A year has passed since my well-publicized demise from UP, and working in Adamson has somewhat made the rat race concept clearer. UP's academe environment is much too stressful for existentialism - everyone is extremely busy about something most of the time, and when they are not busy, they devote their free time for fun and mindless things (the younger ones at least). In Adamson, the work is just as stressful, but it is seldom intellectually demanding. And I suppose it is in this environment where the struggle for a higher position and a higher salary is more tangible, even to an outsider like me. Adamson is a private school, and even if they try to hide it behind their crucifixes and their "education for the poor" slogan, it is still a business. In UP, the upwards struggle of the faculty is mostly academic in nature, if tainted a bit by politics. But in Adamson, it seems more like a corporate struggle. I believe that some people there are really serious about educating their students, but I think that for some, it is still mostly about just the salary.
A few hours ago, I had a talk with Adamson's HR assistant regarding my salary. It was bad news, I'm afraid, and as a sop to me, she was insistent that I finish my MS so that I can get a permanent post in their institution. She was selling to me the higher salary, the improved benefits, when I stay there for good. I've told her that I have plans to finish my studies abroad, but the idea seemed foreign to her, and it appeared that she was content with me having an MS degree here as long as I stay with them. My personal educational development is only secondary to my retention as an instructor there. I understand their perspective completely though. There is no guarantee that I will go back there if I finish my degree abroad, so their priority is to hold on to "promising" instructors. As I said, it is still a business.
And so I walked out the door, feeling more enlightened yet more disillusioned about how this world works. That in the end, the MS degree is not really about personal development. It was just a tool for me to get a higher salary. It isn't like this fact was completely unknown to me before, but it is only now that I'm experiencing first-hand how my academic failure is affecting my opportunities. I suppose I was still nursing this romantic idea that in the end, graduate degrees are still about personal improvement. But this world is pushing me to face the fact that our abilities are measured not by our capabilities but by our degrees. It will not be an exaggeration if I claim that if I put my mind into it, I can teach most chemistry subjects Adamson is offering. That when compared to a fresh MS graduate, I can do a better teaching job. But of course, the HR does not only depend on one's performance for its evaluation. They look for solid and tangible things like degrees. The academic ladder is quantized. I am overly qualified for my position now, but being in the middle gets me nowhere. I am still at Level 2.
But I have no alternatives to the current system we have about this at present. There must be a measure for the proper evaluation and positioning of instructors and professors, and the graduate degree is the best that we have. I suppose I had been a fool for focusing more on the meaning of my post instead of being clever and getting ahead by finishing what they were requiring me to get done. If there was a test to measure my passion for education, or a way to quantify my teaching abilities, I believe that I will be among the very best but the world just does not work that way. The academe has no room for subjectivity (at least in the positive sense), and my termination from UP was proof of that.
Sometimes I still pause and wonder where I went wrong, when all along I was simply trying to figure things out. When every small step I took seemed right and ideal at the moment, yet here I am, floundering on the fringes of this money-obsessed society. Sometimes I still pause and wonder whether those who are racing ahead of me really know where they are careening into. Sometimes I envy them for their unquestioning will. They're not like me who had to know first the ultimate meaning of what they are doing. They're not like me who just had to know why, who aren't born with an innate sense of doing things to get ahead of everyone.
I hate this world, and this is not just because I'm bitter over my graduate career. I hate this world because it pushes me to do important things like this for the money that goes with it. Those who do things for meaning are laughed at and are called hypocrites. The artists become poor. The selfish get rich. And between these two, it will be the latter who will have a better chance of being looked up by society.
I am all for ideals. I am all for making this world's perspective better. But there are times when I have to choke on my idealism because I am living in the real, ugly world. My father just had another mild stroke. My family is being evicted from our home of 15 years. My brother needs his medications and my mother... my mother deserves to get a break from all of our domestic problems and I just cannot handle these by myself all at once. I do not have time to figure things out. I do not have that luxury to know which career path is best for me. I must get going. I must earn more. Now! And woe unto meaning. Woe unto my passions. I can cry myself out, I can shout at the unfairness of it all but I simply do not have time for these things.
These times, I envy the unenlightened. They're still there, running. All for the money. All for their careers. Not understanding that without meaning, they're just lab rats in a maze. And yet I also question myself, with all these said and done, who between us is really better off?
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