In the classic children’s folk tale, Cinderella, there was a warm, gentle village girl who dreamt wondrous dreams despite the predicaments she was facing with her stepfamily. Until one night, a magical fairy godmother bobbed up to bedizen her in a glistening, blue dress, complemented by her iconic dainty glass slippers, then she was sent off riding her pumpkin carriage to meet the charming prince of her daydreams.
However, no magical moment comes without compromise. As the clock struck midnight, her fancy wardrobe, along with her botanic entourage lost all its charm work, leaving her with none but her glass slippers as she went back to her regular life as a commoner.
If you have not been living under a rock, you would know that Cinderella tied the knot with the prince and lived happily ever after as per the story’s ending (in Disney’s version at least). The same cannot be said for the corporate Cinderellas of CEU Manila braving the same tale—at least not yet.
As the clock strikes 9:00 PM, Zach and I, freshmen students of Communication and Media, go on and wear our leather corporate shoes as opposed to Cinderella’s snazzy pair of footwear. With the nightly public tram serving as my pumpkin carrier, I wander to my majestic corporate palace in Makati City to spend my evening as a product trainer for a financial giant in the West. As for Zach, he rides old-fashioned jeepneys to fare to his office in Manila as a non-voice, customer service representative for an expanding financial institution in the United Kingdom.
Zach’s motive to brave through this working student corporeality is his desire to keep going in life after he snuffed the fire out of his burning passion in the past. From our conversation, he shared that he is one who has an exasperation for staying still in life. During his gap year from college, bored and unproductive at home, he decided to put himself out there and enter the massive business process outsourcing industry.
I would say that I live the same tale as Zach. During the peak of the pandemic when everything flatlined is the moment when I thought of working. I also took a gap year from college to reconstruct my plans as I traverse the impetuous phase of young adolescence. I transferred schools and shifted programs to start anew in an uncharted environment.
I have been working for a year and a month, while Zach has been working for around a similar period of time. Our kindred realities, however, began this academic year as we got accustomed to this two-pronged life.
Zach and I mused over our decision to enroll in CEU Manila as Communication and Media students and how life has been going as corporate princes changing personas as the rest of the city goes to slumber. CEU’s curriculum for our program proved to be manageable for working students. There were just enough courses to think about, and the weight of academic requirements did not beat us out of the punch. In fact, I felt nonchalant that I even became a classroom officer and participated in extracurricular activities and organizations.
We also recognize the considerations of the university for employed students. Under the prescribed uniform section of the university’s student handbook, it states that employed students may request an exemption from wearing of CEU uniform as long as it is approved by the department Dean or the Program Head. Zach and I have not felt the need for this exemption at the moment as we have enough hours in our days to refashion back to being freshmen from our daily executive fits.
It may appear that the fable-like, endlessly transforming life that Zach and I are living is desirable and inspirational. We sell our working power to earn pennies to pay for our academic needs, with luxury spending on the side. Be that as it may, the thing with magical tales is that they always come with their own compromises.
Time is the glass slipper we left behind in our tale as corporate Cinderellas; deep, dark circles around our eyes from severed hours of sleep, missed occasions and celebrations for the sake of our account’s attrition, special moments we could have shared with our families and friends who feel like slipping away as we choose to sleep to ensure our productivity as we hop back and forth between our shared realities as employees and students.
If Zach and I, and other working students all over the country from different industries, would remain as main characters of this poignant, corporate Cinderella story where conflicting responsibilities keep us from having a conventional young adolescent life, I would only hope for one thing—for us to share the same magical ending as Cinderella’s fairy tale where we will have the life of our dreams, and live happily ever after.’