juleswrotethese

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The One with the Valedictory Address

I wrote this for my speech at the Thomson Reuters' Manila Speaking Circle Storytelling Session.

When I was in pre-school, I was the valedictorian of our class. Naturally, I was instructed to deliver the valedictory address at our graduation. My mom, by nature, is competitive. She would push us to be the best, to never settle for less, and to give our all to whatever it was we were doing. So when she heard about my class standing, she was elated. She asked one of my titas to write my speech and she had me memorizing and practicing that speech for weeks. Not a day passed by that I didn’t rehearse.

Come graduation day, I didn’t know that I was supposed to deliver the speech in front of the whole student body. I think it's important to note that I was graduating from a university, so when I say "the whole student body," it included the elementary and high school students. When they called me up to the stage, I was frightened. I was a 5-year-old kid expected to speak up in front of what looked like hundreds of students. To me, it was an ocean of people.

I tried to gather what was left of my voice and started, “Dear teachers, parents, classmates,..” I saw and felt all the eyes on me and before I could even finish my introductory sentence, I burst into tears. What was supposed to be a welcome to my address became an end to my self-confidence “….MAAAAAMIII AYOKO NAAAAAA,” I hurled.

I kept looking for my parents but I couldn’t see them. It was like everything went black and I was shipped off into another dimension until I felt my mom’s hand dragging me backstage. My parents and my teacher talked to me and asked me to finish my speech. They eventually got me back to the stage, but I stood there talking while hugging my mom’s leg. I never got to finish that speech and its videotape haunts me to this very day.

It may be a funny story now, but to a kid growing up, it was a nightmare. After that incident, I hated public speaking. I was and still am frightened of it. I never liked having the attention of several people while I talk and its very idea makes my palms incredibly sweaty. It was a fear and a baggage I carried with me all my life.

That was until I became in touch with my potentials and what I could do with them if I weren’t scared. I realized that I was more scared of leaving them as mere potentials than stepping outside my comfort zone. It is always a better choice than looking back and seeing all the time I wasted being scared instead of discovering my talents and skills. So I joined this club and enrolled in law school afterward. Right now, I’m still scared of public speaking, but I’m slowly learning to control it and not let it control me.

You may have noticed that this is quite similar to what I talked about in my past speech. The common denominator is fear. It's just that I firmly believe that every single one of us has potentials and talents that we can’t pursue because we’re scared. Just as we’re about to step out of our comfort zones, a single inconvenience happens, and we’re back to hiding. But let me be that outside force today that tells you that it’s okay. We’re going to be okay. Let me remind you that growth is supposed to be uncomfortable, it’s supposed to be difficult and stressful. Once we step out of our comfort zones and try pursuing our passions and look back, we won't see the discomfort we felt, but how far we've come because of the baby steps we took. And that will always push us to become our better selves. So let this be today’s affirmation: we are capable-- of achieving our dreams and overcoming whatever obstacle we might face towards those dreams. After all, we owe it to ourselves and our younger scared selves to try.

[juleswrotethese]

Taglines and captions I wrote for our shop's Charles and Keith collection.

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Captions for our shop's VS wallet collection.

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Captions I wrote for our shop's promotional posts.

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Some of the captions I wrote for our VS bag collection.

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Here's a link to the articles I wrote for Trip101.

[juleswrotethese]

17-year-old me

I went back and read some stuff I wrote when I was younger and this is something that caught my attention.

You know what's nice about writing? It's that when you do it, you're preserving a moment. Actually, you're not just preserving it. You're immortalizing it. Just imagine the power you hold, being able to immortalize something that is fleeting-- a moment, a feeling, an emotion. I mean, people leave and change their minds. But what you write about them and who they were when you wrote about them, don't. When you go back and read the stuff you wrote about a certain someone, it just brings you back to how you were feeling and who you were when you wrote it. That's basically how powerful and torturous writing is.

All I can say about my 17-year old self though is that damn gurl u sad. Kidding. Really though. I was sad and heartbroken and just straight up done.

edit: posting a redirect link to my other blog because as it turns out, Tumblr now has a character limit. Surprise, surprise. So, read this thing first, and then come back here for the behind-the-scenes of that piece and WHAT HAS CHANGED IN A SPAN OF THREE YEARS.

the BTS (behind the scenes, not the band)

There is no behind-the-scenes for that piece. I was sad. I thought of the boy I have loved since I was fifteen and what happened to us broke my heart and I wrote it down. That's that.

Maybe except for the obvious fact that that post was badly edited and is just a whole block of paragraph. yikes.

WHAT CHANGED? Nothing much. Just the fact that my heart is no longer breaking for this guy. My world is completely fine and A-okay without him. It's kinda strange though, I always thought I would always remember him and that I would always take the love we've shared for a short period of time for the rest of my life, but guess what? It has been three years. I'm already twenty years old; fresh out of college and will be having my first day of work tomorrow.

