The Season of Love

February 9, 2006

I never quite understood the fuzz that comes with the season of Valentines. Even during the times I was in love, it was not that a big deal to me compared to my friends. Perhaps it because they say it is a time to say and show your true feelings, feelings of love and affection to the people we care for and for the people we love. And, perhaps it didn’t really stir so much in me because I was blessed with being able to speak and show love any time I wanted to.

This year however, the season of love took a different meaning for me. Since a few days ago, I started reflecting on the things I love and the things I care for in relation to my current reality as a first year medical student in West Visayas State University.

Coming Home

Coming home was rather awkward for me after having lived a very independent life in Manila. Again, I was confined to the securities of a home most especially having people worry about me when I came home late. At my age, coming home also meant that I still had to rely on my parents’ allowance while my other batch mates from Ateneo were earning for themselves.

Yet, despite these things, coming home also meant having a more practical lifestyle. For starters, the tuition fee was not as expensive as the other Medical Schools in Manila, Cebu or even Davao or Cagayan de Oro. The school was also a block away from the house. During sleepless nights, I can have someone prepare coffee for me, worry about my food and clean-up after me when I was too tired to care. Once in a while, I’d also get to help in giving modules or seminars or doing projects with mom and Tita My for GAMOT Resources, Inc.

The comforts of home posed more pros rather than cons in the decision to come home. But, was West Visayas a home?

Aside for its location and the dialect spoken in the school, West Visayas ground was uncharted territory for me. It would be my first time to study in the public school. Here, there was too much diversity that I had classmates that came from South Cotabato all the way to Benguet Mountain Province. People came from different backgrounds with different social status. It only took a few weeks before tension and cliques developed. Competition was heavy and intelligent people had always something to argue about. It also didn’t help that we were one of the fewest 1^st year batches to walk the halls of the College of Medicine.

West Visayas State University also believed in a holistic form of education. As post Graduate Students, we were “encouraged” otherwise termed required to join extracurricular activities. We had regular College of Medicine “Hinampang” that enabled students to compete not only academically but in the basketball, baseball, volleyball courts as well as in soccer, chess and in literary-musical competitions. During our university week, the 1^st year represented the college for the Annual University Cheer dance Competition. These activities were my source of sanity but were met with great opposition by out classmates who came to school to study. Although I also agree with them that studying was our primary priority, I also felt that we also had to have some sort of release activity to keep the balance of our well being. Up to this day, this problem still persists between my classmates and the key people in the system like the administration and our student council leaders.

The Only Number I Will Remember

I was rather unfamiliar with the different tensions in Med School, tensions between my classmates, some forms of passive aggression and my personal tensions as well. I was and still am concerned about this new system and curriculum that the college is undertaking – PBL or Problem Based learning. In this system, students are given ILOs or Intended Learning Objectives covering Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry and other subjects. Instead of semesters, we have Blocks covering the different organs systems. The most challenging part is classes are only held during the mornings and we are left to study everything we need to know for the weekly module exam, the small group discussion and Block and practical exam that make up our grades.

I was never a reader. I brain was programmed audio-visually and I remember things that I write down. Reading and studying for long hours made me sleepy most of the time. Maintaining the discipline to accomplish the required ILOs is really something that I struggled with and up to now I still am. They say it takes a certain amount of maturity to be able to do this plus dedication. I can’t say I don’t have those two things but I think I just don’t have QUITE YET the endurance for this sort of marathon.

Struggling meant that most of the times during the first semester, I would pay lesser attention to academic priorities. In short, I failed one block – Control and Integration of Movement (Anatomy of the Musculo-skeletal System).

It was the first time in my life that I got a 5.00 font sized 14 in red in a grading sheet. Wow! In my entire life I swore to myself that this is the only number in my years in medical school that I will NEVER forget. I will never forget it, so that I will never have to see it again.

Sometimes when I look back I wonder what really caused that result. I knew I had poor choices but I also knew that I suffered two weeks of the 4-week block battling typhoid fever. I wonder whether having found out about the wedding of the love of my life had something to do with it or was it just plain negligence. I also recalled my decision to go into medical school immediately was partially influenced by his apparent haste to marry and I thought if I finished early we’d have a chance. Perhaps, it was also God’s way of purifying my intentions.

Maybe it was simply a combination of it all.

Academic Adjustment

After that point, I became more wary of my choices. Yet, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t seem to lift myself. I was only passing.

Wait, “I WAS ONLY PASSING?”

Come to think of it, what else mattered in this world f mine but passing? I should even be grateful that I was passing.

It was then I realized that I was coming from the idea that I had always been on top prior to Manila. I though because this was a provincial school it would be easier than Ateneo de Manila. I was wrong. I knew I was intelligent but I was simply not performing well.

