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Passed

The Dean's Office of the College of Arts and Letters of UP Dilimas has just informed me that, yes, I passed the three comprehensive exams I took on Western Literature, Asian Literature in English, and Philippine Literature in English. As I've blogged before, each exam lasted for eight hours and was spread over a period of two weeks. This is for my Ph.D. in English (Major in Creative Writing).

I have just recovered from the shell-shock of the review process (I had to read tons of books in a month) and from the mental process of digesting all those books and writing a coherent, 50-page compendium of answers for each of the three fields of expertise. Since I answered each question in single space, that meant I wrote 100 pages of answers for every field in the exam.

Atleast now, I can be assured of 300 pages of lecture notes for my future classes in these fields of expertise.

And since Bacardi One, a group of young gay men, will have a party tomorrow and has invited Ang Ladlad, then we will go to Maria Orosa at Malate and have a round of drinks.

And yes, do not say the pink web log and my pink color motif has no effect at all. I just came this morning from a lecture on Feature Writing at the QC Secondary Schools Press Conference held at QC Science High School. After my brief talk, the students ran to me -- with their camera phones, their notebooks for autograph -- and mobbed me. Their faculty student-paper advisers also talked to me and said they will join the campaign. Then we had a boisterous round of picture-taking and exchange of contact numbers.

Both the teachers and the students (numbering more than 1,000) said they have seen me on TV many times and they will register for the elections and help in my campaign. When you ask the help of the young and those who will enter media later (be they campus journalism or mainstream media work), how can you lose even if are up against those with gazillions in campaign funds?

As Estrella Alfon said: "O perfect day!"
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