The Midyear

I'm back from Heraldo Filipino's Midyear Workshop. Thank God, it did not rain! It was really fun. I'm glad that 90% of the HF Team 22 members were present. Previous workshops, only half or even less of it attended. So this midyear is a breakthrough. We also saved money because we opted to cook our meals than have catering services. Each section who were assigned to cook was able to save money. Plus, the cooking session is some sort of teambuilding for them too.
We had our teambuilding first, click here to see the how it was played out. We had our Gawad Abdul later that night. The Gawad Abdul is the HF Awards night, it has two parts, the goof awards and the serious awards. Our theme for that night was Holloween, so everyone wore a costume. I also asked each section to have a presentation.The Graphics and Photo sections did an "interpretative" dance, the News section [an all girl team] danced Lady Marmalade, The literary section, living up to their nature, did a skit, Sports section "exercised" to the tune of the DLSU hymn, and the Art section spoofed the Editorial Board which was hilarious that actually resulted for them to win the BEST PRESENTATION. The Features section beg off since the feat ed told me that they were too exhausted from cooking the dinner. We had 20 goof awards, some popular awards were the Senior Citizen award for the oldest HF member[Gino from Graphics edged out Ros from Art by a month, he is 23 yrs. old), HF is my Home award for the staffer who had the most number of residency hours [Mica from Sports won, 500 plus hours) and Talipandas ng taon [Talipandas is an inside joke at HF, Paul from Features won).]. After the goof awards we announced the promoted staffers. 3 apprentices were promoted to Junior Staff status while 7 staffers were promoted to Senior Staff status. And the highlight of the night were the recognition of exemplary HF members. Here are the winners:

Outstanding Section: Literary
Outstanding Section Editor: Patricia Cruz, News
Outstanding Staff: Michaela Grimaldo, Sports
Most Promising News Writer: Rubilyn Valdez
Most Promising Features Writer: Millicent Andres
Most Promising Sports Writer: Luis Olitoquit [unfortunately he did not attend the midyear workshop]
Most Promising Literary Writer: Patrick Quintos
Most Promising Artist: Jumel Estranero
Most Promising Photographer: Andrew Tadalan
Most Promising Graphic Artist: Geronimo Santiago

I was happy to see the smiles of the people above as they received their certificates of recognition. I really hope this will even inspire them to be the best that they can be.
I told the staffers who were not promoted nor received an award not to be disheartened but instead strive more and their time will come.

As for the rest of the workshop, there were lots of bonding moments from playing games, swimming [not me though], videoke [yeah, i sang haha] and lots of kwentuhan sessions. I'm glad to see some of the shy staffers were able to come out from their shell.

It was a memorable workshop. I'm glad it went smoothly. I'm kinda emotional since the Midyear workshop signals the end of the first semester and the start of the 2nd [and my last] semester with HF.

I just could not believe how time flies. The midyear workshop that I attended during my first year with HF is still fresh in my memory and now I was the one who facilitated it.

I guess, I should stop here before I get too nostalgic.