Tessa Jazmines: A Recall of the Persona

I met her during the junior years of my Diliman days. One look at her, I knew that we would hit it off together. Who can doubt her sincere and smart-aleck attitude, one who could snap at a stubborn guard "Kaya kayo binabaril eh!" once when we weren't allowed to attend Mass in Greenhills for lack of IDs, but still she could manage to warrant respect from her colleagues and students.

Ms. Tessa had been the greatest influence during those crucial years of my college life. For a person who loves variety, it only took one class session from her for me to decide having my on-the-job training in her public relations firm. And I was never wrong in my gut feeling. During those drab days of lull when client calls are hard to come by, and we wait for our crafts to be published for days, she always has ways to perk up every member of the team. She would ask for large orders of canton and whatnot, just to keep us from leaving the office. She's not the intellectual snob who would throw you a barrage of theories instead of lend you a book.

In fact, it never came to my mind that she was then the associate professor of the UP College of Mass Communication Journalism department. She never acted like one; though I still remember how generous she was of her experiences and ideas that I thought she was too trusting, especially for a business enterprise where ideas are the most prized asset. Can you just imagine how one day I got my copy of the Diliman newsletter and found out that she's already the vice president for academic affairs. Then I realized, despite all her media and corporate contacts and engagements, first and foremost she is an academic; and that's what makes her firm grounded on value formation the academic environment provides.

I got to read her works just this afternoon while taking a break from a back-breaking job of correcting misplaced commas and semicolons in my latest manuscript. Upon reading even just the first few of her articles gave me a clearer understanding of what public relations is all about. But what amazes me most is the variety of her topics; from one sector to another, she appears to be keen in research and gathering accurate information from the right sources.

A friend of mine said our dean, Luis V. Teodoro, doesn't consider PR as journalism. I was a bit overtaken by disappointment in my lifelong dream of having my own PR firm because of that; but when I read Ms. Tessa's works, I got to see a lot of chances for PR to redeem its name of being inclined to business or corporate interests rather than performing its function of bridging the gap of one social sector to another through communication channels. PR is not stright news journalism or not even the investigative PCIJ-type of reportage, but it is even more difficult. It functions as a buffer zone among usually warring entities, like media and a private company asking for government support for its projects.

Indeed, it's still a long way to go before public relations would be totally understod by laymen. But until then for as long as we have people like Ms. Tessa Jazmines, then we wouldn't have to doubt if we can make use of PR to achieve our patriotic goals for the country.