SAN CARLOS CITY, Pangasinan- As thousands of students will march this month for their graduation in school, here’s a message from a visually-impaired woman, a Magna Cum Laude graduate, for hundred others who take their studies for granted.

Minnie Aveline Juan of this city, 21, the first Filipino Braille International awardee last year, advised students who have complete senses, not to waste the opportunity given them to be educated.

“Kung ako nga bulag nakaya ko po. Dapat mag-aral din silang mabuti (I am blind but I made it. They should also study hard),” she told this writer.

Juan graduated last year at the Trinity College in Quezon City where she took up Bachelor of Arts in English and was named the batch valedictorian after getting the highest average among the three magna cum laude graduates the time they graduated last March.

Juan is also pursuing her second course, Bachelor of Elementary Education at the Virgen Milagrosa University Foundation here to specialize later on Special Education. A talented singer, she also joined the faculty choir and “reads” readings in the Bible during Sunday Mass in the school chapel and other inspirational books in her spare time.

Her mother, Dr. Ma Lilia Posadas-Juan is the VMUF university president while her dad, Dr. Angelo Juan, is the vice president for administration. Both are medical doctors.

Though it is said that education is a right, the young Juan said with the spiraling cost of sending a child to college, education becomes a privilege nowadays and students should realize the hardships of their parents.