[Free Entry #10]

My Observations and Experiences as a "Freshie" in UP Diliman

Having your life in a dormitory for the first time is a little bit hard and uncomfortable. Apparently, I've got no choice but to accept and be grateful with this opportunity to live here in Kalayaan Residence Hall rather than taking the stress and risk if I decided to go to Quezon City everyday coming from a far province, specifically in San Pedro City of Region IV-A, and considering also the difficulty of the journey it would give by traffic. But as days pass, the condition used to be convenient and adjacent for me to cherish my College Life as a "dormer" and appreciate my environment around the Campus.

It's been a while since I last used GPS (Global Positioning System) of my phone. As far as I remember, I used this radio navigation system when I was transferring my things and stuff in the dormitory for the preparation for our first day as a student of the University. I and my father had used this to go here in UP because of a little fact that we were not fully aware with the routes we should take to reach our destination. With the help of the said device, we were given the absolute location (location coordinates) of the Kalayaan Dormitory.

Yeah! Reaching our destination is good enough, but I as a "Freshie", consider this UP campus a large one. Before having our first official day as an "isko", I have decided to ask some random upper-class men (those ones who do not look trolls) for relative locations of the places that would hold my classes. They told me things like "what-jeep-to-ride" and "what-to-look-for". Consequently, they also told me some significant landmarks to look around Diliman in case I would be demanded to go there. The things and pieces of advice they have said became very helpful to me in my one-semester stay here. I also get to know different places and some "pasikot-sikot" or "short-cuts" that would surely be used in my stay here.

Based on self-observations for a month stay inside the campus, there are well-observable human-environment interactions occurring. As an example, many people tend to perform their warm-ups and exercises around the campus because of some well-known factors like having a good (relative at the same) temperature of the environment; it is also not polluted here contrary to urban places external to UP Diliman.

In another part of my observations, I had considered that noticing the similarities of the characteristics and interests of the students inside the campus was very difficult. So I came up to the idea that this is the main purpose of different organizations here. I see them in different perspective, analysis, and categories. They differ in purpose and significance but at least they are built with people with the same interests and goals. I therefore conclude that they are like regions dividing the students in this premiere university with different scale or analysis.

                                       (Photo is retrieved from Google)