Reminiscing ACLEs

27 January 2010

Of my UP life, 8 ACLEs have come and 7 of them have passed, the latest one is this year and I'm happy to somehow be a part of UP PsycA's ACLEs this year even if I'm not on campus (though being part merely means I came up with the title and made some posters) I like ACLEs in general and this is just to remember those that passed.

During my First year I never attended ACLEs, to me they we're just an excuse to go home early. I was never required to attend any nor did I go to any extent of actually wanting to attend any, ACLE topics from organizations bore me, they we're repetitive and unimaginative. Photography crash courses and stuff about comic books are the only things that caught my eye on the bulletin boards, so no, I did not like ACLEs back then.

During my second year I was already part of UP PsycA when the ACLEs started, UP PsycA's ACLE during the first sem was a team up with UP Kustura, an org of people from Marikina. We didn't attend that, we went up to Vinson's to attend an ACLE with Papa Dom about Reggae music and the Rastafarian ideology. In hindsight, I did ask a lot of stupid questions that day, but I did get a picture with Papa Dom and got his autograph.

The Second sem Ate Meme was bugging us about what to present, I had recently watched the film Umaaraw, Umuulan starring Ryan Agoncillo and suggested we show that to people. It was typically uneventful, we had a few people in and it was merely an excuse for me and Jammin to get to smoke in the fourth floor classroom we reserved for the event. Ate Meme gave a little talk about Schizophrenia as well, which she did real well as it apparently was her report for her Psych 155 class.

When we took over PsycA during our third year we wanted our ACLE to be a something people would actually WANT to go to, not have to. I can't remember who actually came up with the idea (I'd like to say it was me, but I'm not sure) that we make a film about Zorro, the costumed mascot of the Academic Oval. It was originally a film, that boiled down to a documentary (or a lousy excuse for one) about Dennis Magtajas, the guy behind the mask. So that's what we called it, "Sa Likod ng Maskara: Ang Stigma ni Zorro". I starred in that docu and did voice acting for that as well, I interviewed Zorro and his father and we built a pretty good picture of who the guy is. This is when we started the lucky streak of speakers, Prof. Rosel from the Psych Department who teaches Abnormal Psychology was a great speaker and did more than we expected from her, which is saying something. We expected a lot from her, she delivered and we we're in awe. The room was filled to doors, and it was a booming success. We knew by then that when we're gonna do events, we can't just pull something off, we have to raise the bar.

The next one we did was something about food, apparently Ging wanted something that had something to do with food. The original professor we wanted to invite was to be invited if only to discuss the "tingi mentality" of Filipinos when it comes to food, he declined the invitation and suggested we ask Prof. Cosare instead. If anybody was an expert at Food Psychology it was him, he knew it, he may be the only one who knew it in the country or even the region. He was more prepared than we we're! We pestered a few people to attend it and we got to fill the room with people, who happily taste tested everything the professor brought (he had wine, and we we're warm all day because of it) and the free isaw we gave away at the end. Again, we raised the bar, apparently Prof. Cosare became popular because of this and was invited to two other ACLEs, one for last sem and another one for this semester.

The Last one was something that you would've expected from a Psychological organization. It was about reading minds "We Can Read Your Mind" as we called it, and we invited a former private investigator (a professor of Rose and a classmate of Mhe-Ann) from BA. Sorry to say I forgot his name, he is a young professor who knew what he was talking about. We also invited Prof. Ed Decenteceo from the Psych Department as a reactor to the event, he was wonderful and provided an opening for this year's ACLE about paranormal psychology. Sir Ed talked about how behavior and body language affects us, how he applies it in acting, in his counseling, in teaching, and a crash course on "Heart Chakras" and the spiritual things like that. I put great publicity as number one reason we filled the Big AS room (96 people! we had to borrow chairs from adjoining rooms and STILL have people standing) Tinek did a wonderful job with the pubmats and I think the success of our previous ACLEs proved fruitful as I saw familiar faces from our previous ACLE joining us that day. As usual, hosting duties fell on me despite me being out of school that semester, during the technical difficulties part in the start I would like to believe the little research I did on Evolutionary Psychology and how our evolution has affected our body language did well in burning up time for the audience. We also showed an episode from the TV series "Lie to Me" about micro expressions. All in all it was the best we ever pulled off and we have been raising the bar of ACLEs ever since we took over. ACLEs now are getting more and more interesting and I hope I'm not being rude by assuming it was because UP PsycA has sworn never to do anything mediocre when it comes to ACLE. We wanted to do something nobody else has ever done, and people who we don't even know go to our ACLEs to actually learn, and that is the idea behind ACLEs anyway. We don't bring in big and popular names or pop topics, we choose topics we like and we know people should learn about.

I hope I'm not jinxing UP PsycA's good ACLE record with this but the latest one, about Parapsychology is proving to be something to be proud of as well, we cut it close this time but I guess we're pulling it off real good as usual. So reader, you heard it from me, UP PsycA raised the bar when it comes to ACLE, and we're not done yet.