, by the mere fact of our graduating with some sort of a laude, that we will turn out to be honorable people.
But what cannot be doubted is that graduating with honors is a tribute to all those who have helped or contributed to get one to his or her standing. From experience, consistently getting high grades—the only prerequisite to graduating with honors—is a tricky business, one that is just as much science as it is art. Individual merit and motivation is one part of the equation; the other parts are the nature of the course, the teacher’s skill, perceptions and expectations, conditions within the project group, the barkada, or the family, and even political and economic conditions at large.
So that when one goes up the stage to receive his or her diploma, medal and five seconds of applause, one represents, in a very significant way, the confluence of factors that have made the distinction possible. One’s individual achievement, in a broad sense, is actually a collective effort. After all, no one ever makes it alone.
So when one graduates with cum laude, magna cum laude, or summa cum laude, one can be proud that he or she has a very particular kind of achievement: a successful career as a student, at least partly the result of a favorable confluence of factors and conditions, which may or may not promise future success.
It is something, but it is by no means everything.
***
With Honor
Excluded Middles
By AVERILL PIZARRO
March 21, 2012, 4:09am
(from the Manila Bulletin)
MANILA, Philippines — Let me just come out and say it, so we can get it out of the way already — graduating with honors is overrated.
I graduated from UP Diliman a year ago with a degree in Philosophy, magna cum laude, and this is a lot less impressive than it sounds.
For one, my class, the Class of 2011, produced 21 summa cum laude, 215 magna cum laude, and 794 cum laude. The feat isn’t exactly extraordinary if 1,000 other people in the same room can do it too.
At the University graduation, only the summa cum laude get to sit on the stage with their parents, along with the members of the Board of Regents, former presidents and faculty.
Magna cum laude get to sit in the front rows, but it is not a big enough achievement — our parents have to sit at the back under the hot sun like everyone else.
Of course I wanted to graduate with honors, and it felt good when I did. Sometimes, it still does. My parents like telling their friends about it, and so do my aunts and uncles. Fortunately, as far as I know, none of them had a tarpaulin printed out and hung at the municipal hall.I have to admit — magna cum laude looks very good on paper. Most people are immediately impressed when they hear about it — and one of them, my current boss, was impressed enough to offer me a job.
But that’s about as far as graduating with honors has taken me.
It got me into a job, but staying in the job, and performing well in it, is a different matter entirely. That’s a fact that people often miss: it doesn’t make you better or smarter than anyone else. It means you got better grades, but it says little about your intelligence, ability, or lack thereof, because most people who graduate with honors intend to graduate with honors but don’t intend to learn.
It’s easy to go through college taking all the easy professors and getting all the free unos, and graduating with a summa or magna or cum laude following your name. But this doesn’t mean you learned well, nor that you made the most of your opportunities, and this does not prepare you in any way to meet real challenges.
Most of the time it’s an investment in image rather than in substance, and it is a dishonor to the University that took time and money to teach you. It is easier to graduate with honors than to graduate with honor.
This is a lesson I first learned in UP.
On the first day of class, a Literature professor had asked us to introduce ourselves to her by submitting a list of all the real books we had ever read in our 16-year lives. “Don’t tell me you were valedictorian, or an awardee this or awardee that,” she said rather crossly. “Don’t tell me you were editor-in-chief of your high school paper. Guess what--we all were. Now tell me the books you’ve read when nobody asked you to and I will judge how well-prepared you are for this class.”
We were all frightened.
Today, though, she is still one of my best teachers, and that was still one of the best classes I ever took in my life.I find that working is much the same. In our office especially, my boss has a habit of hiring honor graduates. Everyone is summa, magna or cum laude. Or a lawyer. Or has a master’s degree in something from prestigious universities here or abroad. It doesn’t make you special. It doesn’t determine the quality of your output. I came in as a fresh graduate, armed with honors, and I had to start from the bottom of the food chain, learn everything as I went along, and learn fast. Sometimes, the philosophy has helped me. The books I read in my spare time have helped me.
But I find that what has helped me the most in my job is not the cerbral knowledge I gained in my fours years in college, not the stuff that got me through exams and gave me good grades — it’s all the things and disciplines surrounding that, outside that, beyond that.
It’s the coolness under pressure, the habituation to deadlines, the initiative and foresight picked up from doing volunteer work that you get through experience, and by watching older people do something well.
It’s the clarity of mind and the determination to work well and hard even when a professor is discouraging or angry or aloof, and you don’t hope to get a good mark anyway, but you want to be able to say you gave it the best you have.
It’s the willingness to get your hands dirty and to give more than the minimum because you believe in the innate value of honor and excellence.
It’s all of these and more — the elements of a good education, about how well you learned, including, especially, from your failures — and such things just cannot be measured by numbers.
***
The true-er measurement of one's achievements lies on his ability to rise above adversity--whether he graduated with honors or not.
Being honorable is different from graduating with honor.
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