100 Years and Counting

Memoir for the UP Centennial
UPCM Class of ’67

I was stunned when my mother said I was going to UP and would enroll in pre-med. I graduated from Colegio de Sta. Isabel in Naga City, Camarines Sur in 1959 and assumed I was going to UST. I wanted to be an architect. My father was an engineer and I grew up reading Popular Mechanics and Photography magazines, as my father was a photo aficionado. I remember he had a makeshift darkroom in a closet off the kitchen. I’d spend hours there fascinated by what he’s doing and eager to be his gofer. I was mesmerized watching images slowly come to life as they traveled through a series of trays he’d instruct me to dip the photographic papers in. I fancied I’d be good in architecture since I can visualize a finished house from floor plans I’d study from my father’s magazines and I was good at sketching. But my mother said I was gonna be a doctor and I would go to the University of the Philippines. Imagine! The idea never occurred to me. But then, when my mother put it in my head with such certainty, I didn’t find it alien at all. In those days to be a doctor is to be next to god and so I never thought I should think that. But since my mother declared it, it seemed to me I could be that, if she thought I could. There were those among my circle who thought it was heretic to go to the University of the Philippines. A good Catholic girl should not do that. But at heart I was rebel enough and with my mother’s endorsement, I really got excited.

Ignorance is bliss. I didn’t have any idea about how competitive it was to enroll in UP. I just did and I started the pre-med curriculum. I did notice some elitism and exclusive congregation among those who came from private catholic schools in Manila, but I was living in the campus dorm Sampaguita, and quickly found camaraderie and friendship from the girls there. Two I met from the start remain my very close lifelong friends. Perhaps the UP milieu was indeed socially and economically egalitarian and only scholarship mattered as status that I spent my years there oblivious of whose parents were powerful or rich or well-known. I settled very quickly feeling confident among the sophisticates there when on the first day of English class no one could spell bourgeoisie but me. From then on I got me respect including the teacher!

Coming from the province, I was amazed by the sheer size of the campus. The Oblation and the administration building behind it with the open columned center, it seemed from another world with the modernity of the architecture. The open circular catholic chapel was something from the next century. I thought, how open, how free, like it was saying come in, welcome everyone. I like to remember the exuberant feeling I’d get whenever I approached the driveway lined with rows of lush and graceful fire trees bursting with color. It saddened me when I learned a typhoon destroyed those magnificent trees. I’ve only been back to Diliman once in 1980. I still have the campus of my pre-med years in my mind’s eye, and I want to keep it that way.

Diliman then seemed idyllic. There were many afternoons reading on the grass and listening to the bells of the Carillon. I am glad to contribute to the restoration of the Carillon. I am outraged and sad that it went silent. I always think of UP Diliman whenever I hear carillon bells chime, wherever I am. Where I live now in Atlanta, Georgia, and since taking up golf, I like to play in Stone Mountain Park, where their carillon plays every hour, Georgia on My mind, Amazing Grace, Broadway tunes, and Christmas Carols during the holiday season. The bells sing and UP Diliman comes to life, as if I’ve never left it at all.

I was so impressed by seeing my first stage Broadway musical Oklahoma! performed by an ensemble from a US University, under the university cultural exchange program. It was so magical, and omigod! They kissed right there on stage, live, in front of everybody! That was so shocking and also such an eye-opener. It was then when I realized there is a lot of world to see. Shortly after Breakfast at Tiffany came out, I was in first year medical school in Herran, and its theme song Moon River struck a chord in me as with our whole class. It became our signature song and our UPCM class of ’67 won the inter-college choir competition in our rookie year.

These first impressions and early experiences in UP to me are seminal, including the ignominious sexist interview for admission in the College of Medicine in 1962. I thought I was the only one treated that way, and as is true with those who experienced humiliation and trauma, I kept it secret for years. Until I grew up. Until I grew wings. Until I grew horns here in America. Then I spoke about how my life flashed before my eyes when my interviewer challenged my bid for admission to medical school. He intimidated me by asking why I was wasting a slot in the college when a young man could possibly have it and not waste it, as I would, since I’ll eventually get married and have children and will decide not to practice medicine. I became cold and my heart stopped for a moment when he said that, I thought he’d deny me admission. I blurted something like “Sir, I will never do that because I’d like to serve humanity!” Whether that did it I’ll never know, because he’s now dead, but I did get in and later when I was able to define what happened to me I became livid. Then I became confused when other women said they were told the same thing but excused their interviewer because they believed he was trying to make them tough. They assured me that that was the practice in those days, that that was the culture, that those men were the products of their time, that one should just accept it. I’m still bewildered. As a product of those times, I guess I should see myself as without expectation about how I’m treated, that I should let others do with me as they please because they have reasons for what they do, that I should stuff that agonizing if brief moment when my entire being froze and my entire life flashed before my eyes, because it was akin to dying, when there is a threat to your dream. I hope that is not happening in admissions interview now. Among my contemporaries of both genders, the view of that kind of behavior is very benign, and sympathetic to the one with power rather than the applicant, and the pressure is for the applicant to forgive.

I’m glad that I’m not god, therefore I don’t have to forgive. Therefore I can ask for apology from the UPCM for the systematic sexist practice that its admission officials perpetrated on women applicants to the UP College of Medicine and condoned by the institution during my time. One hundred years should matter in making progress in this sphere of gender relations.