The cost of a dream, and the people who helped carry it

For WVSU Law graduate Faith Montalban, the road to graduation was built by family, strangers, teachers, and a First Lady her class knew simply as “Attorney.”

“I told God, I told the universe that if law school is not for me, then at least give me the gift of rejection so I could at least move on without regretting that I never tried.

Well, I passed. But life tested me immediately.”

By the time Faith Montalban stood before her classmates, professors, family, and guests at the commencement exercises of the West Visayas State University College of Law, she already knew what it meant to bargain with the universe.

Her prayer had been simple: if this dream was not for her, let the door close early. Let rejection be the sign. At least then she could walk away without wondering what might have been.

Her father drove a tricycle. Her mother worked overseas and sometimes sold soap online on the side. Law school was not an easy dream to defend against tuition, family needs, and emergencies. It was the kind of dream that came with a bill.

Still, Faith applied to only one law school: WVSU College of Law.

She passed.

Then life, with its usual cruel timing, tested her at once.

When her father learned she had been accepted, he tried to take construction work to help pay for her schooling. He got into an accident and was hospitalized. Faith went to the hospital and stood before a cashier asking for seven thousand pesos.

Seven thousand pesos was all she had.

She also needed five thousand pesos for the promissory note that would let her enroll. There are moments when the future stops being an idea and becomes a receipt. Faith stood there, trying not to cry, thinking perhaps this was the real answer. Maybe passing the exam was not the same as belonging. Maybe dreams really were for those who could afford them.

Then someone noticed.

Hospital personnel saw her struggle, led her to the back, asked a few questions, and cleared the bill.

Faith went straight to school and enrolled.

It is tempting to call that a miracle. Maybe it was. But it was also something more human: someone chose not to look away.

That was the quiet truth running through Faith’s speech. No one survives law school, or life, entirely alone. Not in a country where many bright young people begin with talent and grit, but not always with money or room to fail.

Faith worked as a teacher during her first year in law school while reviewing for her board exams. For two more years, she kept working so that by fourth year, she could save enough to focus on studying. She carried her dream the way many Filipino students do: exhausted, sometimes terrified, but still moving.

At commencement, she said she could not speak for all twenty-five graduates. She could offer only “one twenty-fifth” of the story.

The others had their own trials. Some went through pregnancies. Some lost family members. Some carried grief into classrooms, recitations, exams, and bar preparations.

These were not her stories to tell.

What she could say was thank you.

Thank you to the families who understood the absences. Thank you to the friends who stayed through the days they were anxious or too tired to function as a child, spouse, sibling, or friend. It was a hard journey for the students, she said. But it was also challenging for those who loved them.

Achievement may look solitary on a diploma. It never is.

Behind every graduate is a village absorbing the cost of the dream.

For Faith and her batchmates, that village included First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos, whom they knew less as a figure in the national gaze and more simply as “Attorney.” For four years, she flew from Manila to Iloilo to teach them.

Faith’s gratitude was plain. She never imagined she would meet her, much less be taught by her personally. For some of them, she said, law school was once only a dream without the support extended to their institution.

In the class video tribute, the students spoke of a teacher who chose “a different kind of service.” Behind the titles, they said, she sat with them, guided them, and helped mold “the future defenders of the law.”

The affection was not loud. It did not need to be.

It was in the way they called her “Attorney.” In the way they remembered her classroom voice, her presence in bar operations, and her belief that WVSU Law could compete beyond the comfort of home. They remembered not a distant public figure, but a professor who believed in them and kept showing up.

That distinction matters.

Liza Marcos has taught law for more than two decades, across a formidable range of subjects: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Evidence, Remedial Law, Election Law, Legal Ethics, Public International Law, Natural Resources and Environmental Law, Practice Court, Trial Technique, and more.

But students rarely remember a teacher only because of the syllabus.

They remember being taken seriously.

They remember rigor without condescension.

They remember someone who made a regional law school feel less like a smaller dream and more like a place that could stand its ground.

“You didn’t just teach the law,” the students said in their tribute. “You championed our dreams.”

In another telling, that line could sound like flattery. In theirs, it sounded like memory. The kind students carry long after the exams are over.

Faith thanked her mother, whom she had not seen in eight years and who came home just the day before graduation. She thanked her father, who lost a finger in the accident that happened because he was trying to help her go to law school. She thanked her brother, her lola, her friends, mentors, deans, faculty, and staff.

Then she said the line that belonged not only to her, but to many young Filipinos trying to outrun the limits around them: “Dreams are expensive. That hasn’t changed.” No sugarcoating. No graduation-poster gloss. Just the truth.

Dreams are expensive in a country where brilliance is common, but opportunity still has an entrance fee. Tuition is expensive. Transportation is expensive. Time is expensive. Family emergencies can be crippling. Even hope has carrying costs.

But Faith’s story offers a gentler correction.

Dreams may be expensive, but they do not always have to be paid for by one person alone.

Sometimes the village is a mother working abroad. Sometimes it is a father giving more than he can afford. Sometimes it is hospital staff who clear a bill. Sometimes it is friends who wait through the silence. Sometimes it is teachers who keep pushing, keep believing.

And sometimes, it includes a First Lady who is also a law professor, flying from Manila to Iloilo not to be seen, but to teach.

At the end of the tribute, the students told Attorney Marcos that WVSU College of Law would always be her second home.

“Damang wala salamat,” they said. “Hugpalanga kagid namon.”

Thank you very much. We love you deeply.

Faith began by asking the universe for a sign.

In the end, perhaps the signs were never written in the sky.

Perhaps they were carried by people.

People who appeared when the cost became too heavy. People who kept the door open when life tried to close it. People who reminded a young woman, in the most practical way possible, that she belonged in the room.

Faith asked if she was allowed to dream.

Again and again, the answer came through those who refused to let her quit.

Yes. Stay. You belong here.