You could hear a pin drop in the classroom when the professor asked the question.

A student sat among her classmates, the thought formed clearly in her head, ready to be spoken. But before the words could leave her lips, hesitation arrived first. She kept silent. Someone else answered, and the discussion moved on. It was a familiar scene.

Jalaisa Sacedor Quirido, an alumna of Biliran Province State University (BiPSU) under the School of Management and Entrepreneurship (now School of Tourism and Hospitality Management), was the kind of student who often knew what she wanted to say but lacked the courage to say it aloud. She was shy, unsure of herself, and afraid that perhaps her answer was not good enough. And when class ended, she would sometimes think about the response she could have given.

Years later, that same lady would find herself speaking not merely in a classroom, but to people from different countries and cultures—welcoming passengers aboard flights, responding to their needs, representing an international airline, and building a life thousands of kilometers away from the small island where she grew up.

The difference between those two moments is a story about how confidence is built slowly, how a woman tries while the fear is still there, and how a university can become the place to recognize a version of herself she had not yet met.

From keeping an answer to herself as a dreamer, Jalaisa is now part of the global workforce of Qatar Airways, one of the world's leading airlines, as a flight attendant. 

A childhood that knew the value of school

Jalaisa’s journey did not begin in an airport, it began on an island. She grew up in Higatangan, among the best tourist spots in Biliran province. She’s the youngest of five siblings in a family that did not have much. Her parents could not always provide the things they asked for, but they made one thing a priority: their children's education.

Whenever she requested for something beyond what the family could afford, she would hear her parents say, “Paniguro lang ug skwela, dai.” [Just work hard in your studies, dear.] At first, she understood those words as a gentle refusal—an explanation of why a certain want had to wait. As she grew older, however, the meaning changed. Her parents taught her that life would not always offer them the same things other people had; what they could offer was the discipline to strive, the faith to keep going, and the opportunity to study.

It was a lesson formed not through lectures, but through sacrifice. Jalaisa carried it into BiPSU.

But when she entered the university, she did not arrive as the confident young woman people see today. She arrived quietly.

Who was afraid to raise her hand, given a space to grow

Jalaisa describes her collegiate self simply as average, shy, and uncertain.

She knew ideas but often kept them to herself. She knew answers but feared speaking them. There were moments when she would leave classes regretting that she had remained silent. For a while, it was easier to stay within the safety of observation—to listen to others, to avoid getting things wrong in public, to let confidence belong to people who seemed to have more of it.

But BiPSU slowly began to challenge that version of her.

There were ample days when she and her friends gathered in the library, outside classrooms, or in the cafeteria, stretching study sessions long enough to make difficult subjects feel manageable. There were conversations between classes, shared notes, small jokes during stressful days, and the comfort of knowing that someone else was trying to survive the same academic pressure.

Those moments, she says, became some of her fondest memories of college. More importantly, she learned something that would later become crucial to her career: “The people around you can either reinforce your doubts or help you outgrow them.”

Jalaisa found friends who believed in her. She found instructors who did not simply teach lessons but shared their own experiences and stories of becoming. Their lives reminded her that confidence was not something reserved for people who were naturally fearless, rather it could be learned.

So she started taking chances. She joined activities, tested herself, and set goals. Her Bachelor of Science in Tourism Management (BSTM) degree became more than preparation for employment. It became a training ground for the person she was becoming.

The course required her to interact with people, face unfamiliar situations, understand different perspectives, and communicate with greater confidence. She learned that tourism was not simply about destinations; it was about people, service, culture, and the ability to make another person feel welcome.

In the process, she discovered something about herself, that she could do more than she thought. By graduation, the girl who once struggled to raise her hand had graduated with Latin honor.

The transformation was gradual enough that she could hardly point to the exact moment it happened. She looked back and realized that she was already stepping outside the walls she had built around her.

When the dreamer earned her wings

Becoming a flight attendant had always been somewhere in Jalaisa's imagination. For years, the dream stayed there. She wanted it, but she did not have the courage to apply. Perhaps the irony was that while she had spent her college years learning to speak with confidence, applying for an international airline still seemed like a leap too large to take.

