Susan Jo: The Pursuit of First Love

YOU walk into the hall of your college building, almost dragging yourself for another three-hour class, another major subject. Another school year has progressed, and you begin to wonder if this one will lead you to a better path, or if it would be more live-saving to go back, take another track and be like the half of the collegiate population forced to choose future-saving courses over a threatening major like Journalism.

You enter the room. Your classmates must have sought the same idea once or twice. Since few are enrolled in this major, it is more likely that the only person that pressed you into this is yourself, maybe because you know you can’t go back, in case you venture another trail.

You notice someone, a woman at the farthest side of the room, dressed in a casual blouse and denims. Who is she, you ask your seatmate.

“You might be wondering what an accountant is doing in a Journalism class,” the woman said when she was asked to introduce herself, and later her story.

She is Susan Jo, 51, taking up a Master’s degree in Communication, with an accounting college degree and a CPA title under her belt.

When she was in grade school, she had a favorite literature teacher, and the mentoring kindled her love for the subject, a passion she will forever hold on to. But times were tough. When she was 14, her father died of cancer, and she had to help sustain her 10 siblings, so she decided to work, first as a private tutor. At 17 years old, she was already employed in an office work. Her work was her financial aid, and even when she was reviewing for the CPA board, she was still working, although it did not interfere with her studies. In fact, she graduated a valedictorian and this helped her get a scholarship at the University of Santo Tomas.

She took up a degree in accounting. “I followed what should be practical with me,” she explains the decision. This took her to more “financially rewarding” jobs, especially when she passed the CPA board exams. Now, she is working as a treasury officer in a major corporation.

But despite a career established in the field of accounting, her love for writing remained. “This curiosity built up inside me,” she says, “what if I had become a journalist, a writer, or a teacher?” She often attended writing seminars, but they just made her yearning for more. “I had this urge of going farther.” And from there, she enrolled a Master’s degree at UST without quitting her work.

“It’s just going back to my first love,” she reiterates. Talking in front of 50 or so students, she adds, “pursue whatever you love, whatever you want in your life, because it is where you find happiness.” And that is what she did, why she’s back in school, even if it means giving equal weight to work, academic and family life, even if it means sacrifices like taking a vacation leave every Monday.

Talking of family, her husband and daughter are among those querying her about her decision. Describing her relationship with them, she says, “It’s really very difficult.” But somehow she manages to give time, with the help of her faith. “Everything was the working of God.”

And while her activities seem endless, turning back is not necessary. “Why should I quit now?” she says. She reclines in her seat, pauses before she could end her testimony. She blinks her eyes, obviously tired, an evidence of the four hours of sleep she gets almost every night. “I pushed myself into this.”

You look at your classmates, all intently listening at her. Like Susan Jo, you also thrust yourself to this direction. After hearing her story, you ponder. Maybe, you say to your mind, this course was worth choosing after all.