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Jade is a senior majoring in Biology at Stanford University. She was born and lived in the Philippines for 14 years before moving to America in 2006. The project was inspired by multiple people in her life who have struggled with Dementia (specifically Alzheimer’s Disease) such as her lolo (grandfather, mother’s father), a family friend, Sophie, and Jade’s mentor’s mother, Dita. This is Jade’s first venture into documentary filmmaking and would love to continue it in the future. She loves the arts especially the performing aspect and has spent most of her free time at Stanford dancing, singing, and taking part in theatrical productions. In the future, she hopes to attend medical school and give back to the community.

Watch Jade's documentary film alala "remember"

Jade Marcos

alala - “remember”

I’ve been procrastinating writing this paper since it was first assigned. I tried multiple times to sit down, crank it out, and just submit. One day I sat down, opened Word, titled it as My Senior Reflection, stared at the blinking bar and just did not know how to start this paper. I thought I was just being lazy but after multiple tries to start but failing miserably at writing this with the deadline looming over, I pondered why I felt reluctant to write it. It dawned on me that this reflection is my last assignment before I am officially done with my undergraduate career at Stanford. And now that I have no choice but to force myself to reflect and write this out, I couldn’t help tearing up as I wrote my official goodbye letter to Stanford.

I was born in the Philippines and lived there for 14 years before moving to America in 2006. Living in the Philippines, I knew that 99.99% of Filipinos were, in my honest opinion, quite sheltered from issues that society’s like America openly discuss about. It didn’t help that I was still young then and I was naïve to complex ideas such as race/ethnicity, equality, and all other political issues that are important to think about. I was not prepared to move to a country plagued with conflicting opinions on such topics. And so, as an immigrant, culture shock was inevitable. Beyond the clashing cultural values, I also felt alienated by the language barrier that I still deal with even today. During the first year after moving to America, I met a lot of people from different walks of life and my canvass of ignorance was painted with vibrant colors from the stories of the people I’ve met. I once heard this quote that suits what I’m trying to explain in so many words and resonates with me up until today: Our fingerprints don’t fade from the lives we touch.

In high school, I never really explored my passions as much as in college because of this shell I was in. Back then, I was that straight-A immigrant student that always did the right thing. Afraid of failing, I never tried to explore other interests. But one passion that stayed with me and that I continued pursuing in America was music. I was part of choir for as long as I can remember while I was in the Philippines. And in America, I auditioned and sang with the high school chamber choir for 3 years. I’ve always loved music and you can almost always hear me burst out singing at the most random moments or playing the piano.

Three years later, the college applications phase started and I barely knew what college was like in America. I wanted to stay in California, near home, so I only applied to UC schools. I was never going to apply to Stanford but my mentor, high school teachers, and my mother strongly encouraged me to do so. I will forever be indebted to them because on March 27, 2010, my email started saying Congratulations Jade Emmanny! Welcome to Stanford’s Class of 2014.

As a scared freshman, still not able to move past being an immigrant I felt very repressed and lonely. I didn't feel comfortable at Stanford and oftentimes, felt I wasn’t smart enough to be here, that I was that one applicant they mistakenly put in the accepted pile. I wish it came sooner, but after a while, I stopped feeling this way and I owe it to my friends and family for always being there when I felt inadequate and needed some comfort and reassurance.

I’ve wanted to become a doctor ever since I started thinking about how many lives are transformed through medicine. Loved ones of sick people can have more memories and time together because of treatments that were not available to people centuries ago. People with illnesses can get a second chance to pursue the things they loved instead of doing the things they felt obliged to do. To use this great power of medicine to give people more time with those they love and more time to pursue happiness has been a goal since I, myself, thought about the loved ones I’ve lost to illnesses such as cancer, heart attacks, and dementia.

As a premedical student majoring in biology, I had to take my fair share of biology classes. I love biology; which is why I chose to major in it. But during my junior year, I had to reassess what about biology I loved and what I knew wouldn’t be engaging for me.

Growing up, my parents taught me to assess my relationships and conflicts with people by thinking about other people’s motivations in order to understand them better. From then on, I’ve always analyzed people this way resulting to an interest in the biological basis of behavior. I started pursuing the neurobiology track. I took difficult classes that challenged me at times but proved to be worth it because of how much I loved what I was learning. During this time, most people from my year were in labs and preparing to write honors theses. I felt compelled to do the same and started looking and emailing labs that I can join. I hated this part of my Stanford undergraduate career because I felt pressured to do something I did not want to do. I did not envision myself enjoying the typical research most of my peers do. So instead of starting research, I chose to postpone this and went abroad to Kyoto, Japan.

