by rossanahead | Sep 11, 2011 | career, woman
By Romelda C. Ascutia
A little over a year ago, I took the biggest risk of my career: I decided to quit the corporate world and work on my own terms—as a freelance editor.
I wish I could say that it was a calculated risk, born of long planning and preparation. Truth is, it was a precipitous leap of faith during one of the lowest points in my life. I decided to leave a job I loved because after four years, it had turned into a nightmare parade of unending deadlines, long work hours, and nasty office politics.
The thought of diving immediately into a full-blown search for another full-time job filled me with aversion. So I gave myself a few months to scope out the freelance job market. If nothing happened, I could always look for a regular job again.
I was confident of my chances of finding project-based work quickly. Modesty aside, my credentials weren’t too shabby. Over the years I had held senior editor positions, such as managing editor or editor in chief, at a number of magazines. I also worked as a section editor at newspapers and as a content manager for a website. I wrote and edited books, columns, and various print materials.
But to my dismay, the projects didn’t come rushing my way—like a dog bounding to her mistress the minute she steps through the door—as I thought they would. Openings for home-based work posted on job search sites almost always entailed long hours at starvation rates. I snagged a regular monthly gig and some accounts here and there, but they weren’t enough to raise a family on.
As the months passed, my anxiety mounted. If the work inflow remained at a trickle, my savings would dry up! Fortunately, with fervent prayers and a fresh new year came a welcome change of pace.
Suddenly all my self-promotion efforts began paying off, and the projects came one after the other. A publisher asked me to manage her newly launched website. She then referred me to her former officemate, an overseas-based editorial manager looking for a freelance business writer (I knew nothing about world finance but somehow I passed the writing test). The sister of another colleague introduced me to a publisher who needed an editor for one of their school magazines.
I look back in amazement at the heart-stopping journey I made and where it has led me. Just last year I was clinging to a precipice, blindsided, struggling to climb back up or plunge into an abyss. Now I have found a work style that allowed me to practice my craft again, but without the pressures of office life.
What I’ve learned from my career crisis? Setbacks may knock you down, but a good work ethic, perseverance, and helping hands from Someone up there and friends who believe in you, will help you overcome. The trials that land you on your butt may be opportunities to start anew in disguise.
by rossanahead | Sep 9, 2011 | career, children, Education, parenting, Rossana Llenado
By Rossana Llenado
One of the best ways that children learn is through play—this is one of the things that I discovered when we ran a preschool a couple of years ago.
You know how young kids usually cry when they have to go to school? Well, our pupils cried when they had to go home. That’s because they had so much fun at our school, WorldPrep School. We called it a school in a park because we had a big lawn in front and a giant acacia tree watching over us. I remember how the kids loved running around the yard, playing games or just hanging out. That was how we wanted things to be. We wanted children to learn amidst beautiful surroundings.
We also employed non-traditional ways of teaching. We went on trips to the supermarket. Just by going along the aisles, the kids get to learn about shapes and sizes. Our teachers would pick an apple, for instance, and point out its color.
Once, we asked our neighborhood firemen to visit us in school. The kids were just thrilled. The firemen talked about how they respond to emergencies, and shared fire safety tips in the process. The kids even got to climb on the fire truck.
When parents want their kids to celebrate their birthdays in school, we saw that as another learning opportunity. We incorporated educational games into the program and encouraged the kids to participate. We hit two birds with one stone. The kids not only learned a lesson or two, they were also able to sharpen their social skills.
We thought of different ways to put some fun into learning, and the kids, without knowing it, were absorbing all these information in a pleasant way.
There was a time when parents questioned our teaching methods because they thought we just let their kids play in school. They had become so concerned about this that they asked us for a meeting. Clueless about the prevailing misconception, we gladly arranged a meeting.
At the meeting, the parents asked what we were teaching their children besides play. In response, one of our teachers called one of her pupils to the front. Milk bottle in her mouth, donned in disposable diapers, the two-year-old happily complied. To the amazement of the parents, the toddler read three-letter words from the blackboard, pausing in between words to take a sip from her bottle. The youngster got the parents’ loud applause. Our school got their seal of trust.
Unfortunately, a leasing problem forced us to close our preschool. That particular location was ideal, and we just couldn’t find another that equaled it.
On our last day, we held a ceremony at our front yard. We were all in tears—students, teachers, parents, and staff. It was a magical experience that we didn’t want to end. I think the heavens heard us as well because for one shining moment, a shower of acacia flowers rained down on us. It was truly an unforgettable experience.
Today, we are bringing that dream back to life with Victorious Educational Network, and this time we are going to do it better. We want to develop young learners who are happy, smart, and ready for the world. For this endeavor, we are gathering the best minds in the education industry to get our school in a park up and running by next school year. We are also looking for partners who share our passion for education.
I am very excited to see this dream come true once again—and I know that this time, we will come out victorious!
by rossanahead | Sep 7, 2011 | Education, Gina Abuyuan, woman
By Regina Abuyuan
Around mid-2004, I did the unthinkable: I joined a self-enhancement seminar.
Before I actually signed up, though, I went through the usual motions: denial that I needed it; balking at the price; and scoffing at the too-happy, seemingly too-confident people who gave their testimonials. “Interesting,” I thought. “But not for me.”
Curiosity and a good deal on the terms of payment made me register eventually, and in two months, I was sitting with a group of a hundred or so people, eager to discover if this seminar (which promised us “everything we wanted out of life” and “personal breakthroughs”) was really everything its participants said it was.
