PIA-8 (March 7) --- Tanauan, Leyte has a good reason to be beaming with pride nowadays. Its beautiful lass, twenty-one year old Maila Carl Morantte landed in the 9th place with a rating of 86.60 percent, in the recent Nursing Board examinations.

Maila's story is a living proof that best schools are not just found in the metropolis. They could be in the hinterlands, but for as long as students study diligently, they could excel in their chosen fields.

Maila, who is now a nurse volunteer at the Tanauan Municipal Health Unit to help the disadvantaged people of her hometown, graduated at the top of her class at the Colegio de Sta. Lourdes of Leyte Foundation, Inc., in Tabon Tabon, Leyte, an interior town right after Tanauan.

As a board topnotcher, Maila could easily land a job but right now she is taking time to be of service in her hometown. She is currently in Cebu to get the reimbursement of her nursing board review fees from the St. Louis Review Center. This is her prize for being included among the top ten.

Ms. Morantte is weighing her options, whether to acquire an experience in the hospital work or to be a reviewer for nursing board exams.

Maila is also being offered a researcher job at the Tohuko University in Japan, Mayor Roque A. Tiu informed. A Japanese doctor who is conducting a research on pneumonia, and a recent visitor of the local government unit, offered Maila the research job.

Mayor Tiu said that Tanauan is proud to have a board topnotcher in the person of Maila. She is an inspiration to the young people of Tanauan, he said. She has proven that Tanauan is indeed the "Town of the Intellectuals," as it has been known time immemorial, Mayor Tiu added.

Maila is a product of public education. She finished her elementary as a valedictorian at the Tanauan 1 Central School and her secondary education at the Philippine Science High School Eastern Visayas Campus.

Maila's success is attributed to hard work, diligence and very supportive family. She is the first born of two children, the other being Carl, a 14-year old freshman student at the Assumption Academy in Tanauan, of Barangay Licod Chairman Claro Fulton Morantte, a businessman and an agricultural engineer, and Carol Morantte, DepEd Alternative Learning System Coordinator of Tanauan I District. (PIA 8)