Love Makes the Difference

An officemate read one of my blogs and said, “Ang galing mo magsulat ah!” (You write really well!) I thanked her and explained, “It’s because I love to write and when you love what you do, you tend to be good at it.”

I realize that that is especially true of me.

When I was still a student, I kept on complaining that I was really terrible at memorization. I dreaded exams with enumeration quiz types because I tended to blank out and get low grades in those. Dates of important history events were also hard to keep track of, so I got line of 7’s in some Sibika (Civics) subjects.

Essay was my favorite quiz type because I have a way with words and sometimes managed to get perfect scores on questions that I had no idea what the answers to actually were. But when the essay answers needed to be quoted verbatim from books, that was a different story. Due to this, I got a 75 midterm grade for Religious Studies back in College, and I feared I would lose my scholarship.

That’s how bad I am at memorization.

Supposedly.

But how come, back in high school, when our Literature teacher made us memorize an entire book (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar), I got a 99 on the exam and eventually a 98 final grade?

How come my friends expect me to come up with birthday stuff because I never forget a birthday?

How come I constantly amaze people with my ability to recite quotes from movies I had just seen?

How come I could jot down lyrics of many songs I have memorized by heart?

What was the difference between the subjects I did bad at and the ones that I didn’t?

Love for the subject.

That said, I hereby make it my personal mission to find my Lit subject in life. And major in it.