(via salvawhorez)

stealliecheat:

MY CHILDHOOD.

(via unibersidadngpilipinas)

UP Law ADAPT Orientation Speech
Rodel A. Cruz
Malcolm Theater, 10 June 2011

I have been given 10 minutes to inspire. It is taking me a lifetime to inspire my own kids but I’m game and I’ll give it a shot.

But before I begin, let me make an important announcement. Dallas won. The series is now at 3-2 moving on to Miami. Anyone betting on Miami, you may see me after this.

If you are a sports fan, watching the finals of any sporting event live on TV will be a luxury from now on. You will simply be hard put to find the time. You have more important things to do now. You need to study.

Michael Corleone in the movie The Godfather tried to convince his son to take up law saying “When you study law, you are taking on insurance. After that you can do whatever you want.” Later on John Milton in The Devil’s Advocate told his protege, “Law is the ultimate backstage pass.”

All of you made an important decision to study the law. Some perhaps motivated by the same sentiment expressed by Al Pacino in those movies. Others, for other reasons. Some even chose to shift careers to take up law. Congratulations on your choice! Congratulations on being admitted into the asylum called Malcolm Hall!

For the next 4 or 5 years, you will be grouped into sections or blocks. You will have the same classmates, same class schedules and read the same books. You will likely go out to have lunch together, even watch movies and take trips together. You will probably use the same table in the library studying together. You will likely join fraternities, sororities and organizations, engage in student politics, and even play sports with one another. You may end up forging life-long friendships and even find your significant other during law school.

Doesn’t this remind you of something?

Welcome back to high school!

One important lesson you will have to learn along the way is the importance of discipline. After all, you are now in a professional school. t
Save for a handful of prodigies who are truly gifted, professional athletes who reached the top of their game: Pacquiao, Federer, Woods, Jordan, even Anna Kournikova, spent long hours training in their sport of choice. Your gift is nothing without the discipline to hone it. Impossible is nothing! Just do it!

Consider yourself then, as mental athletes in training. You will engage in grueling mental workouts. You will do it in the library and in class while attending Malcolm Hall. In time, you will gain mental heft with the amount of information you will be forced to consume. Your intellect, patience and resolve will be constantly tested by professors who will invariably terrorize, and in some rare occasions, inspire you.

After your first semester, you will realize that your grade point average in undergrad would have been much better if only you applied yourself as much as you do now in law school. Otherwise, you will realize that law school is not for you.

With the right attitude, you will slowly build intellectual stamina and mental agility. You will develop analytical skills you never thought you had.You will learn to understand and to persuade. Some of you will acquire the ability to see more than most.

Download and watch the movie The Paper Chase before classes start and you’ll appreciate better what I mean.

In time, most of you will become lawyers. Good grades in law school will give you the key to a potentially good career in law. The best among you will receive an invitation from top law firms to participate in the annual draft during recruitment season. Some of you will train with the best in the legal profession and compete at the highest levels and eventually become very good lawyers.

But all these efforts for what?

You have enlisted to train in hopes of becoming professionals. Law is indeed an insurance and the ultimate backstage pass. It can provide you a comfortable life and open a lot of doors for you. There is little doubt that when you eventually practice law, you can earn a good living for yourself while making significant contributions to society.

Always remember that the legal profession is not just a craft. It is not simply a trade. Understanding the law is empowering and, as has been said, with great power comes great responsibility. Learn the law well and learn to use it well.

I was told that to make my speech relevant to the occasion, it has to hew closely to this forum’s theme: ADAPT.

A lot of changes are happening in the world today. After the culling of Filipino intellectuals that took place during the revolution that ushered our independence, the second world war and the martial law years, I believe that we have nurtured in the last few decades a considerable intellectual base that can propel our country to it’s rightful place in the world. A legal education can give you the opportunity to make considerable contributions in this regard in a world that continues to evolve.

Law will continue to adapt as it plays catch up with technological innovations. You can use the law now, better than ever, to protect an environment that is grappling with climate change or to protect the marginalized as we build a more just and humane society. But in whatever we choose to do, as students of the law, all of us must always strive to uphold the rule of law. It is, after all, our stock in trade.

Come to think of it, the law serves as our society’s operating system or OS. The rest of the professions are mere apps. Lawyers get to decide if the apps are compatible with the OS. Don’t you like now what you got yourself into?

But as has been said before, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Lawyers in our country remain subservient to the High Court. Long after Marcos left office, lawyers are still fearful that crossing swords with the men and women in the Supreme Court can cost them their license to practice their chosen profession. This stifles legitimate dissent from within the bar.

Unfortunately, we now have a Supreme Court that behaves in much the same way as the court that handed down the Javellana decision during martial law.

Justices are now telling us that we cannot read the plain language of our Constitution when they ruled that the previous president can appoint a midnight chief justice despite the unequivocal ban.

They’ve sanctioned our professors as some justices try to teach us that plagiarism is not intellectual dishonesty - if they are the ones doing it. They teach us that the computer can be blamed for failing to attribute other people’s thoughts. Saying that the dog ate your homework is now a valid and believable excuse. Go ahead. Try it.

They are actually teaching us a most valuable lesson. That as students of the law, we must not accept their crap as gospel truth. We are active participants in shaping jurisprudence. We are part of defining what the rule of law means. We are part of divining our nation’s path into the future.

Remain critical in your thoughts without being too cynical. Enjoy and use your liberties under the mantle of academic freedom. Resist the prevailing tyranny of mediocrity. Fight the seductive expedience of guile - even as lawyers have become too timid to make a stand. After all, as law students, you do not have licenses to lose yet.

In closing, let me leave you this parting advice: Use what you learn in law school not only to do well for yourself, but also to do good for others.

In the meantime, try to have some fun. The next few years of your life will be truly miserable. Did I say miserable? I meant memorable.

Now look ahead, keep your head held high, and look inspired. Please?

Thank you.

10knotes:

Submitted by wayne-twentyone

Featured on 10Knotes, the 10,000 notes blog.

 Hahaha what is super applicable.

fuck-yeah-best-posts:

Submitted by endless-numbered-days

fuck-yeah-best-posts:

nativegirls:

It’s the scariest thing ever to realize how much someone means to you. When it hits you, I mean really hits you, all these thoughts and questions rush through your head at once. A sad emotion even starts to creep on you slowly inch by inch as you start to wonder.

What if for some reason things don’t work out? How are you possibly going to live without them?

Someone that was once a stranger now is the only person you know like the back of your hand. Someone you once had no emotions for, now has the power to break your heart. Someone you used to never hangout with, now owns most of your time. Someone that you thought you’d never love, owns your entire heart. Someone you once lived without, you now wish to hold on forever.

Submitted by waveofeuphoria

Click here to follow a super duper blog

islandsmag:

Check out this new ad. Mind the fine print: This value-driven campaign promotes the Philippines to its own people, many of whom opt to travel abroad unaware of their country’s beauty. “Tara na,” means “Let’s go.”

(via islandsmag1)

ellasxtn:

liwaywaygawgaw:

<3

awwww… tsk

(via significance)

fvckerurl:

Mistuh Darcee. <3

Haha Mister Darcyyyy! :)))