It's been a weird week...
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We were not able to go mountain hiking yesterday because it's been raining (a much welcome respite from the summer heat, the plants are crying hallelujah) Friday night and intermittently on Saturday. Instead, I was engaged in another kind of exercise, a mental one, as we had a seminar for the medical school faculty.
The topic did not sound very exciting - Concept Mapping, what is that? So I was planning to play truant and find some excuse not to go. But our indefatigable dean was texting us non-stop with pa-guilty messages so what could I do but attend? I brought a blank notebook because I was planning to zone out when things got really boring and doodle or write something for my weblog (!) during the lecture.
But surprise, surprise! The lecture did not turn out to be boring afterall. The two speakers were from my alma mater, UERMMMC. The first speaker was the present dean, Dr. Alfaretta Reyes, our pharmacology teacher who I swear has not aged a day! The other speaker was Dr. Marivic Amigable-Villamor, my very own classmate in med school and my schoolmate in UP Diliman, my goodness!
The seminar workshop turned out to be fun, actually. We had an activity where we made "Concept Maps," don't ask me to explain it, it's a bit difficult to explain. It's like a modern lesson plan/course outline/something like that, only more complex and more simple at the same time. So there we were, divided into three groups and each group was to make a concept map of a specific "trigger scenario" for the students to work on. The three "triggers" that the three groups chose were a. shortness of breath (our group), b. lower abdominal pain and c. abdominal distention.
It was such fun because after we made our Concept Maps we took turns defending our maps and critiquing the maps of the other groups. And I could see how these consultants' minds work. Very organized, very obsessive compulsive and very defensive about each group's own style and methodology. We were constantly being reminded that the goal of medical school is to produce general practitioners not specialists, a much needed reminder as all of us were specialists. All these were done in the spirit of camaraderie and learning and we graciously conceded to the corrections made by our guest speakers. We also had fun tweaking our maps until it more or less approached the ideal concept map.
I was very impressed by Mavic: she had a four page glittering resume yet she spoke without any airs at all. And I could see she really knew her subject matter by heart and talked passionately about being an educator. At one time somebody asked Mavic what she thought about people copying her work and her ready answer was she doesn't mind at all, she believes that knowledge should be shared for everyone's benefit.
In their institution, most of their basic medical subjects faculty are full timers, meaning they are not in clinical practice, unlike our situation in Silliman where all the faculty are in clinical practice too so our time is actually halved between the academe and the hospital. Mavic said, soon after graduation, she discovered that her calling was to be a teacher and her dream was not to accumulate a lot of money but to pursue her one true passion. And that's what she is now, a formulator and proponent of modern teaching concepts, an educator of students and teachers alike, and enjoying it all the way.
How about you? Have you found your one true passion and calling?
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