Then the heavenly opportunity came. Qatar Airways opened a recruitment, and Jalaisa found herself standing before a familiar crossroads: to remain within what was comfortable or to risk hearing a "no".

She applied. The recruitment process was not a single interview that changed everything. It was a three-day test of preparation and composure, involving interviews and examinations amid a field of numerous applicants competing for the same opportunity.

After those three days, the waiting began. Requirements had to be completed. Medical examinations had to be passed. There were stretches of uncertainty when there was nothing more to do but wait for an outcome she could not control.

For someone who had once feared speaking in front of a classroom, this was another kind of test. There was no answer sheet to check, no professor to ask, no certainty that effort would produce a result. Jalaisa did what she could do. She prepared, she waited, and she prayed.

And she learned another lesson: “Courage also means surrendering what you cannot decide,” Jalaisa shared.

Eventually, the job offer came. But even then, the wings were not yet hers.

After moving to Qatar, she underwent two months of intensive training to officially earn the job title. The training challenged her physically, mentally, and emotionally. It demanded discipline and perseverance, and it taught her that the glamorous image of aviation is only the surface of a profession built on precision, composure, responsibility, and service.

Then came the moment she had religiously worked toward. She earned her wings. The occasion she once lacked the courage to pursue had become her profession.

What the cabin crew uniform reflects

From the outside, a flight attendant's life can look like a dream stitched together by boarding gates, polished uniforms, beautiful destinations, and photographs from cities that most people only see on screens.

Jalaisa has seen that beauty. Yet, she has also learned the weight beneath it. Long flights, changing schedules, being away from family, living independently in another country, the emotional and physical demands of remaining professional and composed even when exhaustion has already settled in. Every flight brings a different combination of passengers, personalities, cultures, and circumstances. Each interaction requires adjustment.

The work is prestigious, she says, but it is also demanding. Perhaps that is what makes her story more meaningful. She did not simply arrive at a glamorous career, she grew into the person capable of carrying it.

Living abroad taught her independence. Aviation taught her composure. Traveling taught her perspective. And the experiences she gathered from people around the world gave her something she didn’t expect when she was still a student in a small province—a broader understanding of how large the world is, and how much there is to learn from it.

Grateful for her own blessing

“Growing up, my parents had taught me that life would not always offer us the same things other people had,” Jalaisa told. They knew what it meant to live within their means, to choose necessities over wants, and to make sacrifices so they could remain in school. 

Now, as she travels across continents, she has come to understand that lesson from an entirely different vantage point. “The world has given me what I once only imagined,” Jalaisa expressed. “Traveling has taught me to be grateful and to be present—to enjoy and savor each moment because not everyone gets the opportunity to experience the things that I have been fortunate enough to experience.”

For someone whose childhood was shaped by knowing that not everything could be afforded, the privilege of seeing the world is not something she takes lightly. Each destination becomes a reminder of how unexpectedly life can unfold when one continues to show up, takes a chance, and trusts the journey.

“I may have started as a shy girl from the small island of Higatangan, but by God’s grace, I have experienced more than I could have dreamt,” she stated. Instead of allowing these experiences to make her forget where she started, they have made her more grateful for it.

The provincial lady who once learned to accept what life could not give her eventually received what life offers with gratitude.

The more she sees globally, the more she cherishes home

A paradox in Jalaisa's life is that the farther she travels, the more deeply she appreciates where she came from.

She has seen places she once only admired. She has met people whose cultures are completely different from hers. She has experienced the beauty of unknown cities and the rhythm of life in countries she once learned only from reels.

But no matter how beautiful the destination, there remains something she looks forward to at home. The people, her family, and the simplicity she loves. For Jalaisa, home is no longer defined by a particular place. It is defined by the humans who make returning meaningful.

Travel has made the world larger for her, and it has also made home more precious. “Sometimes, it takes seeing how vast the world is to understand how special the little place that raised you has always been,” she said.

View beyond tourism

Her experiences in aviation have also given Jalaisa a more mature understanding of the field she studied.

