Do you know this boy? I would rather you call him Nathan, rather than “F,” which somehow connotes the last in the rung, below the A pluses and the Ds.

His fifteen minutes came with the delivery of The Speech at the college commencement two summers ago. I heard all the words that might be “trite” for some, but it rang true for me and a lot of other people who stopped by to listen, who paused from their lives to read the forwarded e-mail that has become inbox fodder the equivalent of “wear sunscreen.”

I stood way back at the Hardin ng mga Diwata. I came there as spectator, not as participant, although I was supposed to be with them. In fact I did not want to come, I did not want to be reminded that I made the grades. But because of some professor’s whim I was barred from graduating. Four years of work eradicated in five seconds of a local god's whim.

Life was unfair, but I still attended the ceremonies. Because my friends were there, and perhaps because I wanted to wallow in the bitterness and irony of it. So when I heard The Speech, before it became e-mail fodder and media material, I recognized the pain that must have come from having to share with everyone the cruelty of living in a world indifferent to poverty. There was truth in that speech, and it was a reality that I knew only too well.

My greatest angst while in college, and even now, was that there are people who coasted through life relatively unencumbered. When I came to UP, I first thought that it was a school for the smart and for the poor. I believed in socialized tuition because it made it possible for me to acquire a university education. That was the reputation the university had. My high school history teacher fostered a discussion oriented class, because she said “that is how class discussions are held in UP. If you want to go there, you better be able to argue your way through Greek classical history.”

It was an ideal that might have been true in another time, when students were more concerned about learning, when teachers actually gave a damn about teaching. But in the university I came to know, most of the iskos and iskas came to class with nary a clue about what was to be discussed. They bluffed their way through class whenever they could. For people whose majors required a lot of reading, not too many of them actually bothered to pick up the books. Their lives revolved around much more mundane concerns like acquiring the newest Gucci bag design, or discussing the Celebrity Deathmatch.

All of these could be fun and satisfying, if all you are interested in is fluff. It could even actually pass for a valid existence if you didn’t have to worry about how to get to school the next day, or if your mother earned enough to have food set on the table. It infuriated me that most of the people around me in college walked around in a daze, feigning boredom and angst, their greatest problem was how to get around the dorm curfew because they wanted to attend the Elvis is dead concert. It infuriated me that while I worked hard to make good in my classes, these kids could slack off, drop a subject here and there. They could afford to, I couldn’t. I had to finish my education in the four years allotted to me, because that was how the world worked. There was no excuse.

It therefore made sense that I avoided hanging out with people like these. I figured that surely, not everyone is a dazed and rich brat. There would be other people who would know how life was like for those who had to endure two-hour commutes. There would be kids who could discuss Foucault and Derrida and actually know what postcoloniality meant, and they wouldn’t be just calling a bluff either.

Nathan was one of them. He worked harder than most of us, his determination was much more grim. If I were in a rut, his was a deeper quagmire. He was also definitely a smart, smart guy. If he had a GPA of 1.32 and graduated magna cum laude, it shouldn’t take you by surprise. The fifteen minutes generated by The Speech wasn’t just a self-congratulatory “look at me, I'm poor and I've made something of myself, hurrah hurrah." Because while the university champions itself as the “University of the Poor,” the reality is that most of its students are now upper, middle, lower middle class. Those poorer than that cannot afford to go to the premiere state university, they attend the lesser known, less privileged and much maligned State Us, like the one I attended in high school.

The boy behind The Speech didn’t ask for the media mileage. The university administration took it, propped it up for all the world to see, and used it as a defense against the budget cut. “See, not everyone in this university is concerned about parking and bandwidth. This boy persisted, and look at him now.” The media glossed over the untidy details, the boy with the speech became a manipulated image, a Poster Boy for the “Ayokong maging dukha” persuasion.

Should we blame him then for the image and the mirage that resulted from The Speech? The situation is two-pronged. I wouldn’t label it anti-poor. It was neither a crutch nor an excuse.

I also have other thoughts about all this, but the one that bothers me the most is the accusation that even the source material for the image was a fraud. Did Nathan – he deserves to have a name, and not a single dismissively assigned letter – take the easy way out? Was he really fond of “soft touches?”

I don’t think so. If I knew Nathan at all, I would say that he stood by his principles. I respect his decisions. Coasting by easily was never in his character, in the whole time that I came to know him. There were faulty professors to be had, and sometimes could not be avoided, because they were the only ones teaching the required class. But to base a whole academic career on soft touches is just not possible. The best class we had together was taught by an iron fisted woman whose biceps seem to have been shaped by lifting pyramids. She challenged us with all the theories, made the Lake District Poets a political discourse, and much much more. She kicked intellectual ass, and we felt like we earned every single point of the grade she gave us.

One should never rely on the gossip mill. Tidbits gathered from that may be amusing or interesting, but should be taken with grains of salt.

I also found it strange that people can exist in a common time and place and yet not have each other’s lives intersect, not even once in all the four, five, six to seven years we all spent in Diliman. To belong in the same university, in the same college, same department and course major, and not know. The only explanation I can think of for this is that we must live in parallel worlds which neither connect or intersect. Or that we have somehow acquired the powers of invisibility. You only see what your eyes want to see. We share the same time and place, but move in different circles.

"I have walked among you, but lost in anonimity." How many times have we passed other people in the hallways, perhaps sat a few chairs from them in class every day for several years, and still not recognize them should they approach you? Indifference does that.