Thesis 8: A moment of thesis grace

For four straight days, I wrote the last part of Chapter 4, which is all about exploring who and what the Filipino youth istambay is all about. The process of writing was both challenging and fascinating. I devoured all related information from various sources and endeavoured to produce a systematic understanding of why some Filipino [...]

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Clarity and doubt

Yesterday, I went to see my adviser to know his opinion about my Chapter 4. While he was not able to finish reading all my text, he was pleased with the clarity of my work. He said that he is happy to witness the improvement in my academic writing and see my ability to present [...]

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Thesis blog 6: Istambay song

In their meaningful depths, the songs written about the istambay are undeniably, social commentaries about the persisting problem of inactivity in the Philippines, particularly of Filipino youth. Although the initial understanding of istambay often relates to unemployment and underemployment, the issue of inactivity is a totally different ballgame. It is an issue that sings a different [...]

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Thesis 5: Hypothetical istambay

I find it interesting to use a secondary data (YAFS 2002) to describe what I term as the ‘hypothetical istambay’. I call it ‘hypothetical’ because I base my argument on a main activity question, which did not include the question if the respondents identify themselves as istambay or not. Given this methodological limitation, I focused [...]

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Thesis blog 4: Istambay statistics

For days now, I have been immersed at looking at data sets. One is from a perceptual survey that I conducted at UST about the university students’ perception of istambay. Another one is the 2002 Young Adults Fertility Study (YAFS) from the UP Population Institute. I find it interesting to see how the concept of [...]

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Thesis blog 3: Two sentences

After writing a handful of paragraph in the last few days, today, I only wrote two sentences but I am not too disappointed. The first sentence was nothing ‘coz  it did not capture what my mind wants to explain. The second was the revision of the first. Both did not make sense. So, I just [...]

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Thesis blog 2: Taken for granted

I devoted this past week clarifying my thoughts about the concept of “istambay”. This Filipino term is derived from the English idiom, “on standby” which generally refers to some Filipinos who are either out-of-school or out-of-work. I find them interesting because since childhood, I know a lot of istambay in my family and in my [...]

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