As a typical 16-year-old back in the 90’s, I was not so sure of the career I wanted to pursue. My senior year high school classmates were already comparing about the colleges and universities they wanted to enroll in, but I was still in a quandary about what life would bring after high school. You see, I was able to go through a semi-private high school as a “Poor but Deserving Scholar”, a government program under R.A. 4090 enacted by the Philippine Congress in June 1964. I have my high school teachers to thank for this, but I thought that it would be a challenge to get something similar for college.
Determined to get into college, I went on a college-hopping search with my friends until I found the university I wanted to get into. I excitedly brought back home enrollment forms and announced to my parents about the university where I wanted to go. Sadly, my Nanay told me that we could not afford the tuition fees. In fact, times were so bad that there was not even a plan to send me to any school after graduation. Although it was not really a surprise, it was still earth-shattering to hear it for the first time.
This news did not deter me from finding different alternatives. If there was one thing that my Nanay told me that stuck into my head, it was the message that “education is the way out of poverty.” This message guided me to ask friends and do more research (google would have been useful at that time). I was blessed that one of our brothers in the church learned about my school search and referred me to his uncle who was an employee of MERALCO at Ortigas Ave. in Pasig. I did not waste any time and immediately secured an application form and a schedule for the first test.
After passing the IQ test (thanks to the fellow examiner who lent me a pencil), the psychometric test, the interview, the home inspection, and surviving through a grueling a month-long STOP program, I was overjoyed when I was informed that I was one of the 145 students who got into the program.
Everyone who went into this program would tell you that making the C-Clamp during the first year’s Mechanical Workshop class is the most memorable part of being an MFI student. Who wouldn’t? The blood, sweat, and the labor of ensuring that all the surfaces of the aluminum block you’re manually filing are flat and square would make you shed into tears after realizing that you would have to cut the middle section any way to eventually make a C-Clamp. One would surely have a deep understanding of the word perseverance after this subject.
MFI did not only teach me the psychomotor skills through the workshop projects, but the school also equipped me with engineering, presentation and public speaking skills and entrepreneurial know-how. These are competencies that allowed me to survive throughout the different challenges in my global career. More importantly, thanks to our Socrates-like professors, I learned critical thinking and the phrase “the end does not justify the means”.
Values in education is deeply embedded in the MFI education. I remembered the times when each student was assigned to give a talk about values every Monday morning. Our instructors would teach us about the value and meaning of hard work, integrity, and humility (by knowing how to make a coffee for your boss during your first day 😊). Having hired employees at different levels in my current company, these are the same values that employers look for and these are the values that differentiates a successful employee from the rest.
The perseverance, the values, the engineering and soft skills I learned from MFI enabled me to start as an Aircraft Mechanic Apprentice at Philippine Airlines while working on weekends as an adjunct instructor at MFI Quiapo and Las Pinas, then as a Service Engineer in Singapore, a Director in Panama and now a Vice-President for our facilities in the US. When I recently stepped into my newly renovated office at our San Antonio facility, I looked back at the time back in the 90’s when I did not know whether I would be able to go to a college or not. MFI Polytechnic Institute Inc., especially its devoted teachers and staff who molded us, gave me that chance to improve our lives and in turn help other people to grow in their career.
About the author:
Noel Casino is from Batch 8 – Industrial Electronics Technology Course. He is currently ST Engineering’s Vice-President for Corporate Quality and Organizational Development based in Texas, USA.
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