Thinking Out Loud: Angas!

Bakit ka bumibili ng UP shirt?

I am a proud graduate (and currently graduate student) of the University of the Philippines. That much should be obvious. But during my sever-year stay at the campus as an undergraduate student, I only bought one UP shirt and one UP jacket.

My reason? I don't feel wearing a UP shirt while i'm in the campus. It just feels..repetitive. But boy oh boy, once I graduated my list of UP apparels ballooned!

Only but a few of my UP shirts. Only the one in the rightmost came from my undergrad years

I got all kinds of shirts! Different colors, different types. From simple, straight-up shirts:

What could be more straight-up than Honor and Excellence?

To witty and funny ones:

..and promptly shout 'Hugot!'

But why do I buy UP shirts? I have four personal reasons and i'm going to elaborate them after the jump!




Here are my four reasons on why I buy UP shirts.

1.) Pride

Pride sounds like a very negative word due to a lot of different reasons and...you know what, i'm not comfortable with this so let's try this again.


1.) School Pride.

There you go! As i've said at the beginning of this entry, I am proud of calling myself an Isko and I absolutely love UP. Wearing UP shirts then become an outlet for this emotion. Others may scuff at this reason and see it as arrogance, or showing off, or angas. But I don't mind if they think so. I wear UP shirts because I love this institution and I am proud to call myself an Iskolar ng Bayan.

My newest UP Jacket!

2.) Unity and Belongingness

How cheesy! But it's true. It gives me a sense of belongigness, a sense that I am part of UP whenever I wear any kind of UP apparel. Again, others may belittle this reason of mine, saying that it is petty, or that it is merely superficial. My retort: Is it the only way to foster this particular kind of emotion? No, not by a long shot.  Is it the best way to feel such sense of unity? Probably not. But is it bad to feel camaraderie whenever I wear a UP shirt?

No, it's not.

3.) It's a blast from the past!

Aside from my grad pics and diploma, the only tangible thing that connects me to UP (aside from actually going there) are these shirts. While most of these are relatively new and purchased post-graduation, the culture of UP still lives strongly in these shirts. Just look at the Blue Book shirt from above. I bet mostly only UP students would even understand why a blue-seemingly-sentient book is apologizing for not knowing the answers..which leads mo to the fourth reasons which is:

4.) They are awesome!

Apart from the aformentioned Blue Book shirt, there are loads of other UP shirts that carries the culture of the university within it. We call this the Angas Shirts:

There are tons and tons of UP Angas Shirts that you would see, which includes the cliche "Uno ka nga? UP ka ba?" among others. And even if it is not the typical Angas Shirt, the 'straight-forward' shirts are still magnificent! Just look at the Honor and Excellence shirt above, or this shirt:

Or this emblem on one of the jackets:

Just awesome.

Bottomline, we all have our own reasons on why we do things. Maybe in the end of the day, what's important is that we stand by our reasons and we do not intentionally step on others along the way. Hey, let's make this simple and let's just smile! :)