A glimpse into a full teaching schedule
So this is how it feels to be a full-time teacher… for one day: January 21, 2026, Wednesday. No clinic, no research, no writing… just teaching!
8:00 to 10:00 AM: I typically designate Wednesdays as my “St. Luke’s Day”. The St. Luke’s Medical Center College of Medicine-William H. Quasha Memorial has its General Faculty and Student Assembly (GFSA) series on Wednesday mornings, so my day started out by listening to a Health Promotion and Public Health talk by one of its alumni. One of the other faculty and I were discussing that these sessions sometimes serve as great career talks; they open up the possibility of medical careers other than the usual residency-fellowship-clinical practice route.
10:30 AM to 12:00 PM: Module 3 of the Introduction to Medical Humanities elective for interns. We started with Module 1 (of 6) the previous week, and today we tackled Narratives of Illness in Literature and Visual Art – fiction and nonfiction writing, and graphic novels. This is the first time we’re running the two-week elective for this academic year. In the past three years I would have said “first and only time” since that’s the usual, but it looks like the elective is a bit more popular for AY 2025-2026 because we’re having two more batches of interns in April and May… a total of three groups this year!
1:00 to 3:00 PM: Doctor-Patient Relationships and Empathy Module of the Medical Ethics and Professionalism elective for interns. In this two-week elective (separate from the Medical Humanities elective above), interns take an in-depth look into topics like autonomy and agency, power in medicine, and health care professionalism.
5:00 to 8:00 PM: Unlike the other two in-person classes today, this last class of the day was via Zoom video conferencing. The second semester for the University of the Philippines Manila campus started this week. Jhaki Mendoza, my co-faculty from the College of Medicine’s Department of Social Medicine, joins me in this class. I am grateful for her expertise – having undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in anthropology, her perspectives complement mine since I can offer the the clinical/medical background. This is the first time I’m teaching a graduate-level course for the Master of Medical Anthropology/Master of Science in Medical Anthropology programs co-administered by the College of Medicine and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of the Philippines. The Master of Medical Anthropology program is the non-thesis option, while the Master of Science requires one. Since MA 201 (Perspectives in Medical Anthropology) is a foundational course tackling the multiple theoretical approaches to studying the intersections between culture, society, health and medicine, I wanted to start with a talk about the basics: Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Masters Degree in Anthropology.
Whew! Nice to temporarily put on a non-clinical hat… back to seeing patients the next day (Thursday).
