INTARMED: A Giant Leap of Faith

INTARMED: A giant leap of faith
By Wen Del Rosario-Raymundo
Sunday, July 20, 2008,
from The Philippine Star
(*Thanks for sending this on Bambi!)

In 1982, I entered UP as part of the first-ever Integrated Liberal Arts and Medicine class. INTARMED began as an experimental Accelerated Medicine program that accepted 20 boys and 20 girls into the College of Medicine direct from high school. Our first two pre-med years were spent in UP Diliman, blocked all throughout except for minor subjects. Every Monday morning, we went to PGH on Taft Avenue for preceptorships in Introduction to Patient Care. After IPC, we rushed to Diliman, grabbed a quick lunch at Casaa, then caught up with the rest of our classes. In our third year, we were integrated with the lateral entrants (premed graduates) for four years of medicine proper, followed by a year of internship at UP-PGH.

While we were all understandably excited about getting into the program, it soon became apparent that not everyone was happy with our presence. Many pre-med students were sore at us for having encroached on an already limited number of slots in Medicine. Had they known of the original plan to increase the INTARMED slots annually until it became the only point of entry to Medicine, with premed courses eventually phased out, they would’ve probably lynched or skinned us alive. Thankfully, most were as clueless as we were then as to how things would pan out.

Now, any experimental program — no matter how well-planned — was bound to have birth pains one way or the other. INTARMED was no exception. This we found out soon enough, when scholarships (e.g. NSTA) and APE’s (except for Spanish and PEPE) were deemed invalid since our course was unique and unprecedented.

Unfazed, the boys all scrambled to get medical certificates for the all-important “green card,” which would grant exemption from CMT. The girls made fun of them when all were denied green cards and required to take CMT. We laughed till our bellies ached, until we learned that CMT was mandatory… for everyone, including females!

Every Saturday, we grudgingly reported to DCMT as the “Medic Platoon,” wearing fatigues complete with little white belt bags bearing the Red Cross insignia. We listened to military training lectures, endured formations, crawled on the ground during war games, baked under the scorching noonday sun during pasa-masid… only to be told apologetically at the end of the school year that — oops, so sorry, CMT was not required after all.

One perk of getting into INTARMED was the privilege of having the best professors: institutions like Professors Concepcion Dadulfalza, Bienvenido Lumbera, Clara Syliangco, Felipe de Leon, Jr., Randy David, Professors Estrada, Cariño, Umaly, Pagulayan, Cubar, Taylo, Jacinto, and other brilliant teachers. We had hip young mentors like Zoology instructors Misses Rodriguez and Garibay, Physics instructors Roland Sarmago and the extremely quotable Wilson Garcia, who, during a discussion on spherical planetary models, emphatically declared that “while Kepler was discovering his laws, Galileo was playing with his balls.”

Our Spanish 1 professor was sweet and soft-spoken Prof. Antonio, who cued our telephone conversation exercises with a lilting “Ti-li-li-li- ling!” after which she cringed as we mangled the Spanish language. Giselle and I sneakily married off our classmate Eric (“¡Hola Giselle! Nuestro amigo Eric casarà a la Señorita.”), prompting him to retaliate with a resolute “¡Hola Jason! Ha obtenido un divorcio.”

Being in INTARMED back then meant not having to take the NMAT at all; we just had to pass all subjects to get into medicine proper. No problem, we thought, until we reached the second half of our last premed year, a.k.a The Sem From Hell. A curriculum miscalculation unintentionally overburdened us with the equivalent of four Zoology subjects and their labs, in addition to other subjects like Chem 40 and Physics 52. By mid-semester, half the class was flunking Zoo with class standings of 4.0! Our alarmed parents and teachers promptly convened an emergency meeting to discuss remedial measures, which enabled everyone to eventually pass.

In June 1984, we finally made it to medicine proper — bruised, battered, but still alive. Opening ceremonies in the steaming auditorium had Dr. Billote greeting the entire student body with “To make a diamond, you need both heat and pressure. You are now experiencing the heat; the pressure will come later.”

Our exuberance at finally making it was quickly doused during enrollment, when we were welcomed with a terse “Mga P.I. ninyo!” No, they were not cussing us — due to yet another oversight, we had apparently failed to take P.I.100 (Rizal Studies), a required pre-med subject!

The solution? That semester, while non-INTARMED classmates went straight home to wash up after Gross Anatomy dissection, we left a noxious trail along Padre Faura to UP Manila where, reeking of cadavers and formalin, we took P.I.100 classes until early evening.

Thereafter, our INTARMED class blended seamlessly with the rest of the students in the UP College of Medicine Class of 1989. How did we fare? Quite well. Our class valedictorian and other top students, as well as five of the board topnotchers came from INTARMED. All of us are now doing well in our chosen fields.

Two and a half decades later, I look back at those early years of INTARMED with both fondness and mixed feelings. Yes, we went through difficult times — yet these developed in us a sense of self-worth, a will to survive, strength of character, strong bonds and deep, lasting friendships. This class certainly gave me some of the best memories of my life.

INTARMED began as a giant leap of faith. In the end, however, I believe it was all worth it.