Later I realized that indeed I had the capacity to come up on top in this game. That is if I followed the ideal methodology of the PBL system of reading and reading all the free hours given to us. The idea of such drove me a little insane. I was sure that I would stop med school after my second year if I did the 10-12 hours daily reading routine, if not I’d really go insane.

I guess, as long as I retained the basic minimal information, grades or ranking wouldn’t matter that much anymore. I well being I guess still was more important than prestige.

Pride as the Strongest Motivator

Last night we had drinking session to celebrate a classmate’s birthday. In between numerous bottles of Red Horse, we were debating on the new system and worrying on how we’d fair in the Medical Board exams after. After exchanging points comparing the traditional 8-hour class type of med school and our 2-4 hour class PBL med school, we came up with the conclusion that it was more of pride that motivated us to study.

Pride because being a failure gave a negative connotation. Pride because since we were in this sort of system, it was almost implied that we had to do good in the boards to defend this system.

In our environment, you are not judged by the heart that you give into this vocation. You are judged by what you know in this line of work.

For me those two things; vocation and work are two different things.

A Dry run of Surgical and Medicine Department Duty

As a member of the Order of Asclepius, I got a change to co on surgical and medical missions. Being a 1^st year student, we would only take physical examination and interview patients on chief complaints and symptoms during medical missions to screen the hundreds of clients as to which doctor to send. I also got a chance to assist on minor operations such as cyst removal and circumcision procedures.

I enjoyed these activities and found meaning in what I do in occasions such as these.

I realized that pride was not my motivator, it was conscience.

I am no longer concerned of grades or of the prestige or respect reserved for those in high academic standing. What I was more concerned for was my accountability in heaven as a result of my practice.

In the 2 semesters that I had experience, I knew that the business of lives was no joke. Yes I was resolved that grades were not the whole world but apparently knowledge was. Knowledge in this business meant live lost or lives saved. I envision myself standing before the gates of heaven not being accounted for the good and bad things that I have done but accounted for the result of my vocation and who I had become in this vocation that affected lives and souls. With this in mind, negligence and lack of knowledge were no longer acceptable because I knew that during crucial moments, these two things can really break a doctor.

Preventive and Community Medicine

My four years in Ateneo taught me a lot about my God and my responsibility to His people. Maybe that’s also the reason why I wanted to become a doctor in the first place. This is why I was initially excited in our Preventive and Community Medicine.

This was the earliest chance in Medical School that we’d get a chance to interact with people we hope to serve in the future. However, to my disappointment this endeavor proved to be quite different from what I expected.

Preventive and Community Medicine which was supposedly an occasion for a Medical Doctor to also participate in Community Building was regarded more as a subject. What amazed me at the same time disappointed me most about our first few experiences was the lack for sincerity in what we do.

Maybe, I feel this way because I come from a bias that our underprivileged brothers and sisters should be treated with more care. I understand that people like them believe that they are poor in all aspects of society because they are poor materially. I got used to relating to them under the premise that they should be treated with respect in more ways than our regular cohorts because of their tendency to have low self esteem. Well, this is also the psychologist in me speaking.

Today, we conducted our first activity in our adopted baranggay and I couldn’t help but feel uneasy with our methods. We came to help conduct a Situational Analysis activity to aid us in further planning and implementing projects in the community. However, I sensed that we were out of line lecturing and facilitating there, giving the impression that since we were medical students we knew more things that we had to “teach” them.

There was nothing wrong with teaching, I just felt that it was given without them asking for it.

Some Things that Remain in the Dark

I believe in the goodness at which I approach things. I believe in the graces of positive outlook, the capability of reflection and the humility to admit that I am not perfect.

Perfection is something reserved for God, yet it is human being’s intrinsic capability to approximate it or come close to it despite never being able to achieve it.

My imperfections include some things that remain in the dark. I have had a lot of blessings and yet I also have a lot of things to work out. There are just times that I fail to be a good Christian, a good citizen, a good daughter, a good friend. Sometimes I choose to ignore boundaries and cross the line. There are some things that I need to resolve within myself and there are some things that need a lot of improvement. Sometimes I get tempted with the luxury of ignorance and passivity.

Life is indeed a struggle. I struggle with current realities, with preferences and choices, with people and beliefs and situations. Someone once said that God puts us in pastures where we can bloom. People just tend to look for greener ones.

I believe I am put right back smack at the things that I need to struggle with. These things have been avid companions throughout my life and I don’t believe they’ll simply vanish to prove that I can bloom. It’s specifically overcoming them that will be a testament to my blooming and hopefully that will serve as my tiny contribution in this life.

The season of love speaks not only of romantic love and the commitments and sacrifices that comes with it. This season also speaks of love as a result of a strive for transcendence or simply love and commitment as a result of searching for meaning and purpose in this borrowed time we call life.