The Scenic Route to Here

There's this thing that happens when you grow up as a naturally soft-spoken person: everyone keeps asking you to speak up.

I've heard varying versions of "Sorry, can you repeat that?" more times than I can count. 



And honestly? I'm considering adding a microphone as part of my desk setup right next to my growing army of Kinder toys: a sweet perk of being one of the designated recipients of a colleague's literal Kinder egg surprise.



I spend my days immersed in curating images for COLLECTIONAL, learning about the artists in Plot 6, and discovering new little tidbits about the brands under Vetted.

I'll catch myself staring intently at a brand's images, studying the materiality of surfaces way more often than I'd like to admit. My face goes completely blank when I'm focused (you know, that normal concentrated look everyone gets) but inside, I'm thinking "yeah! that's such a cool piece" about seventeen times an hour.


Then lunch comes around, and suddenly I'm a goby fish in open water.

No images to curate, no artists to research, just me and my food and the terrifying possibility that someone might want to have a conversation.

Don't get me wrong, I genuinely appreciate it when someone approaches me for a quick chat.

Buttttttt… I tend to overthink everything and miss social cues only to catch on to what I was expected to do after the conversation has long since passed. The amount of times I cringe at myself could power a small city.

Here's the thing: I'm fresh out of my strategic communications degree with my ceremony coming up in November, and I feel like I'm navigating this whole "professional adult" thing a bit later than everyone else.

Some of my friends are already in permanent junior roles or a few years into their careers, and here I am, the youngest in my department, still figuring out how to project my voice in meetings.

Growing up, I heard that college is where you find yourself.

I thought about what I've wanted to do for so many years- and I wasn't that lucky to really "have" a dream career, because I wanted to do so many things! My family loves telling a story of when I was between seven and eight, during a family outing at a hotel. 


After our stay, I announced I wanted to be a housekeeper- much to my parents' horror. In my head, that meant I'd get to spend all day in this really beautifully decorated space AND get paid for it. 

As university applications loomed and I needed to pick something concrete, I settled on going back to the Philippines to take up veterinary medicine.

Then COVID hit, and suddenly there were no veterinary medicine courses taught in English in the UAE. Plans changed, paths shifted, and I ended up studying strategic communications instead.

Now as an intern, I'm realizing maybe all those detours were leading somewhere after all.

When I read about COLLECTIONAL's vision in transcending borders and connecting with visionary creators, about weaving meaningful possessions into personal masterpieces, it felt like that same childhood pull toward beautiful, thoughtfully curated spaces, just expressed in ways I never could have imagined.

COLLECTIONAL has taught me that curation itself is a form of voice. Choosing which stories to tell, which artists to spotlight, which details to highlight, maybe that's exactly how someone like me was meant to speak up.