Throughout the journey from grade school to high school to college to post-graduate studies, school is where you meet people who will shape and make your life – your barkada. You’ll meet friends who’ll be there for you through good and bad, through failures and successes, and who’ll grow with you while you achieve your dreams together.
Such was the case for this group of friends from Tacloban City. With a friendship that lasted them from college all throughout law school, they studied for the bar exams, cried and laughed as they failed on their first try, and celebrated together when they finally passed this 2020.
Most people distinguish their high school, college, and post-graduation friend groups. For this group, they’re all rolled into one.
Before there were 6 – Babayne Tan, KT Acerden, Mae Conde, Rosalie Almaden, Jovany Damayo, and Dennis Abril – there were 3. Babayne, KT, and Mae knew each other from way back in high school, before meeting again on the grounds of the University of the Philippines Visayas Tacloban College (UPVTC) for college.
The three forged a friendship with Rosalie and Jovany as they were batchmates in UPVTC, sharing common courses and classes. They stuck together until going to law school in Dr. Vicente Orestes-Romualdez Educational Foundation, or DVOREF College of Law, where they eventually met Dennis.
Though the barkada is a happy-go-lucky bunch, it wasn’t always rainbows and sunshine for them.
After going through law school and taking the bar exams together in 2018, they had to endure the year-long torture of waiting for the results of the exams to come out.
2019 came, and unfortunately, none of them made it through. In her Facebook post, Tan says,
“When the results came out a year ago, all we could say was, “Seryoso inin? Waray talaga may nakapasar bis usa ha at? Guinjojoke ba kita? Bisan naman la usa ha iyo, waray gud? (Is this serious? Not even one of us passed? Is this a joke? Even just one of us, nothing?)
“Most of us wept but all of us laughed. Iyo ba naman barkadahan it mag landslide hulog. (Imagine, your whole barkada failed.)
“2019 definitely wasn’t our year.”
Fortunately, they dusted 2018 off as a bump in the road, and forged on together to retake the bar exams in 2019. Tan expresses it as hitting rock bottom and having nowhere to go but up. Energy, morale, health, and funds were running low, but they kept each other going.
After another year-long wait came the bar exam results in 2020. This time, it was a happy ending – all 6 of them were on the list.
Image credit: Babyne Tan
This barkada has a habit of renaming their group chat according to highlights in their lives. In 2019, they named the chat WHAT WENT WRONG after failing the 2018 Bar Exams. The name was to remind each other to analyze what went wrong in the situation of all 6 of them failing.
Tan says maybe it was because she said in her prayers that she wouldn’t be happy if they didn’t pass together.
Recently, they renamed the chat to #PUMASANA, meaning “finally passed” – the best barkada name glow-up after the Bar Exam results came out on 29th April.
This group of friends inspires not only aspiring lawyers, but barkadas around the country to keep fighting for your dreams, and to find friends who will stay by your side as you do so.
Whether you and your friends have the same dreams like they did, or are going down different paths, it’s important to keep supporting each other the way this inspiring group of lawyers did for each other.
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Cover image adapted from: Babyne Tan, @prcboard
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