I WISH success for my peers who have set their sights on working overseas. But I am also hopeful that with increasing employment opportunities here, maybe fewer young people will leave in the next several years. As it is, we have become beneficiaries of the global trend in outsourcing, with a call center and an editing company establishing businesses just recently here in Dumaguete. If things go well, Dumaguete — and maybe even other places in Oriental Negros — could have several more of such businesses by 2010.

By then I hope I would have been finished with my master's degree and doing more administrative work, particularly in the guidance program of our school (since my degree is in guidance and counseling). But more than such professional growth, I would like to see myself becoming better in the vocation of teaching — and touching and changing lives.

I have learned well from my parents. My mother is a teacher, too. She came from a poor family, but through sheer hard work, she and her siblings were able to improve their lives. Meanwhile, at 63, my father still coaches our basketball team (which recently became the champion in the City Meet, a tournament among schools in Dumaguete City). He is a devoted educator like my mother, and his influence among students continues well after they graduate.

That's what I want to emulate as a teacher: create a lasting impact that leads to positive transformation. As a grade-school teacher, I want to instill not only academic skills among my pupils but values as well. It takes more effort but knowing that I made a difference in the life of even one student makes it all worth the work. Survival is not the name of this "game." Service is.

I know there are other Filipinos my age who think this way, too. Here in Dumaguete and elsewhere, other young people are steadily and continually setting things right. That's why I believe that our generation can still step up to the plate. A recent study showed that despite all the trouble our country is in, majority of us are still proud to be Filipinos. We have more self-confidence compared to young people from other nations and we get more satisfaction in life. If we can only have an environment that could encourage the youth to focus their energy and talents toward nation-building, perhaps in three years we could get the wheels of a new revolution rolling and make this country great again.

Wishful thinking? Reeking of naiveté? Perhaps. But as one cliché says, it takes just one pebble to form ripples. All we have got to do then is to thrown one. We can contribute by being the best in what we are doing, in whatever profession we are in. And this is exactly what I am trying to do.

If I can't seem to shake a nagging feeling of uncertainty, it is because of the way things are at present in our country. With leaders saying one thing and doing another, with leakages in licensure examinations, with cheating seemingly integrated in the electoral process, optimism is getting harder to come by even among us youths.

But many of us aren't about to stop hoping we can help make our country into what we have always known it can be. So don't count us out just yet.

Lea Janice Remata Sicat is a 5th and 6th grade reading and writing teacher at the ABC Learning Center in Dumaguete City, Oriental Negros. She was one of 2004's Ten Outstanding Students.