PUVeP News

Horacio S. Factura III Graduates 'Cum Laude'

Congratulations to Horacio S. Factura III, PUVeP agronomist on study leave, who graduated “cum laude” with a Master of Science degree in “International Horticulture, Major in Plant Nutrition” from the University of Hannover, Germany, on September 28, 2007. Horacio was a scholar of the German Catholic Academic Exchange Service (KAAD).

On October 1, 2007, he started a 6-months internship at the Ecosan Program of the GTZ Headquarter in Eschborn, Germany, before returning to Cagayan de Oro in April 2008. Horacio will become PUVeP's new expert in the field of "reuse of treated ecosan products in agriculture".

Again, congratulations and best wishes to Horacio - we are all very proud of you!

Following is a very personal account of Horacio about his stay in Germany:

"Finally it was over. I never thought I could. Two years of hardwork in conducting scientific experiments had never been in my wildest imaginations. Before I can say that SPAD value (the measure of leaf greenness) is positively correlated with leaf photosynthesis rate or with leaf nitrogen content, I had to do first tremendous amounts of work. I had to prove it. I had to show it. “That is how it should be”, they said. Well, I didn’t know before that this is what it takes to work in science. In the middle of my studies I realized that I was totally never prepared for it. My student life was not smooth during the first year of my masters studies.

For me, my research work was very complicated. I had to write the project proposal for my study. I had to present the proposal in front of professors and students. Working in the greenhouse, preparing nutrient solutions, measuring chlorophyll content and chlorophyll fluorescence using specific equipments, checking my plants everyday – morning and afternoon, doing laboratory analysis, inputting and computing data to the computer and finally analyzing them, were mostly new and not easy for me. Sometimes my supervisor would ask me questions which I totally had no idea what to answer like “Why are some leaves of your plants looked strange or Why is one plant bigger than the other?” Results were not good during the first trials. Research work was a big shock for me. During the experimental period, I could not have weekends and holidays. To get sick is a big loss. I also had to deal with so much Chemistry and Mathematics which I really love to hate. Aside from doing all these stuffs, I also had to join lectures and take examinations.

Time runs so fast. I always needed to be quick in almost everything that I did and at the same time I had to adjust to the environment, to the new people that I worked with, and to the German culture and system in general. I experienced a different kind of learning and training system which I think I could hardly find in my own country. Adjusting and learning are two different things which I had to both do at the same time. What would make it even worst is when you are not even aware that you are actually on the process of adjustment. To experience winter was another new horrible thing for me. The natural coldness was understandable but the atmosphere wherein you don’t see people outside having fun, no leaves on the trees, and not much light in the surrounding wherein the daylength was very short making it gloomy always, caused me to fight more against my own depression, homesickness, and loneliness.

I missed a lot of fun. One of the important events that I missed to fully-experience is to join friends in the very hot FIFA World Cup 2006 fever. Witnessing the soccer games in the big screens around the city (not in the expensive stadium) of Hannover was the most I could do but I simply could not. While everybody was enjoying around, I was busy with my plants in the greenhouse. Filipino friends would regularly invite me in celebrating some Filipino occasions and also in their own family gatherings but most of the time I could not attend. I was also very envious, especially during summer that sunshine was abundant and sunset is at 10:30pm, to see people doing a lot of different kinds of fun at the park.

I had a lot of confusions, complaints, and questions that were pulling me down as I kept them inside me. Should work be really like this? Is this really what I want to do in my life? Is this great privilege of studying here in a very rich country really for me? Why am I here when my interest in research was not even significant enough? Do I really have to undergo all these endeavors and be deprived from experiencing the colorful life of a teenager surrounded with all sorts of opportunities to have fun? In many of my private moments I wondered, “Does man really have to suffer to understand the longings of his silent heart?”

Either I would persevere and succeed or quit and go home were my only options. I realized that I had no way out. Of course I chose the one with the glorious end. Then I prayed and asked God’s help. I told God that I only had me and I am only limited. Hopelessness was already crawling on me. But through constantly storming the heavens with prayers gave me strength to keep on going. Later on, I began to understand the word faith that gave me the confidence to break the wall of the weak self-reliance and opened the door of dependence, humility, and obedience. Courage is a good big brother and patience is a comforting sister. Determination to succeed is what everybody wears so I also had to blend with them. Slowly I learned to do my work with a light heart and gave smile to every simple work of my hands. The ability to put my thoughts focused on the actual things that I do was one of my great personal achievements. God provided me with all the things I asked but He did not give them all in one full package at one time. He gave them to me piece by piece and little by little. I had to constantly ask him and worked for what I asked for. I realized that I was actually focused on my own selfish negative thoughts and became blind of the importance of my work.

As I continued to go with the flow of the busy world under the Institute of Plant Nutrition, I understand that research is about finding out what is unclear. It is about completing the unresolved knowledge through scientific investigation. For scientists, it is their way of life. Since then I started to value my data from my experiment. Those figures that were at first only mere numbers to me now became important and sacred because they were all generated from the work of my human hands. My time was spent on them therefore it means life was given. I started to feel the physical works that I do as ingredients that could actually compose me. It gave me the sense of being responsible of the things that I do, I say, and I think.

Time went by and results get better and better which made to start writing my thesis. Then the final day came when we had to defend our thesis. It would mark the end of the “roller-coaster ride” in studying Masters in International Horticulture in Leibniz Universität Hannover. All of us, 16 foreign students from Asia, Latin America, Africa and Europe, finished with a very sweet success. And all of us now have one thing in common. It is neither the degree nor the hardly-earned thesis. But it is the growth of our individual being that made us to value worthfully all our experiences."

Back 07.10.2007.