University of the Philippines Manila

The Health Sciences Center

National Service Training Program
Padre Faura, Ermita, Manila

Learning Portfolio for 2nd Semester A.Y. 2020-2021

by:

Alon, Mikhael Paulo M.

June 2021
Synopsis:
This portfolio marks the closing of my second semester in UP. I must admit, it has been
a very stressful year spent stu(dying) online. I really wish I can say I learned a lot. To be honest,
even NSTP really stressed me out due to the surprisingly heavy workload of editing what ended
up being a total of four educational videos targeted at grade-schoolers. To be fair, I had so much
fun working with my groupmates to create content that was as whimsical and entertaining yet
educational (I hope) for little kids as well. It was a blast, really, to come up with great topics to
teach children and then get those creative juices running like mad to create a decent presentation
for the short tutorials we came up with. It was tiring, like much of the semester, but it was much
more enjoyable and rewarding than most requirements I’ve ever complied with. So, thank you!

Learning logs:
Video 1. This first video, the first part of the first episode of our Lakbay-Aral sa Tahanan
School series, was all about basic addition and subtraction. As a novice video editor who was
basically messing around with Adobe Premiere, this was the video that took me the longest to
finish because I had to whip up everything from scratch- the theme, the opening sequence, the
way the footage was presented (removing backgrounds was a pain; I spent so much time because
we weren’t using green screens at the time and the scenes at the grocery ended up kinda really
bad). This was definitely the video that sat unfinished for so long and then suddenly grew from
five minutes of rough, loosely bound bits and pieces of edited and unedited material into nearly
15 minutes of storytelling that was still rough but what the hell it was edited in three days,
basically- the very same three days before the deadline. Hehe. I must confess, this project helped
shed light on one of the greatest shortcomings of the entire online education system: thanks to
our abysmal, snail’s-pace, intermittent Internet connection at home, uploading the videos took
so long we had to cheat a little and submit links to still-empty Google Drive folders instead of
the video output itself, because the video was taking so long to get uploaded, and then put our
submissions into said folders a few hours after the deadline. I’m sorry for doing this and I’m
sorry to my groupmates for revealing our secret but looking back it’s just so funny how
unscrupulous and desperate we were. It was my bad, though, I was the one who took so much
time to edit the final output, and so I would gladly take any responsibility. Still funny though.

Video 2. Part 2 of our series on basic arithmetic! As aforementioned, Video 1 ended up

being too long, and we had to cut it into two so as to not go over the 10-minute time limit-
which, ironically, led to Video 2 running almost two minutes overdue. Go figure. This ended up
being a pleasant surprise, as I had originally meant to edit what ended up being Video 3 and
Video 6 into Videos 2 and 3, respectively. As time to edit slowly ran out, I just basically
welcomed anything to take off some of the work off my hands. I was pretty much satisfied with
how this single episode of the LTS series ended, and I learned a very important lesson: do not
aim too far. Know your limits. High standards require high competencies. Don’t cram what in
hindsight was a month’s worth of work for a noob video editor into what ended up being less
than two weeks of editing; this is only a surefire way to disappoint yourself and the people
depending on you. I should have grounded our group’s expectations deeper in reality from the
beginning. I naively thought I could produce an output of very high quality while still learning
the basics in an insufficient amount of time and was only extremely lucky to end up with a
medium-quality work. Next time, I will strive to work as if the deadline is tomorrow. Because
more often than not, the deadline is tomorrow. Ah well, life.
 Video 3. This video also took a lot of time to make because, despite having worked out
the opening sequence, the music track, the sound effects, the general flow of the material, and
other prerequisites to making another episode in what was planned as a multi-episode series, I
wound up struggling with another thing: removing backgrounds. This time my groupmates very
kindly used green screens for easier post-production, since the editing in the first video was
abysmal; however, to my extreme chagrin even with green screens I couldn’t properly edit the
backgrounds. I was extremely frustrated because at the time I was running out of time to edit
and had other requirements and the damn video just doesn’t look as nice as I wanted it to look.
So, I did what any reasonable person would do: I disregarded the need for sleep, pulled all-
nighters, and slaved away ceaselessly at improving background removal and pasting my
groupmates into the zoo background the script demanded. In hindsight, I should not have done
this. I really think I shouldn’t have. As aforementioned, I should have just set my expectations
of myself lower and just accepted that right now, this is my limit. But no: I wasted hours on
hours to get those shadows just right, to tweak the opacities just enough, to smooth out these
transitions just perfectly. In the end, I wasn’t even 100% satisfied with the video I ended up
settling for. And as outlined above, we even had to cheat the deadline a little. Moral of this
story? Get some sleep. I wholeheartedly commit myself to getting as much sleep as possible for
the rest of my days- after all my requirements are done. In which case, coffee is my savior.

