Lasiste | Contributed photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — After topping the Electronics Engineer board exams, Charles Samuel T. Lasiste wants to become a teacher.
Engineer Lasiste, 22, said he planned to juggle having an engineering job with time for teaching in a university.
“As someone who is given with the intellectual gift, I want also to pass it on,” said Lasiste, who earned 10th place in the April 2019 Electronics Engineer Licensure Examination.
He also said that this would be his way to honor and glorify God.
“Hopefully kani ako ginabuhat, glorifying sa Ginoo. (Hopefully, what I am doing is glorifying God.) Of course, all the talents, all the gifts and intellectual capabilities, basically everything that we have is from him. Our duty is to honor him. It is not ours…so what ever we achieve, we give it back to him,” Lasiste said.
Lasiste, who was a March 2019 Electronics and Communications Engineering graduate of the Cebu Institute of Technology- University, was the only topnotcher from the Visayas in the April board exams.
He said he was supposed to graduate in October 2018 but he lacked some requirements to graduate so while he worked on completing his requirements, he also reviewed for the Electronics Engineer Licensure Examination.
When he graduated in March 2019, he was ready then to take the Electronics Engineer board exams on April 11, 2019.
He garnered a rating of 86.70, which was good for 10th place out of 1,365 board passers.
The April 11, 2019 Electronics Engineer Licensure Examinations was topped by Malcolm Kwok of the Dela Salle University-Manila, who earned a rating of 90.70.
Meanwhile, Lasiste said his desire to teach was sparked by his experience as the president of a Peer Learning Program, a student to student mentoring or peer mentor program at the university.
He said this developed his passion to teach and mentor other students.
Lasiste and his family originally came from Ozamiz City, they moved to Cebu when his parents got separated in 2006. He is the third child among his two siblings, Charlnette, 37, and Carl, 36.
“He is named Samuel because it means gift of God. My parents wished for a baby because it was a14-years gap already since the birth of my younger brother,” Charlnette said.
Lasiste graduated elementary and high shool at Child Learning Foundation.
“At first, my first choice is Med Tech (medical technologist) because I want to proceed to Medicine. But later on during high school, I have a teacher (who was) the one who inspired me to take (an) engineering course. Later on, I decided (on) ECE and learned to love it,” Lasiste said.
Lasiste was a Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Scholar and a consistent Dean’s Lister during his first to fourth year in college.
Like normal students, Lasiste also fought his own battles before he finally got his diploma.
During his fifth year, Lasiste’s family problems greatly affected him and this also affected his studies.
Fortunately, he got over it and had also mended fences with his family.
One thing he learned from that experience was that despite adversities, one should never give up fighting for one’s dreams.
“To all the students and youths, I want to share a Bible verse from Ecclesiastes 12:1: Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of adversity come, and the years approach of which you will say, “I find no pleasure in them,” Lasiste said./dbs