In a way, they were right.
I learned that most, if not all, of us never live in the present. We live in the past or the future, and the baggage of our past and the anticipation of what’s going to happen in the future affect our choices today.
I learned to consider things, events, people, words just as they are—nothing more, nothing less. They only gain meaning when we color them with our own intent and personal dramas.
I learned that the everyday complaints we have about people and situations are what hinder us from moving forward. I learned that we actually are attached to those complaints and don’t want to give them up, even if we know we can and should, because we get a payoff from feeling and believing in such.
What are these payoffs? We may feel right (or righteous), we may feel powerful, or for those who like it, we may feel victimized. Whatever it is, those payoffs make us blind to what really matters: Would you rather be right, or alone? Powerful, or feared? Strong, or perennially stressed out? Victimized, or always dependent on other people’s perceptions of you?
I learned about choices, how they’re different from decisions, and how you can make your life work by re-making your choices every day—or unmaking them with the same commitment if your life isn’t working.
I learned how to “complete” things and issues with other people; and how to feel complete with incompletions if the other person wasn’t yet in the right space to allow that completion.
I even learned that the simple formula of context-breakdown-breakthrough could be applied to almost anything (in fact, it’s one of the formulas I give to younger writers if they ask for story guidelines).
These may sound simple, and I learned so much more from this basic seminar, that I enrolled in the Advanced Course, and later, the Leadership Course. As I am not a trained Forum Leader and one blog entry can’t encapsulate everything the seminar has to offer, it would be unfair for me to expound more.
There are some who get addicted to seminars like these, though, and when that happens, their self-improvement goals become counter-productive. Self-enhancement programs are meant to enable you to stand on your own; they’re not meant to become a crutch.
I stopped being actively involved in those seminars in 2006. Life continued, but this time I was equipped with tools I needed to deal with certain aspects of it; to transform the way I previously handled problems and issues. I don’t use all of them all at once, and sometimes I forget to use them at all, but they’re there when I choose to pull them out, and so far they’ve served me well. “We already know that,” skeptics will say about seminars like these. “We just need a reminder.”
True, but it takes a bit of humility to be open to those reminders; and a bit more to actually accept them. Don’t get me wrong—this isn’t an advertisement for you to go out and sign up for the first self-enhancement class you encounter. Those opportunities for self-improvement can come in different forms, and at the right time.
Meanwhile, be willing to be nudged, to consider another person’s perspective— an external voice, if you will—to make you realize your “blind spots” and help you bloom.
Be willing to do the unthinkable.
![Mapping Me]()
by rossanahead | Sep 3, 2011 | career, Education, Jing Lejano, woman
By Jing Lejano
The other week, I attended a mind mapping workshop with my friends from AHEAD Tutorial & Review Center. I’ve always been fascinated with this thinking tool, which challenges the user to think in a more free form manner.
I’m a writer and when I think, I do so in a linear fashion: one line after the next. In my planner, you’d see all sorts of lists, written neatly one bullet after another. Whenever I’d get one task done, I’d just put a little check beside the bullet and feel all good.
Whenever I’d see these mind maps that go every which way, I get a little intimidated. I ask myself, could I possibly think every which way like that as well?
But as Teacher Y explained mind mapping more clearly, I calmed down. Draw pictures. Use colors. Make the map that makes sense to you, she told us. It’s your map, she says, and you’re free wherever you want to go.
After the lecture, she asked each of us to make a mind map of who we are. At first, I didn’t know what to do but once I started drawing and doodling, there was no stopping me. It was like a whole new world opened up in that blank piece of paper. And it was liberating.
My map, which showed all the different roles that I play in my everyday life, looked a little cluttered and crazy, but it also seemed like a lot of fun. But more importantly, I realized that it was I who drew the map of my own life, and I am happy to be living it.
by rossanahead | Sep 1, 2011 | career, children, Education, Karen Galarpe
By Karen Galarpe
At a lunch meeting with a school official, talk veered to teaching. I asked the woman I met with if she also teaches there.
“No! I can’t teach these young kids. I tried before, but I just can’t do it again. I can teach adults, but not college kids,” she said.
She then went on to explain how difficult teaching is and moreso when the students are not interested or behaved. I nodded in agreement, as I know what she’s talking about.
Back in 2005, I taught communication subjects at a college nearby, and the yearlong stint has instilled in me an even greater respect for teachers. You see, I realized how much of a vocation teaching is.
You spend many hours preparing for your classes, then when you are in class, you give all that you’ve got. Teaching exacts much of you, as you give of yourself so your students can learn. But I realized after a time, that even though you pour out your heart teaching, not everyone will learn. Only those who want to learn, who are willing to learn and be taught, and who are teachable will be the ones to benefit. Even the smart guys stand to lose if they are not hungry to learn.
It’s like me when faced with html codes that all look Greek to me. My brain refuses to process it, or refuses to even try, and I give up right away. I don’t even want to learn html because, well, it looks so complicated and I’d rather leave it for others to decipher. But give me something else–history, current events, whatever, and chances are, I’ll lap it up. I want to learn while I still have breath in me. There’s just so much going on in this world and we have so much to learn from each other.
As parents, we should instill in our children a love for learning. How? It starts with us. When we ourselves show amazement at new discoveries, when we make the effort to feed our minds and engage in critical thinking, when we look upon our world with curiosity and ask, what can I do to make this world better–children pick that up.
Love learning. It’s a great way to live!
