How does one become significant? How does one transform through creation, connection, and the courage to exist fully⸺even when the world seems too vast, and you feel too small to matter? These are questions I grappled with throughout my entire journey as a student, and I continue to grapple with them today.

Learning, to me, was never just about absorbing information or excelling academically. It always has been, and still is, a testament to humanity's endeavour of connection and remembrance. All the knowledge we inherit⸺from the sciences to the arts⸺is a hand reaching through time, saying, "Come with me and see the world."

The world is vast. Each of us is a tiny fleck in the cosmos. There are billions of lives that we will never see or touch, and yet we try. For me, the arts have been my attempt at leaving a mark. Writing, painting, music, and theatre became a means of both escaping and being found.

In the Philippines, there is a double-edged perception of the arts. On one hand, they are pleasures we cannot live without. From karaoke to teleseryes to chapbooks, we surround ourselves with works that entertain and invoke emotion. On the other hand, there is still underappreciation in our capitalistic society. The arts are often seen as frivolous, unworthy of the same investment as sciences or businesses. Worth is tied to how much money you can make or how much work you can produce. For creative minds, where each project demands heart and vulnerability, it is easy to measure your value against criticism, rejection, or loss. The "mad, suffering artist" stereotype exists for a reason. But it never told the whole story.

Along the way, I lost sight of why I made art in the first place. I didn't think I mattered. Yet even with this forgetting, creation was still my anchor amid mental turbulence, uncertainty, and a multitude of illnesses. And through art, I soon realised that maybe I was looking at the world wrong. Perhaps worth and belonging come from tearing your gaze away from the vastness of the world and noticing the tiny details that nobody pays attention to anymore. Even as I remain that "mad artist," looking at colours nobody sees and hearing music where nobody does.

The sprouting of wildflowers. The afternoon light filtering through an open window. The tears that refuse to fall from the eyes of someone you know. The hand that holds yours when you tremble under the weight of the world.

In those tiny, mundane, and seemingly insignificant moments, I have become significant. In choosing to pick up a pen or a paintbrush, I became and did something worthwhile. Even if it’s just sitting in silence, holding space for people’s stories, or telling my own and hoping someone resonates with my words or art. When I chose to listen and act with intention, life slowed down. I remembered how to breathe—even if just for a fleeting second.

Now that I’ve graduated, I am proud of my achievements—but even more grateful for the people who made them possible. Those who understood the longing for connection, who let me touch their lives, and allowed them to touch mine. Even through the hard times, or the messy parts most people avoid. Where friendship and love were met with intentional actions and the shouldering of “inconvenience” for the sake of community.

In four years of creating, failing, and starting again, the biggest lesson I've learned was in the small moments. I wrote. I painted. I sang. I laughed. I cried. I held space for others’ stories and for my own. Most importantly, I simply am.

Each act of creation is also an act of becoming. Art is an act of survival, of transformation. Through it, I became not only an artist, but a person capable of resilience, understanding, and connection. I'm still learning, still making, still becoming. In this ongoing process, I am so grateful to meet this version of myself—a version that years ago, I wasn’t sure would exist.

Thank you for helping me grow, DLSU. Thank you, Daily Tribune, for seeing past the mess and into my worth within. Thank you to everyone who believed in me, who let me be myself, and who found value in the small, fragile, and human pieces of creation I offered.

Amelia Clarissa de Luna Monasterial

AB Literature, Major in Creative Writing

🏅Summa Cum Laude

🏅Jose Rizal Honours Award

🏅 Lasallian Scholar

🏅 Outstanding Thesis Award

🏅 11th and 14th DLSU Annual Awards for Visual Arts Awardee

🏅 36th and 39th DLSU Annual Awards for Literature Awardee

🏅 15th and 16th DLSU Arts Congress Exhibit Featured Artist

🏅Writing the Forest: A Critical and Creative Writing Workshop Fellow, Fiction Category