When my youngest daughter, Yeye, struggled through what was supposed to be her final year in UP Los Baños, I had already accepted the possibility that graduation would have to wait. The numbers against her were overwhelming: three subjects with a grade of 4—strict pre-requisites. A sudden case of chicken pox right before the removal exams. Twenty two units left to take, meaning overload. And, they were all Math subjects. If you know UP, you know exactly what those numbers meant. To me, another semester sounded perfectly reasonable. “Okay lang ’yan,” I gently told her. “Next sem na lang.” I wasn’t lowering my expectations.I was simply protecting her from disappointment. But Yeye had already made up her mind. “No Ma! Ga-graduate ako ngayong sem na ito! Basta!” “Okay. If there’s a will, there must be a way!” I must have said this thoughtlessly as my way of giving support to Yeye. Truthfully? I had doubts. An Impossible Semester She somehow managed to get approvals to register...