Of the Greatest Kind!

Mamanghagays Reunite at Ayala Center Cebu for the 2nd Cebu Literary Festival (June 20, 2015)
(L-R) Athena, Melgrace, Davey and Rey

 During my college years as a Nursing student, I wasn’t always the kind of geek who spent hours in the library or in a silent room to study. The library, for us nursing students, was then a place to take a nap or to chat with friends. It was a comfortable place to talk since there was air-conditioning and our sheer numbers could not be opposed by the miniscule population of library personnel who got tired of ringing the bell and just ended up giving-up or reporting our nuisance to the Dean. I was a happy Nursing student just like everyone else, but that wasn’t the only thing I was crazy about.

While trudging through Medical-Surgical Nursing and operating on patients in the hospital, I was also a WORDian. I was one of the privileged few who got to enter the official student publication of Holy Name University. I was a student journalist together with the same kinds of minds and talents. We came from different departments but we all had one thing in common—writing and the arts.

Typical snacks for a writer: coffee and chocobutternut donuts!

Being a member of The WORD was one of the most productive times of my life. I was with fellow writers and artists. We didn’t have the same kind of beliefs either but we all still got along. Aside from writing, catching deadlines, and running like mad to the pier to catch our boat trip to Cebu, we loved talking to each other almost anything under the sun. WORDS and the ARTS really united us. We would talk into the wee hours of dawn over coffee, hot chocolate, coke and donuts. (Being the nursing student, I would often insert apples, oranges, healthy fruit juices and Vitamin C into our diet.) With fellow WORDians, I was really able to express myself. I was free to express my geeky, weird and nerdy self to them. Aside from what we had in common, we accepted each other—brains, hearts, blemishes and all.

It has been eight years since I graduated from college and I cannot help but keep looking back on my experience as a student journalist and even as a literary artist. I am thankful that we, WORDians of our time, still manage to gather together and enter into a euphoric nostalgia as we recall our “Mamanghagay” days. Eight years have passed and we have gone our separate ways, each one pursuing one’s career and dreams in life. One thing has remained the same though—our love for words and the arts.

Not all of us have been writing the same way we did when we were student journalists and were threatened with lawsuits for libel and suspension from the Student Affairs Office. We have long since left the academe. We try to blog, we try to write stories or poetry, train other writers and even try to preach. But our love for words still bring us together. We try our best to gather together because our love for the written word and all the arts that come with it, and most especially our deep fondness for each other, continues to bring us closer. Despite the fact that we have long graduated from our Alma Mater and have bequeathed our legacy to the next generation of the members of the WORD, we remain the same.

We remain writers. We remain artists. We are Mamanghagays. We remain to be—WORDians of the greatest kind!

(L-R) Author, Athena, Juya, Neil, and Davey. A little reunion dinner at Payag.