--and to my surprise, two people giving up on each other after years of trying not to is not the saddest story in the world.

That's what three years taught me. I've met a lot of people in those three years. I've been through A LOT. Three years AGO, he was the only one I could write about. Three years LATER, I've written about greater loves and worse heartbreaks, none of which included him.

This is actually one of the things I find fascinating about life. When we're young, our worlds are really small. We think that heartbreak changes everything, but as we grow older and try to look back, our 17-year old selves wouldn't even think they'd make it to twenty with all those broken hearts.

As it turned out, it's not just one heartbreak that changes our lives forever. It's actually a lot. We have to go through multiple heartbreaks and world-shattering moments to get where we want to be and be the person we always dreamt of being.

Like I've said in my previous post, I'm in a good place right now. It took me a long, long while to be here. And who knows? three years from now, a scared and confused 23-year old me might be looking back and reading this post, looking for something she feels like she lost along the way.

Hey, 23-year-old me, if you're reading this, you'll make it.

To my 17-year-old self, hang in there. you'll be okay.

And to the 17-year-olds reading this, buckle up.

[juleswrotethese]

Life Through the Eyes of a Minister's Child

Growing up, our parents would always tell us that everything we do is a reflection of our dad's ministry and the way they raised us. So of course, I resented that. I looked at it as an obstacle, like it was something that stopped me from doing what I wanted to. I have never gone to a sleepover with friends and was never allowed to tag along to outings and reunions. I didn't like it and I felt like it was preventing me from being happy and was taking away my freedom to enjoy my youth.

I also didn't like that we had to completely uproot our life whenever we would get assigned to another locale, leaving us no choice but to leave friends behind, transfer to another school, and basically just start a new life from the ground up. I didn't like it. I didn't like the boxes, the packaging tapes, the dust from under all that furniture, the broken sink of the new home, and the new set of people we had to adjust to.

We were also raised with all these stories from my dad's time when he had to cross muddy rivers and ride carabaos to officiate a service of another locale. He would leave on a Wednesday night and return home on a Friday because the transportation was dismal and my mom had to be left alone with my sister and me.

There was also a time when he rode a jeepney and sat across some of the province's NPAs and they talked about kidnapping him because he looked like a foreigner. He was guided enough that another commuter, a complete stranger, translated the dialect for him and warned him.

These were all just stories to me, but as I grew older, I realized all the ways I fell short of the child our ministry deserved. I started seeing that it was one of the most important things I was blessed to be born with. It's not just because we don't have any trouble asking for our dad's signature on our salaysays, but because of how even though we had to give up a lot of things for the safety of our parents' tungkulin, Papa God makes sure to bless us with more than what we deserve.

It's also living beside the church, how whenever we feel down and hopeless, it's literally just ten steps away. It's the lunch time BEM stories, the bible verses pick-me-ups, the blessings in disguise, the brethren's love, and the family prayers at the tribuna.

Being inside the ministry may not be everyone's cup of tea. Some might see the lessons and values it requires as "old school," but when you're in it, you'll never go hungry. I used to not understand it, but it's true that it's probably one of the safest places you can be in. It's not extravagant and it has its downs, but it's quiet and peaceful.

I hope my KADIWA friends get to read this, not because I'm trying to get you to pursue ministry or marry a minister, but because somehow I hope that this sheds some light on how blessed we really are even though we don't always see it. I guess I'll end this by leaving you with what my mom always tells us, and it's that there may be a lot of things we had to give up for the ministry, but there are more things Papa God makes sure to give us first because we are in it.

[juleswrotethese]

THIS IS ME

(This is a spiel I wrote for our college's general assembly program.)

In this society, people who are different often get mocked. Suddenly, our different skin colors, larger waistlines, flatter noses, scars and cuts, and even our mental condition and serious illnesses were taken against us. We were labeled for something we have no control over. Because of these scars and “imperfections,” we were made to feel like we didn’t have the right to belong to something bigger that would complete us. We fought to have a seat at the table and we had to prove ourselves. We were left behind. We had no choice but to hide in the dark and be pushed aside because we weren’t “normal.”

But we will no longer live in the dark. We will no longer live in the shadows of those who meet the standards. Every person deserves respect, empathy, and love. Humanity should know no skin color, no specific number on that weighing scale. It should not be given only to those who are “flawless," because these differences complete us. They make us who we are. Now that you're a part of THIS family, you are accepted for who and what you are. You are a part of something bigger—you are more than your imperfections. You have a seat at the table, and if you don’t, you will be given your own table and you will confidently and unapologetically sit there with your friends. Here in the College of Communication, we are taught not only to be the best version of ourselves but also to love ourselves and embrace our weaknesses and turn them into strengths. These weaknesses make us stand out from the crowd. This is who we are. This is me.

