PAGLAOM: The UPCM Class of 2023
August 04, 2023
By: Karl Gerard R. Crisostomo, UPCM 2023
Class 2023 students smile for the camera as they finish their first year of medicine.
Midway through Class 2023’s final year of medical education under the UP College of Medicine, a poll was posted on the class Telegram chat: “What would be the overarching theme for our commencement exercises?” We had an array of beautiful words to choose from and, naturally, it took time before the class decided. Initially, the concept of Yugto won the majority over. The idea was built around us medical students graduating into the great unknown; how we would be closing one chapter of our lives and moving into another. The finality of Yugto however, was a deterring factor. Thoughts of better descriptors to encapsulate our five-year stay in the College persisted in the minds of some. More importantly, that of whether or not we were even ready to break free.
Cliché would dictate that we refer to the UP College of Medicine Class of 2023’s medical school experience as, “a series of ups and downs,” but that would be true for all medical students who combat sleep deprivation, stress, deadlines, and timebound requirements that would often render us despondent. If anything, the start of our stay was unremarkable, much like any other batch in the College. We came to class, did our due, and went through the first year of med school with little to no drama whatsoever. Our most distinct feature being our class cheer, “2023, Making History!”, a tagline which at that point felt more like a response to the need for an appropriate alliteration in keeping with tradition rather than a genuine statement. Bonds were formed, exams were taken, TRP and Mediscene came and went, and our first year ended just like that. Second year was no different — we studied, we failed, we did what we could to stay afloat, but some of us did thrive in that environment. Even with all the stressors surrounding us, we all settled into our own respective niches. Some served key roles in their respective Organizations, Fraternities, and Sororities, while others contributed to the class directly through their work in the class council. These included initiatives such as setting class outings, coordinating tirelessly to execute IGPs for the class fund, as well as initiating review sessions for those who were having a difficult time with their studies. Despite these niches the class still banded together for major class events, which culminated with the class winning first place in the annual Tao Rin Pala Chorale competition — an accolade borne out of a year’s worth of hard work, having come short in the prior iteration of the event. By then some of us felt that we had already adjusted well to the ins and outs of medicine, and that we had settled comfortably and built our respective identities and plans for the years ahead. Unfortunately, that would not be the case.
Much has been written about the collective experience of the world during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — of how a class suspension of a few weeks quickly extended to two years of isolation and social distancing. Loss had become too common, settling into our lives within those years. We lost time to bond with each other, opportunities to explore the field of Medicine both in a hospital setting and through various electives; we even lost a few of our colleagues and loved ones, a classmate of ours included among them. Processing these alone in our homes and together in Zoom meetings proved indescribably difficult. It is a gross understatement to say that it changed everything for us, along with what we had to contend with moving forward. The dramatic shift had made for a tortuous journey, and it was up to us to navigate it as best we could.
Adjusting to the new status quo was easier said than done, and that is exactly what we did throughout our clerkship in the Philippine General Hospital. Face masks and face shields were the norm, with everyone living day by day; the threat of contracting the virus that made the Earth stand still ever looming around us. Even as we felt a particular sense of normalcy at finally being able to go on face to face duties again, we had to contend with the idea that the world as we knew it was not as it used to be. Opportunities for procedures, learnings, and assists that were once in abundance in the pre-pandemic setting were now scarce, with the class often being told to defer these opportunities to the more senior class, who were equally unfortunate as they virtually spent a majority of all their hospital years in isolation during the peak of the pandemic. Many of us finished our Clerkship year feeling as if we had much more to learn to deserve to be called “doctors”.
This past year – our last as students – circumstances were a bit more favorable. Still, we had to deal with many things along the way. As with the previous year, our curriculum was once again split into two phases separated roughly six months apart, with the idea that if a lockdown were to occur again, there would be another opportunity to make up for lost duties or requirements. While this may have served as a peaceful respite for the more difficult rotations, it also did not translate well with regards to establishing continuity in patient care as well as in providing ample time for the class to adequately internalize some of the lessons learned throughout. With our fellow Postgraduate Interns from different medical schools in tow, we navigated a new PGH, one that changed just as much as we had over the course of the previous two years. Seniors who we once last saw as our seniors in Calderon Hall were now our residents, equally as hard pressed to take every opportunity possible to make up for lost time in the preceding years. We were forced to learn in the span of a single year what previous batches did in three. For every misstep and question, we not only felt a sense of internalized inferiority, but also had to contend with similar statements online — with some higher powers deeming us as less qualified or capable compared to our pre-pandemic peers. Regardless, we pushed on and finally reached the end of our journey as medical students.
As I look back at what the class has gone through to get to where we are today, the question I posed at the start still lingers at the back of my mind. Yugto can be described as appropriate to our experience, but perhaps there is a more fitting way to illustrate the collective experience of the class after everything that has happened? Weeks after the initial announcement, another vote was opened with an alternate suggestion for the graduation theme: paglaom, hope. When the polls were opened, the change was met with approval from the class, with 88% voting to change the theme. Indeed, after everything that we have been through, I cannot help but agree. Yugto implies finality, a defined start and end, but the story that we are writing as a class has not yet reached its conclusion. Rather, it has only begun. Paglaom implies many things. For one, we as servant leaders of the UP College of Medicine have been tasked through our capacity as physicians to act as agents of hope through our respective practices, increasing the quality of life for our patients while also giving them the chance to see the sun for another day. Paglaom also implies the beginning of something greater than what any of us could have expected. It indicates a bright outlook of what is yet to come, a promise of something better. It is a statement to the world that our class is not yet done with what we have to offer to the college, and to the country. As we leave our medical education behind and move to the challenges that life has to offer, in my mind I go back to our class cheer, and how its construction implies not a declaration of history having been made — instead, being a promise of what is yet to come. Our story is not the end of a book, to be discarded and left to the rigors of time. Rather, it is still a blank page, of many stories waiting to be told.
We made history – and we will keep making history.
Students from Class 2023 pose in front of the Oblation and PGH in their white coats as their final days of internship come to an end.