Shoes and surveys

On the first day of classes of 2009, my groupmates and I delivered a report in management class in corporate attire.. a “culture” which is very NOT U.P., even according to the president of the university who also happened to be our professor in the class.

We sort of grazed the concept of “corporate culture”, and our professor suddenly inspired began pridefully spilling out what the UP “culture” is like. In a nutshell it’s one where we can wear pambahay cotton shirts and thrice-worn-nonwashed jeans everywhere, where a “boss’s” words are never The Rule, and where we can get away with almost anything we want done, even if it means fighting authority. Where we’d rather lose the job, than that effing dignity and reputation we’re notoriously known for. And hello, this IS the university president at seven in the morning revealing the embarrassing-gratifying-narcissist(?) ”humble” image of her work culture’s constituents (go judge it yourself).

The UP president wears awesome rainbow-hued corporate couture everyday, yet she understands and respects the rest of us who just want to be comfortable and “ourselves”—she’s a “UP person” I have high respects for, especially with the way she seems to balance these contrasting things in her life: classes, chancellors, “regular” or “activists” students and professors, staff, the government, the masa… then there’s her fashion, her family, her sleep time (she always arrives at our 7 AM class earlier than me)..Wow. I feel lucky to be learning the corporate culture, and management from “the best”, especially when I’m not a management student– there’s the comm director of this huge accounting firm in the country, the president of the premier state university of the country, the owners of one of the remaining export businesses in the country, my father… S#&%, I just realized, I SHOULD be really good at it myself too! O_O uh-oh.

Hahaha, ok, where was I?

The UP “corporate” culture is a lot like what you see in this picture: my groupmate-friend here couldn’t take her the agony of her “heels” anymore, she simply took it off while we were walking to the next building.

Well, she did have her every-reliable tsinelas in the bag anyway.

***

Something related to the “corporate career” talk:

As I was hanging out with two friends at Sunken Garden, two UA&P students approached us to survey us on our perceptions of call centers and BPOs as graduating students.

This is a personal observation among UP students: surveys are so close to heart (because everyone in UP has done a sturdy at some point of their college lives), and sometimes we even love answering it.

For one, me and my friend also do research (I’m a communication research major while he’s in business administration): we know how devastating it feels to be refused by informants. Both of us felt kind at that glorious-windy-sunny-day-sunken-garden-moment, and didn’t want these other kids to suffer the same pain as we have in the past.. so we took their instruments and chick-checked our perceptions away.

Second, answering surveys could be a learning moment for ourselves. One doesn’t get see survey results in a snap, but a bit later while answering, one may suddenly be hit by personal revelations like hey, my friends didn’t invite me to go BPO-ing with them because they couldn’t see me happily working in one, awwwww. 

A life tip (maybe): please answer surveys, especially when they’re by students, AND when you believe you’re still in that student-”I really don’t know what I want to do in my life” phase. Who knows, you might learn about yourself (even if it’s simply your “perception” of some X and Y brand-shampoo, or chocolate milk drink :D)!