Expanding his Own Legacy

“Everything that you would write, even if is thrown into the waste basket by your editor redound to your benefit.”

This grain of wisdom was once pecked by an aspiring journalist from his managing editor. But now, we are sharing the granules of the thought when the once rising journalist before had now reached the paramount, the peak of all of his aspirations, parceling out every piece of what he had learned in the field through the years.

It is true, no one could have ever taught whatever he never experienced, someone could have never preached whatever he never practiced.

Having exercised journalism within a score of years, this old, brown Pangasinense may have nothing to prove on how competent he is to face hundreds of students, mentoring them, molding them to the shape of the new generation of press people.

His eyeglasses may have not said it wrong when once he spotted errors being a proofreader of the late Philippine Daily Express.

His quick thought and stenographies may not be that slow to follow the fast pace in covering sports events when once he became an assistant sports editor of Pilipino Express.

He may look not that strong but his steadfastness is enough to catch like an eye witness all crime and breath-taking police operations within his beat when he has been promoted to be one of its police reports.

Being a graduate of Bachelor of Science in Journalism at the Lyceum of the Philippines University, he hold some of the most important assignments every journalists desire to attain, a privilege for every reporter to hold like the Malacañan, the Senate and the Congress beats.

His few white hairs may have represented the long years of his struggle in school. After graduating the basically four- year- course, he chose to enter the law school of the University of the East and pursued a Master's degree for Mass Communication and a Doctorate in Public Administration both in the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

His adeptness in media ethics and of the law regarding this may have helped him to hold the Justice beat in Manila Times.

His journalism career had bloomed and was refined into gold. Inside the two decades of exercising what he had learned, he had established a remarkable stain in the industry.

Upon reaching the peak of all he had ever dreamed of, he then decided to enter a new line of nobility, a profession beyond journalistic stereotypes; teaching.

He crossed the threshold in PUP to share all of what he had learned inside his 20 years behind the walls of the newsroom to all who aspires to be bequeathed with the common job in the near future.

His expertise made him to lead the university’s journalism department and its official publication, PUP News. As part of his legacy are the two books he had written, the Basic Journalism Handbook and the Feature Writing Handbook.

The professor once shared that those book are specially written for Filipino Students and was subjectively adapted to the current Philippine set-up. The book that was just before an imagination from a dreamer thirsty for a learning material that will easily cease his hunger was now materialized into a book that will abridge journalism students’ journey toward their respective workplaces.

This professor once made fun with his own professor with the same subject when he told in one of his article that it was “makulit at parang sirang plaka.”

Now that I’m his student and he’s my mentor. I am boldly saying that my mentor is the type of that quirky professor and his mouth was like a broken cd repeatedly advising things he had already said before.

Indeed, teachers mold their students into their likeness. And this is Professor Filemon Viduya’s legacy. Sooner or later, will I be as successful or as ‘kulit’ like him?