Fast Forward to 2012: New Life in Cebu

It's been years since the last time I posted in this blog. Reading through the old entries brings back bittersweet memories. I was a student, struggling to survive college. Fast forward to my penultimate year in the university, I again struggled to pass Audit. Imagine, in my last year in college, I had doubts if I could make it through. I cried a lot. I was really disappointed with myself that time. I thought my dreams would be gone but I was blessed enough to have given, again, another chance to get through with it. I passed in the removal examination. Unfortunately to some of my classmate, they failed. But the thing was, there was something wrong with the curriculum. We sort of protested with the results of the tests and the effectiveness of the curriculum but to make things short, the faculty reversed its decision to drop the students who failed to pass the examination. We all made it. We marched together to get that hard-earned diploma. 

Moving forward to May 2012, I wanted to take the review class for the CPA boards in Cagayan de Oro because that's were most of my classmates would want to. Some of them went to Manila to enroll a class but Cagayan de Oro was cheaper. My classmates were very excited and we went to the review center to check the place as well as our dormitory. My aunt, who financed my college education, had a little bit of a setback financially. She could only pledge for the review cost so my parents would have to finance my monthly expenses. I was at Cabadbaran, my hometown, that time when I learned about it. It dawned on me that time that, given my parents' financial status, my brother would have to stop a term for me to make the ends meet in Cagayan de Oro. 

I didn't want that. 

I then decided to take the class in Cebu - far from my classmates. My parents had already been renting an apartment in Cebu ever since. It would save a lot if I would just take the class there and not worry about rent and food. I sailed immediately to Cebu and enrolled in a review class for 5 months. In an instant, a new environment seemed like a new life to me. It was like starting from scratch. I had no friends. And I sat at the end of the row, like a newbie geek you see in the movies.