prologue 1

its been about 6 years since i've been to the philippines, an event which steered me in a direction that i still live by today.

every personal statement for every application in the past 6 years has included this life changing experience. my entire college career was based on this trip and all of my social consciousness and awareness began here. it was the perfect precursor to my senior year of high school, and will be the perfect precursor to my first year of medical school.

for a detached upper middle class filipino american, notions of class and social inequality are easy to forget and get caught up in the system of a society that is more focused on the individual, on materialism, on escapism. i always need some sort of check now and then to remind me of the privileges i have and continue to have. detached in that i grew up away from extended family. detached in that i grew up away from my homeland. detached in that i didn't grow up speaking my languages. detached in that i live in a strata of society that a majority of my people do not. all these things which i cannot change, nor blame my parents for it. they chose what they had to for our family. all i can do from here is only understand and attempt to reconnect the bonds which where forcefully severed by the same system which i live in today.