Tourism, she believes, should never be measured only by how many visitors arrive or how many vlogs a destination produces. There are people behind every destination. There are communities behind every attraction. There are cultures and ecosystems that should not have to disappear for a place to become profitable.

Coming from an island, Jalaisa hopes to see more responsible and community-based tourism—development that allows local people to genuinely benefit while protecting the environment and preserving cultural identity. She believes the Philippines has countless places beyond its usual tourist centers that deserve attention, including micro and remote destinations whose beauty has not yet been fully seen. Her hope is not just to bring tourists there, it is to ensure that when tourism arrives, the community benefits with it.

That perspective is perhaps one of the most valuable things she carries from her Tourism Management education into the aviation industry. She now sees the world not merely as a collection of destinations, but as a collection of communities.

Weaving BiPSU with the world, world with BiPSU

Jalaisa has spent years moving between countries; but she has never wanted distance to erase where she began.

As a BiPSU alumna, she carries the university in less tangible but perhaps more important ways—through the confidence to communicate, the willingness to take opportunities, the ability to work with different people, and the humility to keep learning. Her experiences abroad have widened her understanding of culture, human race, and possibilities. Now she hopes to bring some of that widened perspective home.

For her, weaving BiPSU with the world means taking the values and lessons she gained from the university wherever she goes, while bringing the experiences she gains from the world back to the community that helped shape her. The relationship works both ways.

BiPSU helped prepare her to meet the world. The world continues to teach her what she can bring back to BiPSU. This is why she wants students to understand that coming from a small place does not require them to dream small. A person's starting point is not a ceiling.

Her public announcement to BiPSUnistas

Somewhere inside the University today is another student who knows the answer but is afraid to speak. Someone who doubts whether they are good enough, someone who sees an opportunity but hesitates to apply because rejection feels worse than failure, someone who dreams of an unfamiliar place and wonders whether a person from Biliran could ever belong there.

Jalaisa knows that feeling. She lived it. “Keep showing up, keep trying,” the flight attendant herself advises. “Do not be afraid of gateways that push you outside your comfort zone.”

In addition, Jalaisa reminds the BiPSU community to choose people who believe in their growth. It is likewise important that they do their part, work hard, pray, and trust God.

She speaks about faith not as an obliged idea, but as something that accompanied her through vagueness. She believes she did not arrive where she is through strength alone; there were things she prayed for, things she waited for, and things that did not happen according to the timeline she wanted. Yet she sees faithfulness in every season.

That is the message she now offers to students still standing at the beginning of their own stories. “Do not limit what your life can become simply because you cannot yet see the road ahead.”

There is something poetic about the girl who used to stay quiet when she knew the answer. Perhaps she did not become fearless, perhaps she simply became brave enough to speak while still afraid. And that may be what education is capable of doing at its best—not turning students into people they were never meant to be, but helping them discover the person who was there all along.

Jalaisa arrived at BiPSU as a shy student who did not know where her journey would lead. She departed as a graduate who had learned to trust her voice. Today, that voice travels through aircraft cabins, across languages and races, and into conversations with people from various corners of the world.

Her story delivers how the University is committed to creating an environment where students are not only equipped with knowledge and skills, but are given the space, support, and confidence to discover their potential. It is a testament to how education in BiPSU can pilot not only careers, but the person behind them.

For the students who are still sitting quietly in their classrooms, afraid that their voices are too tiny, Jalaisa's journey offers a different ending to that fear. You may not yet know how far your voice can travel, you only need the courage to use it.

“Biliran Province State University is a special place as it provides students the opportunity to start from wherever they are and grow into wherever they want to go,” she stated. “By the time I pursued a career as a flight attendant, I had already learned the importance of challenging myself and taking a leap even when they felt intimidating.”

Rainbows could agree, a girl who lacks the courage to speak up can one day find herself speaking to the world. Because at BiPSU, every learner is given the chance to find their voice, spread their wings, and discover just how far they can go.

#WoWBiPSU

[This article aligns with SDG 4: Quality Education and SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth.]