Name: Quijardo, Celine Rose F.

Year and Section: Set 2C

Program: Bachelor of Secondary Education Major in English Date Submitted: August 24, 2023

“Writing as Helping”

It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil
(Aristotle, 1996, p.58). As far as I can even remember in my childhood, I’ve always dreamed of helping people.
Perhaps it was all due to my parents’ forthcoming in raising me, as their second daughter, to be as helpful and
careful as possible, yet here I was so close to conflicts. My childhood at school was filled with kids telling me on
to my teachers, saying, “Ma’am, giaway na sad ni Celine si kuan!”. For my father, it was a common occurrence at
school- to be called by the faculty for my disappointing behavior as a student. Take note: my mother is an
educator at a high school. And here I was making a bad reputation for myself- quite definitely opposite to what
my parents have always taught me. However, whenever my father goes to the faculty, with his hand holding
mine, he’d be supportive, because, honestly, I wasn’t really the one basked under the bad light. In fact, I was
only performing vengeance and, yes, I’m not even joking. Honestly, it was more like defending a friend, although
it does seem like vengeance.

My name is Celine Rose Fernandez Quijardo, nineteen years of age, still living in my parent’s house, and still
thriving to be the better version of my past self. At a very young age, I was seen as a child prodigy for being the
best at speaking and writing in English there ever is at preschool (mind you, I was only three years old at the
time), and everybody seemed to be well acquainted with me for my unique conversing skills. Due to this, I was
encouraged into joining various competitions, such as reader’s theater, spoken poetry, essay writing, slogan
making, and even in varied performing arts competitions (dancing, singing, and also playing an instrument). I
enjoyed being an academic achiever and being a performer at school. My reign of being both lasted until senior
high school and so is my “bad reputation” for being a heroine.

Being a daughter of an educator made my reputation worsen as it is. You could guess that dreaming of
becoming a heroine was not much of a good thing for someone like me, perhaps I was too caught up with
reading fantasy novels at a young age that I somehow couldn’t accept the fact that reality was definitely a roller
coaster you couldn’t get out of. During my high school years, I decided to join a performing arts guild that was
known in our city due to its outstanding performance of theater plays, dances, and even singing. I trained there
for almost four years (also participating in competitions, ranging from cluster events to regional events), winning
in the Regional Festival of Talents at Tagum for the Jazz Chant competition, and I could proudly say that it was
exactly the stepping stone for me to become a freelance author (my pseudonym’s Caelina Bellerose). Although
hardships had come to stop me from pursuing performing arts, I switched to our school publication, in pursuit of
excellence in creative writing. However, it was the opposite of how I wanted it to be. My three years of training
and participating in the National School’s Press Conference 2019 which was held at Pangasinan, and bagging
sixth place under the category of Editorial’s Page, made me a senior Editorial Writer at The Viewpoint in our
school. At first, before I won, I thought of journalism as a hell journey. I was actually an all-rounder since I wrote
best in four types of journalism, which was Sports Writing, News Writing, Editorial Writing, and Sci-tech Writing.
My School Paper Adviser (SPA), Bonifacio Pajarillo, was such a great moderator. He has been such a great help
for me to widen my knowledge in writing and was also the one who made me believe that I am much more than
anybody else’s expectations of me. Life is only meaningful when we are striving for a goal ( Aristotle). He was the
first one to believe me that I am more than those rumors swirling around campus that I am a delinquent. And that

Submitted to: Gladys P. Guzman

Rating: ____________________
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was when I started aspiring to create something that could change youth’s perspective of the world since
everybody’s been focused on the social construct that society makes that youth, nowadays, forgets about
themselves. The most important relationship we can all have is the one you have with yourself, the most
important journey you can take is one of self-discovery. To know yourself, you must spend time with yourself, you
must not be afraid to be alone. Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom (Aristotle).

Looking back, I guess I was indeed able to pursue my dream of helping people- not in seeking vengeance
though. But in teaching people by writing novels under different online platforms that talk about social issues that
youth are frequently being engaged to. This also helped me with my education as I believed in Aristotle’s words
and, I quote, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” Now, at the tertiary level, I
wanted to challenge myself as a free thinker, critically evaluating my beliefs and widening my mind to know more
since I believe there’ll always be more that I don’t know. As a future educator, I believe I need to improve my
public speaking skills to teach and to be able to converse with more ease since I think I’m having trouble with my
confidence nowadays, with few people I know, are all out there still cursing my name. I do know though that
basing my feelings on people who hate me is futile, and that’s exactly why I’m thriving for the betterment of
myself. Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent
execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny
(Aristotle).

Submitted to: Gladys P. Guzman

Rating: ____________________
Technology for Teaching and Learning 1