Seven years ago, a group of six graduate students sat quietly in a history class. They came from different backgrounds, most were working as secondary school teachers, but all were interested in history. Realizing that these students were on the same boat, they got to know each other.
The group of six grew to seven to nine to twelve adding and subtracting as one joined and left the program. But safe to state, the group maintained its twelve members over time.
I belong to the Ateneo MA History student group or what we would like to call ourselves, the Team Bromoki. The name came from one of the topics under our social movements class. We fancied this group, not so much because of the rituals they do before battle (i.e., bacchanalia and orgy galore before attacking or raiding a village and town), but because of the name — Bro, short for the term “brotherhood”.
I find Team Bromoki to be special in many ways. I can cite three reasons why I am devoting this space just for them.
First, graduate students do not normally “bond” with each other, at least here in the Philippines. More than 80% of the graduate students in our university are part time students. Their main reason for taking up MA or PhD is because it is required to advance in their respective positions within schools and universities. Within our graduate program, we are all working in school settings as either faculty members or school administrators.
With our busy, hectic daily schedule, it is not a wonder why graduate students do not bond as much as undergraduate students. Our classes are held in the evenings which leaves us with little time to really get to know each other. After our night classes, we go home and prepare for the next morning’s grind.
It was quite different for us. Though we are all part time students, we were still able to bond with each other. After each class, we got to discuss the lecture of the evening and some of the more pertinent issues (aka gossip) referring to our class. We spend several hours in a fastfood restaurant just to mull over the class requirements, and think how we can get balance our already busy lives. We sometimes carpool with each other so that we can still talk about everything from the most intellectual to the mundane.
Which leads me to my second reason: Team Bromoki served as a support group, and a solid one indeed. We not only reviewed with each other for the comprehensive exams, we also oversaw each other’s work when needed. Contacts not within an individual’s reach was made possible by other’s networks which came handy during research and thesis writing.
But our lives are not centered on academic research alone. When a dear friend got ill and died, we mourned together. We sought the help of each other to cover some of the incurred hospitalization and funeral expenses. Even at times when our department seemed helpless to our own needs, we mustered the courage to seek for our own means.
Finally, Team Bromoki became my source of friendship and family. If one looks closely into our profiles, history majors are considered to have a weird spectrum of personalities. Most of us are introverted, one is antisocial, another is a perennial cynic while the other is socially inept (think Raj of the Big Bang Theory). We were considered as eccentric by other students, dismissing us as people who like historical trivia (which is a hyped stereotype). Who goes to graduate school to study history anyway?
The Bromokis came at an opportune time in my life. After college, I felt drifting apart from my college buddies whom I used to treat as friends. No longer being invited to their gatherings or reunions, life went on for them without me. I was on the verge of despair and disillusionment. I got angry most of the time, and salvaged whatever that remained. This MA group was perhaps saved me from falling apart.
Graduate school never taught us the hidden side of graduate studies: depression, anxiety, intense pressure and stress, disillusionment. One can easily breakdown before the semester ends. But through this group, I realized that one need not go through the difficulties alone. In the end, we all got more than what I have bargained for:a genuine friendship that will last us for a very long time.
