By Leigh Anne Darlene E. Dispo
There is nothing enthusiastic about the labor you dedicate to law school. It is Herculean, lonely at times, and a health risk. But sometimes, it does seem to influence something almost supernatural within its students: a ‘lucky’ cold call grade feels like an approval from the Heavens; passing a 2-unit subject under a professor with a well-known high mortality rate coaxes a deep sense of relief you might infer to be due to the recent New Moon in whatever-astrology-it-could-be; and any form of misfortune amidst a Mercury Retrograde is such a profound resignation that you become inconsolable.
The truth is, you must love the study of law so severely and so desperately that when things fall apart, you grasp at straws for any reason why. But it is that love that will keep you tethered onto the Earth, staggering still, because your pursuit is not done. For now, as you are starting out, good things will seem heaven-sent; in time, you will realize that none of your grit is coincidental.
In this 2025 Issue of Back-to-School, it is my honor to welcome you to the San Beda College Alabang-School of Law and to applaud you for taking a chance on yourself. We hope that in this coming year, The Red Chronicles will be your company at every current event and each law school-induced hurdle. The Bedan life and community cannot be easily described in plain sailing terms, but that does not mean you cannot make it your own.
So don’t dare seek happiness or some form of comfort or acceptance here; seek for what is meaningful. When you are dragged through the mud, belittled even with your ambition, or ridiculed for your truth, you will not cling onto the version of you who settles for cursory pleasures. What you would want and need is the version who is tenacious enough to weave the very warps and wefts of your own life — the version that made you enter law school.