Video 4. I didn’t edit this one! Jan edited this video, and can I just say, it’s such a relief
to have some work taken off your back when you most need some slack. I am very thankful for
Jan allowing me to work on some of my other requirements on other classes. Of course, I’m
also very thankful to all my other groupmates who worked on the script, recorded themselves,
and allowed me to mess with clips of them saying the cutest, funniest things! Adela, Bea, Fiona,
Adrian, you guys rock! And I had perhaps the most fun with this video, simply because now
I’m just a narrator, I didn’t have to worry about the technical aspects of the entire video
anymore! Voicing the character of Georgie in part 1 of this standalone episode of LTS was fun,
and I really felt that this output of ours really could be of some use to young children still
learning their multiplication. Did I mention I didn’t even edit this video, and had a pretty easy
job of recording lines for one of the narrators? I did? It felt good. Really good.

Video 5. Part 2 of Jan’s animated episode on multiplication and division! Once again, I
didn’t have to do much for this one, and I was actually editing Video 6 around the same time
Jan was working on this one, so thank you for helping me out with the editing, Jan! Main
takeaway: don’t take on so much work for yourself, self. Video editing is hard. Sheesh. Once
again, I enjoyed watching the final output because I saw just how other people could utilize
their own creativity by crafting their own educational presentation and comparing myself and
my own abilities and ideas against theirs- not in a competitive way, truly! but in order to better
myself by learning from my teammates. Speaking of; the group’s teamwork really shone on
these videos: task distribution, moral support with each other’s tasks, submitting for me when
my Internet connection was so slow. It really shows the power of friendship and love.

Video 6. The last video I’ve edited for this course- for now. This ended up being just
part 1 of an episode of LTS about the states of matter and cooking instant noodles. I even
appeared in this video as the host who cooks pancit canton for the weirdest cooking show ever.
I realized in doing this video that sometimes, it’s okay to struggle so much and try to give all
you’ve got for something, even if it feels like you aren’t even rewarded for your efforts. It’s fine
to allot so much time for a presentation that people probably won’t even get to see, to
meticulously work on the little things even if no one saw them, to do that thing you’re passionate
about even if no one else appreciates it. The things that make us happy are ours; we have no
need to justify them to others and even to ourselves. They’re just what we’re passionate about.
It’s okay to go crazy excited over a project that other people just think is a boring chore and to
spend way too much thought and time in polishing and putting the finishing touches on that
little piece of what you wish was perfection, because in its own way it is exactly that. Life’s too
short to not do the great things we love, even if it’s great only to us. Let’s just do it.

P.S. I’m still interested in finishing the story of the cook in the weirdest cooking show
ever. Adrian still never got his chance to shine in the limelight. I will definitely complete part 2
of episode 3 of Lakbay-Aral sa Tahanan School. …when I’ve got the time.

Overall:
Every video that we as a group submitted in this class was the culmination of tens of
hours of work and thought and time not spent sleeping or lazing around relaxing. I learned so
much from those hours spent working and thinking and not sleeping and not lazing around
relaxing that I think this Literacy Training Service served to train not the kids who would
hopefully one day watch the stuff we came up with, but instead trained me to learn how to read
between the lines of the story I am writing every day about my life. I also learned that I’m such
a presumptuous bastard so obsessed with sounding so wise and creative when writing essays
and stuff for school that I’ve turned what should have been a perfectly legitimate learning
portfolio into my personal rant outlet. What the hell, this calms me down. Sue me.

Reflection:
Living is hard right now. School, an element of the subset of life called ‘my youth,’ is
by extension also hard right now. But that’s okay. What’s life without a little bit of challenge?
I’ll be good as long as I keep on going in the direction my moral compass instructs me to go.

Conclusions and Perceived future Directions:

I must continue to dream, to reach greater heights. Direction: ever onwards.