Garbo sa Sugbo

It’s a pinch-me-am-I-dreaming moment. Or a slap-me-because-I-just can’t-believe-it instance. That was my initial reaction when I learned about graduates of Cebu-based schools clinching top spots of various licensure examinations. Heck, it borders on the surreal. I mean, wasn’t it just early last month, when results of the 2016 Bar Exams revealed that four graduates of the University of San Carlos (USC) made it to the top 10? The icing on the cake was that the number one spot went to USC graduate now Atty. Karen Mae Calam.

Then last Monday night, while I was conducting research on the social network website Facebook (yes, it was research), I chanced upon the post of the results of the May 2017 exam for certified public accounts (CPAs).

Well, what do you know? Nine persons on the list of 16 with the top 10 scores graduated from Cebu-based schools.

Six came from the USC, and three from the University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJ-R).

And get this, second-degree cousins Vianca Pearl Amores and Marianito Jesus del Rio, both of USC, claimed the number one spot with a rating of 92.67 percent.

Utterly absurd (in a good way), right? But it gets better.

The very next day, the Professional Regulation Commission released the results of the board exam for chemical engineering, and Wayne Lorenz Tandingan, a graduate of—you guessed it—USC, grabbed the number one spot, while a graduate of Cebu Institute of Technology-University (CIT-U) placed ninth.

I know Amores and del Rio both hail from Mactan clans. That makes them bona-fide Cebuanos. I’m not sure about Calam and Tandingan if they’re both daughter and son of Cebu. But hey, they still carried the name of Cebu in achieving their feat so that’s good enough for me.

Proud of you, Tandingan, Amores, del Rio and Calam and all the others from Cebu-based schools who excelled (sorry I can’t write down all your names because I don’t have enough space).

This proves, no, confirms that higher education institutions in Cebu Province are at par, or, (dare I say it) better than their counterparts in others parts of the country, specifically universities and colleges in the National Capital Region, such as—and this is just off the cuff, mind you— the University of the Philippines Diliman or Ateneo de Manila… did I just hear a pin drop?

Anyway, proud of you, USC, USJ-R and CIT-U. Forgive me for bursting with pride, but that’s what separates Cebuanos or Bisaya speakers from other linguistic groups in the country.

Not that I’m not saying that we’re better. Not at all. After all, what’s four Cebuanos or four graduates of Cebu-based schools topping the bar or the board exams for CPAs or chemical engineering?

Right?