memo to memo

You have in your midst one of the top 10 brightest students I have ever for the past 10 years. As to why you only have the character-building Convergence and the hastily prepared bulletin board as your "obvious" projects is worrisome.

Don't hate me for calling you out. It had to be done.

Why are you not expanding your talents and your capabilities when you have this opportunity? Don't you know that only a few are given this chance to lead and to have this first-hand understanding of what it means to lead?

Are you tired with the failures that seem to pile up faster than successes? The destructive side comments that never seem to stop?

Wake up. Life is hard. Life is difficult. These very difficulties are your ticket to be better. Learn how to deal with it. ALL that came before you faced the very thing you are facing. The path to knowing what it means to lead excuses no one. EVERYBODY goes through the SAME path.

Don't be like others who hid and became apathetic. And don't go using alcohol. Worse, using drugs. And even worst, using another person and pretend you are in love :) Don't you know that love, the true one, is the most difficult of them all? Haven't you heard that love is patient? Why do you think it has to be patient? It has to be patient because the other party has to grow up and you have to wait. Is waiting easy? Is it? Is it easy for a girl when she is madly in love with a 'torpedo' guy? I don't think so and we are simply in the infatuation stage. And infatuation is only the door to the room called love :)

Guys, most will cower and hide from the avalanche of unexpected responsibilities, difficulties and challenges. But they will not grow. They will not get better. They will be stuck.

But if we continue to fight and embrace the moment, we will get smarter. Not IQ smarter but street smart smarter. We will see and understand human nature. Its bad side and its good side. We will know how to navigate these waters. No book can tell us this. It's too complicated to write. We have to walk the path. Get bloodied. Lick our wounds. Cry tears. And utter some heartfelt prayers, too.

But I tell you and I promise you - you will get better. And you will give yourselves a pricing leverage over the other graduates when it comes to job hunting. They can only show a diploma while you have invaluably differentiated yourself.

But you have to show up. Carry on.

I looked at the bulletin board over the past months. A bulletin board that I still do not know if it is already finished :) I saw your pictures and the thing that entered my mind are these questions - what are they trying to say from the pictures? That they are aspiring models? I mean, they are student leaders? Is that not good enough? Or are they confused and they think that to be a student leader they have to project a "winter of discontent" look?

If you are confused, go back to the reason why we put up Memo in the first place. Go back to that time when you approached me in the Library more than a year ago and shared to me this noble burden. Go back to that. Once you remember that. You will know what to do next.

Have a meaningful 2011, Memo-philes! Or would you rather prefer Memo-bots? :)