Not long ago, there was this angst-ridden third year Journalism student who studied in what many perceive as the premier state university. It was summer that year, and while everyone was either busy packing his/her bikini or swimming trunks for a beach escapade or heading his/her way to Baguio for a cold and winter-feel vacation, he was stuck in the Collegian office, where he works by the way, groaning over a problem.

It turned out that he was having a dilemma in choosing where to have his internship. All his classmates were already accepted as interns in dailies, magazines or ad agencies. He, on the other hand, was criticizing his classmates for being sellouts. For him, newspapers were merely ideological state apparatuses that the rich employ to maintain status quo. He thought magazines did the same, while working in ad agencies was not worth his three-year ordeal and training as a student./td>

Eventually, his predicament came to his parents' attention, which led to a homily over the dinner table one night. "Leftist ka kasi kaya ang dami mong reklamo, paabot nga ng kanin," his mother quipped. His father, meanwhile, was delivering a sermon about how passé the "underground movement" is and how Jose Ma. Sison is making money in Utrecht while his comrades in the Philippines are dying in vain. Like a churchgoer attending mass, he was silenced. And finally, as if being forced to receive communion, his father had him swallow his principles. "'Dun ka na mag-OJT sa Tito mo sa Senado. Mataas posisyon n'ya doon. Pupunta tayo bukas," his father hollered.

And so the next day he was accepted as an intern in the Senate. He worked in a room in the fourth floor, in the media relations office. The office secretary told him three others from what many perceive as less "premier state universities" were also having their internship in the same office. One was answering phone calls while another was photocopying documents. The last one was out running errands.

The secretary introduced him to the other employees. There were six of them, five ladies and a guy. The bubbly one ecstatically shook his hand and uttered, "Pamangkin ka pala ni boss. UP grad din ako." Then, she faced her computer and continued laying-out what seemed like Senate passes. The rest of the staff looked at him with nonchalance.

It took him two weeks to realize that he was a total office bum. Unlike the three fellow interns who were always busy making or answering calls, photocopying documents, and running errands, he was just watching cable tv. And so sick with boredom, he just pried into the lives of his officemates, he chatted with them as they were busy doing clerical work that even elementary students could do without any brain activity - making IDs, writing letters, faxing documents, and clipping news articles that bore the names of senators from newspapers.

After a whole day of chitchat, he gathered that almost all of his "officemates" were Journ grads, two were even cum laude, from what many perceive as the "premier state university."

The next day, without telling his parents, he quit internship.)

This semester, the angst-ridden Journalism student is in his senior year. But unlike his former blockmates, he is not yet graduating in April. In one of his Mass Communication classes at the beginning of the sem, the teacher asked her students where they wanted to work after graduation. More than half of the class easily answered with gleaming eyes and what seemed an unwavering conviction, they are all going to be broadcast journalists. When it was his turn, the teacher asked, "Ikaw Xavier, fourth year ka na, anong balak mo?"

"Ewan ko po," he muttered.