A CITATION FOR THE KBP GOLDEN DOVE AWARDS IS ENOUGH

i am a twenty two year old young woman fresh from college and have been working as a newscaster for the last 7 months to date.

who would have thought that my name- a humble Marianne Gallo- would appear right next to the names of veteran newscasters (AM and FM) including but not limited to DEO MACALMA and ANGELO PALMONES?

lost? i'll get to the point then. I have been nominated into the 14th Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas' Golden Dove Awards. My name is under the categories Best Radio Newscaster and Best Radio Newscast.

I represent Home Radio's General Santos Station for my colleague Vanessa Jardeleza, or Geri as she is known on the air, represented the Manila station. (She too by the way is nominated under Best Radio Newscaster). how does that apply? well you see, the Gen San and Iloilo stations have yet to find newscasters for themselves and so we here in Manila support and send them our recorded news items through e-mail. (technology! sighhh!)

My entry had been about how back in June there was a story of two Japanese stragglers in the mountains of Mindanao. Reports had it that 60 years after World War II they were discovered still hanging on to their rifles and refusing to believe the war has ended. imagine! well, long story short- a host of foreign correspondents rushed to the Philippines, Gen San to be exact, to find out the whole story. they had been here for weeks but found nothing. later the "SOURCE", whoever he was for he was not identified, admitted the story was a hoax. hayyy!!! had it been true, it would have been the story of a decade for the Japanese Media.

The other nomination, Best Radio Newscast, is cited still for Gen San and goes under the umbrella program Home Radio News on the Dot, which is what it is called in all the FM stations of Aliw Broadcasting Corp. This nomination goes up against nationwide provincial news programs for both the AM and FM bands.

i am still overwhelmed as it is. however, i refuse to show false humilty by saying i dont deserve the nomination. truth be told i WANT to deserve being a finalist. i want to be proud of this kind of a milestone. who else can be more proud? its a one in a million chance to show that people in their youth can make a difference, can be someone and find their spot on the planet. and im 22 for crying out loud! the people im up against are veterans- they're older than most of my mentors and have been delivering the news since i was in diapers, lampin more like.

why do i want to deserve it? because it is my thanks to all those who sacrificed for me to get this far in life. it is my show of respect for all that i have learned in life's good and bad times. and i believe it would be a disservice if i simply deny my right to acknowledge or claim a citiation this prestigious.

and as a move of gratitude, i let my educators know about it. some of them i informed through text message. others i visited at the other station and thanked in a letter. and for the school where i let all my imagination wander and hope i came to give a copy of the whole KBP memo and phamplet containing my name.

upon graduation college with Magna Cum Laude honors i intended to go back to my high school- Montessori Integrated School of Antipolo. But due to schedule constraints i could not find the time to visit so my mom did that for me. she told the people at the school that with the training i had in MISA i grew an incessant thirst for knowledge. haha, geek am i not? but with this recent development on the Golden Dove Awards, i could not not visit.

so i went. i went back to the high school three days ago, a Friday. i walked through the lonely road leading to the school and on the way there i saw the students clad in the Citezen's Army Training uniform and it brought pleasant memories to mind. later i saw a Technology and Home Economics teacher of mine. He called ne by the nickname and i was so sorry i forgot his name! (Later i asked another teacher- she reminded me his name was Sir Romeo or endearingly- Sir Meo). So i was set to come home to my beloved school.

there, i met up with the ladies at the registrar's office to give them their copy of the phamplet to give to the owner and directress of the school- Mrs. Sylvia Lazo. then i hoped to find my teachers so i walked to the library (which even in the elementary was my place of comfort). fortunately the staff room was relocated beside the library and there i found Ms Eyzell, now the wife of my other teacher and commandant Sir Ruel.

we talked and remembered the past. how our batch was her first advisory class in her teaching career. how she poured all here energies into us and set difficult standards for us to comply with. how back then she encouraged us to become the confident (not overly so i hope!) individuals we are today through the classes we had with her. she had been our English teacher since grade 6 to 4th year high school. plus she taught us speech and drama. i was fortunate enough to further bond with her in high school for i was a member of the theater arts guild which she headed. we remembered how i was always who she tapped to represent the class in all the public speaking contests, be it extemporaneous or impromptu.

then i told her about a time in my 6th year in elementary when she informed the class that 15 of us were graduating with honors. back then i counted and counted. i tried to figure out who was sure to be included in the list. And having known the potential of each classmate i felt i had it in me to get through to that list. i knew i had no line of 7 grade in my report card after all. we were wrong. my eyzell later that week or the monday after i cant remember called my other classmate and i to her to tell us that we had a 79 each in Livelihood Education and since the grade for this subject was halved into the Home Economics subject we could not have known by simply looking at the report cards. they were discovered in the teacher's record book and that was the greater imprimatur. so my classmate and i were disqualified from the honor's list.

it would not have been a big deal had i not have rushed home days before telling my mom my assumptions. it had been sad to eventually tell her i failed her. it was not a simple matter of failing my hopes. it had been a bigger deal that i would have brought her and my dad's memory honor. they had after all brought me up on disney classics and musicals and books and english movies and discovery channel and encyclopedias and quizzes on world trivia in hopes that someday i would be what every parent hopes their child would be. after that failure i vowed it would never happen again that i would fail them.

in all my years of winning this and winning that achieving this and achieving that, i have not been taught to see teh milestones in my life as a means to an end rather an end in intself. so the mere nomination, the mere citation is what i am thankful for at this moment.

i could have chosen to tell the people in my life about the citation after the awards night, which is a week and a half from now. but i chose to reveal it now so that i will be reminded that having my name mentiond alongside the names of the veterans is enough.

most of my mentors do not know just how much they are appreciated. i am nothing without them. and everyday i thank God for their knowledge for their wisdom and for their patience with all their students. and it makes all the more a difference because i know this is just the beginning of a long and fruitful career. i owe it to them to be thankful for the citation. and i owe it to myself to look back and remember all that i would not have been without my teachers.