Endless bloopers, food- and beer-laced (woohoo!) review sessions and a shouting match with Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) employees, and here we are. Full-fledged, licensed Environmental Planners. This year’s passers included, there are less than 620 EnPs in the entire Philippine archipelago. I am one of them. And yes, I understand if you don’t know what an Environmental Planner is. The answer is P.D. 1308.
I’m not sure if I should be proud of the fact that I’m one of the first few (waaw, pioneers) or sad that there are so few of us, especially when I believe our role is crucial – and I have to say all too often neglected in the face of ever-present selfish political and private interests and misguided policy and implementation – to national development.
I’ve never been a licensed anything before so that in itself is exciting for me. I’m not an architect or engineer. I don’t fall into any of the de-kahon categories of eligible EnP Board exam takers i.e Public Administration, Political Science, Economics, and the aforementioned professions. I had to spend half an hour explaining to the PRC evaluator that my undergraduate course (BA Social Science major in Area Studies) actually qualifies me to take the exam, and that I had completed all of my requirements for my MA in Urban and Regional Planning save for my thesis which is due for defense soon. He of course acted unconvinced. What is Area Studies and why does UP come up with such strange courses? he asked. Well how should I know?? I had to endure the PRC guy’s subtle put-down, and his offer of a bribe! Imagine that. He said since my application was “alanganin”, he would put in a good word for me with the Board of Environmental Planning as long as I provide him with copies of my reviewers – which he would undoubtedly sell to clueless students. I was taken aback and had to ask “manong, okay lang po ba yon?” to which he replied, “oo, ako bahala sa ‘yo.” The nerve! I felt deeply disappointed at the entire PRC, for putting my application and my chances of becoming a professional planner at the mercy of a single employee looking for an easy buck. I was enraged, but had to keep my cool and remained pe-tweetums until the very end.
Edison wasn't as placid. In typical Edison fashion, he engaged in an actual fight with a terribly uncourteous, unethical PRC employee who had the gall to shout at us in front of an auditorium full of applicants, walk out and then mutter "putangina mo" under his breath as we passed by - like the complete coward that he was, hiding behind his position.
No offense, but the PRC has got to be one of the most rotten government agencies I’ve ever dealt with. It’s not just the bribery, but the sheer disrespect for the applicants and people in general. The application process is completely demoralizing. You’d be down and out long before you even take your exam. I think they make it a point to dehumanize you. Wala lang, power tripping. They probably think they’ll feel better about their own crappy situation by haranguing and taking advantage of the applicants.
I digress. So I got through that application with more than a few upsets. But that was only the beginning. The greater burden, of course, was actually passing the exam. Indeed, the pressure was on.
I come from a family that doesn't take failure lightly. Thus was the rationale for my keeping the fact of the exam a secret. But really, how could you keep it a secret when your friends and fellow exam-takers spend weekends holed up in your house reading about Myrdal and pedo-ecological zones, and eating indescribable amounts of food? Ah yes, food. From Len's pretzels and leftover cake, Mark's E-Aji, UP's life-saving squidballs, down to Lisa's cooking, Mama's salt crackers and Vir's fantabulous meat-and-vegetable concoction, there was no shortage of things to put in our mouths when we could no longer remember the things we had read about 10 seconds past. If you ask me, it was the food that got us through. That and ice cold San Mig Lite.
And of course there were Mark's famous index cards full of environmental laws, which we tried so desperately to memorize. PD 1151. 1586. Art XII Sec 1. 7279. You wouldn't believe how many laws and regulations we have on planning and the environment. I swear nag-diarrhea ang utak ko. And guess what? Out of the hundreds of laws and statutes I flipped through, only two appeared on the exam. One section of the Constitution and the Hazardous Wastes Act (RA 6969. How can you not remember that?) Ay, I wanted to kill Mark.
But not as much as I wanted to kill him on the 2nd day of the exam. Which was when my ultimate blooper happened.
Wednesday, May 30, I woke up to a badass crazy churning stomach. Bad omen ye think? I popped two tablets of Kremil-S, drank two cups of hot tea and wobbled my way out of the house to the exam center at 630 am. I prayed so hard for the pain to go away, knowing that exam #2 was the toughest, and comprised the largest percentage of the total score. Hey, 45% is no joke.
I was feeling a little better as the exam started. I took out the calculator I borrowed from Mark (because my most favorite calculator, the one I'd used since high school, had gone missing) and turned it on.
On. ON. ON, I say!!
It just stared back at me. Dead.
I. Didn't. Have. A. Calculator. Me, who shuns anything Math-related as if it was a leper. Lara, who naturally flunked her Math17, the grade of which sits hauntingly at the very top of her Transcript of Records. This silly silly girl, who failed to check if the damned thing was working before she stashed it in her plastic envelope. Thoughts of population projections, teacher-student ratio, NPV, IRR and whatnot then filled my head.
Complete, utter, terror-filled panic.
Fuck it. I had to make a choice. So I straightened my shoulders and tapped Aldrin, asking if he had an extra calculator. None. I slipped out of the room and called my mother who had just driven away. None. I knocked on the other room and called Len and Edison, begging for an extra calculator. None. By then the proctor was asking me to turn off my celphone. Couldn't she see the desperation in my eyes? I explained my predicament, which she in turn announced to ALL the examinees, in the hopes that at least one extra calculator would turn up. None. At all? Not even the musical, blinking kind that kindergarten kids use? None??
She asked me what kind of batteries were in my calculator. I had to unscrew the back of the calculator (don't ask me where I got the screwdriver) to find out. AAs. Then she said the most miraculous thing: Okay, we'll buy the batteries.
There is compassion out there, after all.
30 minutes later the new batteries arrived and I sat there, pushing them in as I cursed my boyfriend (Nah, kidding. But I did want to wring his neck.). And...voila! It still. Wasn't. Working!!! Gaaaaaaaaarrrk!!!
To make the long story short, I ended up solving the equation manually. Take note, equation. Singular. Yes people. True to form, the exam had only one question that needed a calculator. All my wasted energy, half my spirit drained away in the first five minutes of that exam, violating one of Agnes's exam rules (wag gumawa ng eksena sa exam)...all of it - for one question. I didn't know whether to cry or laugh hysterically.
It didn't matter. In the end, the exam played its part to the hilt: it scared me to death.
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Ang haba na nito. To be continued.