[juleswrotethese]

I compiled in this google drive the scripts I wrote in college, the projects I formulated for the fulfillment of our subjects, and other write-ups that are too long to post here.

[juleswrotethese]

To Seniors

(I wrote this letter for the graduating batch 2018-2019 as the College of Communication's farewell to the students and teachers)

To my dearest seniors,

You entered this college as young, hopeful, and determined kids who had no idea what was in store for them. It was a huge step, having to move to a university, leaving your high school ways behind and starting to work towards your dreams. Some of you even had to leave their homes and be far away from your parents-- you had to endure the sadness you felt on the Sundays you spent alone in your dormitories instead of being at home having lunch with your families. You had to miss the birthdays of your loved ones because your homes were too far and settle with greeting them through video calls. It was too much for a kid who had just graduated high school and is used to going home to their mothers’ cooking in the afternoon.

You took huge steps after huge steps-- faced drastic changes which you had no choice but to go through for your dreams. You had to lose sleep, go to school on holidays, cry over papers, get left behind on family getaways, drink an enormous amount of caffeine just to get through the night, spend half of your lives facing your laptops, barely able to go home because of the amount of work you had to finish. Yet here you are, waiting and ever ready to wear that cap and gown and march to the stage and finally say to yourself that you did it. You made it through. Now that you look back, who would’ve thought that that scared little girl and boy who had just graduated from high school and had lots of time to spend with their friends would be able to make it this far? Who would’ve thought that that one long night you struggled to go through to make it to the dead line would lead to this? I am so proud of you for not giving up. I am proud of you for pushing yourself to get up in the morning when all you wanted to do was get a decent amount of sleep. I am proud of you for trying even after you’ve failed countless times. I am proud of you for making it through every difficult day at school and for overcoming all the anxiety you felt.

I can never put into words how proud I am of the persons you all have become. I have witnessed your growth through the course of your journey in this college. And I am grateful. I am grateful that despite all the work you had to get done, you dedicated yourselves in serving this college. I know that the pressure of graduating had taken its toll on you all too many times—and yet you found it in your heart to serve and give back to the college. I know it wasn’t an easy task, and I know that with all the work you had to do, you didn’t need more. But you still did it, willingly and whole-heartedly. You served this college with all the passion in you, no matter how tired you were and for that, I am eternally grateful.

To the professors, I want to express my deepest gratitude for taking care of our students like they are our own children. I know that you too had lives of your own, but you still guided them, patiently waiting for them to learn from their mistakes and be the persons they are meant to be. I can never thank you enough for the dedication and commitment you have to this college. All the work may have been a huge headache, but thank you for doing it undoubtingly. You’ve been the second parents of our students, honing them to become better people who know how to look back to where they’re from and the journey they’ve been through.

And to my dearest seniors, as I bid goodbye to you, I hope that you take with you all the lessons you’ve learned with me. Not just academically or the ones you can learn from the books. I want you to take with you the times we’ve been through together. All the struggles you had to face, the mistakes you had to learn from, and the triumphs you are most proud of. They make you who you are. I want you to remember these times when you start doubting yourselves, when you commit another mistake that you think is impossible to face, or when you are on top of the world. Never forget how much you had to go through to make it as far as to where you are right now. Most importantly, never ever forget to thank and give all the glory to our Almighty God. He was the one who was there for you when you thought you had no one, who comforted you on times you felt hopeless, kept you company when you felt most alone, and He is the one who made all this possible. Again, thank you and I am proud of all of you. ‘Till we meet again.

[juleswrotethese]

Love Languages

As little kids, the romantic comedies we watched taught us that love is loud– it is jewelries bought in velvet and suede boxes, buses ran after, and  boomboxes held outside our bedrooms. As we grew older and entered this little bubble called “first love,” it was further proven to us that it should be loud, otherwise it isn’t real. Photos were posted up on everyone’s walls, long messages became a trend, and bouquets became bestsellers. 

Personally talking, growing up, I’ve always loved love. I loved the grand gestures, the cheesy handwritten letters and good morning notes, the poems, the songs, I can go on and on and you’ll think of me as one giant ball of cheese which eventually grew to a person. But I guess somewhere along the way, I lost that. Don’t get me wrong though, I still love love, art and words, but if you come to think of it, how difficult could it be to write a letter or two? How do you know if it’s true or not? I have witnessed enough pain and lies to make me stop believing in them, but I’ve never stopped doing so in love. As much pain as I’ve witnessed, the love I’ve felt is twice as much; just more than enough to make me hold onto it tightly.

