What's your UPCAT story?

Whenever the UPCAT weekend comes, I reminisce how the UPCAT became the reminder that it is for me right now how God can turn what may seem to be the most unfortunate events into miracles. I remember how I was so stressed out the day before the exam - how I had to compete in a contest I badly wanted to back out from to be able to rest my head for the next day, how I had to wake up and leave the house at midnight because of an emergency, and how I cried the dawn away because it felt like the universe was conspiring against me the whole time. I remember how ashamed I was on the exam day while I was trying to get out of Palma Hall when everybody was trying to get in, the guard shouting to everyone to check that the building in the exam permits indeed was Palma Hall. (I knew where my building was. I just didn't know you couldn't get to the pavilions through the back of Palma Hall.) I remember how so close I was to crying while walking fast to my building and how repeatedly I was chanting pleasedon'tcryit'sokay in my head. I remember how I had to run to the exam room when I got in the building. I remember how bad my tummy was throughout the exam and how unfair I thought it was that I wasn't feeling well during one of the most crucial exams I'd have to take in my whole life. I remember all the stress.

I also remember having this dream one night after the exam and before the results came out. In my dream, I was in a classroom, sitting at the back row, in the corner of the room. I knew I was in college because the teacher was giving out thick binders of what I knew was a sort of guide for freshies. The walls of the room were white and they stretched high up until the rectangular windows near the ceiling.

I remember, most importantly, how one day during first year college I just realised that the room in my dream was one of those in Palma Hall because I had already been in one. I remember how low my confidence that I could pass was when I took the exam and how God defied all hindrances and expectations to let me live the four beautiful, blessed years in UP he had prepared for me. And I say beautiful and blessed because I cannot imagine how my UP life could have been better than how it turned out to be.

Everytime I get scared of the big things I have to tackle head on I try to remember what big things I had to face in the past that I did get through - like the UPCAT - and perhaps get through well at that. I don't gain confidence that I will succeed, I gain stronger faith that God has my back, no matter how the world may conspire against me.