IS THE BIG 4 THAT BIG OF A DEAL?

Contrary to popular belief, your school does define you. But maybe not getting into your dream university doesn't have to be the end of the world.

- By LIMMY LIMBO

collect school ID lanyards like how people collect fridge magnets. Once, I'd asked my friend from La Salle to buy me one of those thin, black minimalist laces with the university's initials patterned on the strap, detachable by the nape. On a fluke visit to the UST museum, I was able to buy a similar one in yellow. Same manufacturers, probably.

At some point, I started bartering them. "I'll trade my Benilde lanyard for your MINT College lanyard." Hell, one of my friends even offered her UP lanyard for my La Salle one. Who said you needed a degree to do business?

There's something, or so I would like to believe, campy about affiliating with a school that you aren't even enrolled in. Irony is good fashion sense. It's the same way TikTok fashionistas will tell you to match a sundress with running shoes, or to pair black loafers with pinstripe shorts.

Although there's something particularly exhilarating about parading a Big 4 lanyard, which takes up more of my collection than I'd like to admit. It feels aspirational, or like a costume. A recurring fantasy I have involves people congratulating me and building statues in my honor. Afterwards, we'd all hold hands and skip.

Little would they know that I had fooled them. A-ha, I'm not from a Big 4 university! But it sure would have been nice.

BY FOURS

Older forms of religion believed that four cardinal elements made up the world. Not 118 or whatever my science teacher said when I was 12. It was also around this time that I saw a Facebook post saying that my hand shape made me a firebender.

At an age when the world didn't seem to make much sense, labels and categories conveniently sorted it all out for me. I'm a Sagittarius, so I'm adventurous by heart. I'm an ENFP, so I'm bubbly and outspoken. Had J.K. Rowling not been a transphobe, I would proudly call myself a Ravenclaw.