Oh well, if we keep on talking about the whole idea of love, we’re going to be here for a while, so instead of babbling about all the cheesy things I used to like, I would like to share with you the kinds of love I’ve witnessed and stories of it I’ve heard over the years– the ones that made me hold onto it tightly.:  

Look at how much love a look can hold. Our lolo was in his last years when this photo was taken. He was often sick and he didn’t have enough strength to work. But when his first grandson was born, he used his pension money that was intended for his medicines to buy him that red toy car.  

This photo isn’t even enough to describe these two’s relationship. The love they have for each other only grows stronger as they grow older. They look out for each other’s children, and even reprimand each other when they aren’t taking care of their health. 

Most of the time, love comes in the form of an aunt who loves her nieces and nephews as her own, from the time when they can still fit in a make shift crib/boat/tub (?) ……

….to when they can barely do in this photo’s frame. 

There are many kinds of love and more plenty ways of showing it. I’ve downloaded a lot of pictures for this particular piece but none of them captured my tita driving all the way from Las Pinas to Zambales at night to provide us supplies of diapers, only to drive back again the next morning. 

They didn’t show my tito bringing his daughter foods every other day at her mom’s place– or how my dad rushed to the church when he heard the door shut while we were having our personal prayers because he knew mom was scared of the dark. 

Sometimes, it’s difficult to look for it. There can even be times when you feel like it doesn’t even exist, which makes the looking even more difficult than it already is. But here’s a promise– love will never be gone. It is always there. It may not be at your home, but it could be with your friends who support and accept you, your teammates who push you to do better, and all the other people who aren’t used to loving loudly. They’re there, I promise. All you have to do is look a little more closely. 

More importantly, aside from it always being there, it is unconditional and accepting. 

So if you love love and gestures as much as I do, why not show someone you love that you’re thinking of them? We know just the perfect gift. 

written by: Jullia Nicole Santiago 

[juleswrotethese]

The ABCs of Dressing Up

Figuring out your style has got to be one of the most crucial decisions you make. That threshold you cross when you ask your mom to stop choosing your clothes for you can be agreed to as a “make or break” point of your life. There are so many rules in choosing what to wear– what bottom is the perfect match to that new top your lola gave you as a New Year’s gift? What shoes do you wear? Do you sport a cute purse you so innocently “stole” from your mom’s closet? And even after answering all these questions, you still give up and throw a tantrum over how you don’t have enough clothes. 

So let’s settle this once and for all, shall we? What are the ABCs of dressing up? How do you know when you’re overdressed or under dressed? How do you know if your style reflects your real “brand” and captures your personality? Dontcha worry, we’re here to at least give you a few points on how to dress well and look absolutely stunning while not compromising your comfort. 

(Just a little bit of a disclaimer though, we don’t LITERALLY mean the ABCs. It’s a metaphor guys *insert an eyeroll gif here*) 

We live in a time where one glance at you can give even strangers the teeniest tiniest idea of who you are. Do you wear branded clothes from head to toe, or do you sport a class A pair from Cartimar?  Now, here’s the most important part to remember in dressing up. IT. DOESN’T. MATTER. I know, I know. It’s always easier said than done. We see all these quotes and posts in Facebook and other platforms telling us to not care what other people say about us, but when they won’t stop talking, how do you stop them from drowning out your own thoughts about yourself? How do you remember all the empowering words you see online when their whispers are louder and what they say is more believable?

Well, can we let you in on a little secret? Confidence. Again, I know that it’s easier said than done, but you’re the only one who can. You hold the immunity against other people’s opinions on your style and you have to acknowledge that first. That is the first step to achieving confidence. Need more proof? Here’s a couple from our team: 

This is Jules. Take a look at her outfit, do you recognize some staples from known brands? I don’t. After looking at her clothes, look at her smile. Look at how well that smile goes with her shirt and Greenhills-bought denim skirt. How can we even argue? You know what they say, the only accessory a girl ever needs is her smile. 

Now this is Thea. Let me give you a little background on when this picture was taken. Thea had just said yes to her first boyfriend. She was on a cloud (again, figuratively) You’ll see some brands there but who’s to say that those lanterns shine brighter than her? (Not that her happiness came from her jowa, but that’s for another article)��

I guess the point we’re trying to make here is, there really are no rules in dressing up– that’s the actual joy of it. You get to put on whatever the hell you want, whether it’s printed on printed, colored on colored, who cares? You should only be the one to tell what your style is. Remember how we said that figuring it out is one of the most crucial decisions ever? It’s because you literally have to figure out what piece you’ll feel the most confident in without putting what others have to say in consideration. What’s important is you’re you, and that’s amazing.  That’s enough. 

We know this kinda contradicts the very name of our shop, but we promised you honesty, quality, and beauty. And if you think that branded stuff adds up to your ALREADY EXISTING beauty, then why should you refrain from buying and wearing them? Again, it’s your style, and it’s your call. No matter what happens, we’ll be here to be your one-stop shop for fashion, luxury, and comfort. 

written by: Jullia Nicole Santiago