Being in Japan, away from all the Stanford stress, I felt renewed and refreshed but still learning new things everyday. Day by day, I learned more about what it means to be culturally aware/sensitive and how to negotiate my own cultural values with this foreign culture I was immersing myself in. It was an eye-opening experience because I started thinking about my personal values and which of them were from my Filipino culture and which ones were American values I had recently acquired. It was awkward because I felt like I was psychoanalyzing myself and I was surprised by how much I have changed. At age 14, before coming to America, I promised my sister, who drove my mom and me to the airport, that I wouldn’t forget where I came from and all the values I was raised with. At age 21, I felt like I was no longer the same person.

In the Philippines (and in Japan, as I have observed while there), we have this strong social pressure to show extreme deference to elderly people. We have to call our professors by their last names prefixed with either Ma’am or Sir. This practice set the tone for the whole relationship with this barrier that we should never cross. However, in America, teachers and professors insist for students to call them by their first names or Ms/Mrs/Mr with their last names. My 14 year-old self was confused. Over the years, I had to get use to this practice and I accepted it by rationalizing the behavior as a way for professors to make their students feel comfortable to approach them about anything. While I was in Japan, the display of deference for elderly people, what I called the sensei (teacher) complex, was also highly practiced. During this time, I realized I had difficulties on addressing people and after some thinking, it hit me that I had changed. What used to be something so hard for me to adjust to became so natural for me and I did not even realize it. This was only one of the many values that I have observed to be conflicting between my Filipino and American identities.

After my trip to Japan, I came back to America more certain of my identity. I was no longer just Filipino, I was/am Filipino-American. Despite this momentous moment, I still had a decision to make regarding my academic future. I had to choose between researching and writing a thesis on a subject that whichever lab I choose to be in studies or to use my last year at Stanford to take more classes that fit my interests, spend time with the people who’ve become my family, dance my heart out as I reconnect with my Filipino culture through Filipino folk dancing, immerse myself in music through a capella and music classes, try new stuff such as theatre managing, and other bucket list items I only get to cross out while in college.

I was looking over classes to take for fall 2014 when I saw Bio196A. I then googled TSR and browsed the TSR website. I loved the idea of an exploration project that allows me to combine art and science. I knew right then that music will be my medium but then the scientific topic was still a mystery…

A few years earlier, I met a lovely lady and her daughter, Dita and Shirley-Anne respectively. My mom was a private nurse who took care of Dita. There was also Lola Sophie, a Filipina caregiver, who worked with my mom in taking care of Dita. Grandma Dita, as we lovingly called her, had Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) that progressed for 10 years. When I met her, she was wheelchair-bound due to a previous stroke. Like all AD patients, her mood swings became hard to manage until, through Shirley-Anne, we discovered her passion for singing. When she was feeling irritable, my mom would put on a CD of Grandma Dita’s favorite songs. In a few minutes we’d all be singing songs like Let Me Call You Sweetheart, Home on the Range, Getting to Know You, You are my Sunshine and many Frank Sinatra songs. After that singing session, Grandma Dita became cheerful and happy again. What astounds me the most is that despite being unable to speak coherently due to stroke, when my mom played those songs, she is able to sing along and her pronunciation was spot on. My interest in the way music can affect the brain and everything associated to it like memories, speech, and behavior stems from my encounters with Grandma Dita.

Later on, Lola Sophie was beginning to be observed with symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease as well. She was in denial for the most part but after multiple potentially life-threatening circumstances she experienced, my mom and Shirley-Anne finally convinced her to see a neurologist. She, too, was diagnosed with AD.

Besides my memories of Grandma Dita and her struggle through Alzheimer’s Disease, my experience with the disease started with my grandfathers. I grew up with both of my lolos (grandfathers) suffering through Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) during the later stages of their lives. I was too young to comprehend the severity of their memory loss. It reached a point wherein my lolo could not recognize my parents or me. It was painful to realize that all the memories we’ve shared were slowly vanishing and the bond we used to have was fading away. My family visited my lolo often. During those times, I remember my aunts, uncles, and parents would have hushed conversations about how my lolo was doing and how they’d ease his irritability and deal with his denial of his disability. There were days when my mother’s father, my other lolo, would act out memories from his years as a guerilla fighter in World War Two. He would say things like “Kailangan kong magtago dahil parating na iyong mga Hapones!” (I need to go hide from the Japanese) and “Pupunta ako sa bundukin para magtago” (I’m going to hide in the mountains). He would also pack up his prized possessions in a little duffle bag that reminded me of the backpacks soldiers carry in the army.

During my second year at Stanford, I joined a student group called United Students for Veterans Health and started volunteering at the Menlo Park VA. Most of the veterans that reside there have dementia. My weekly visits with them reminded me of Grandma Dita, Lola Sophie, and my lolos.

The people whom I’ve lost to Dementia (specifically Alzheimer’s Disease) were one of the most influential people in my life. To watch them go through this disease and not be able to do anything made me feel so useless. From then on, I want to be a part of the effort to find ways to improve the quality of the life of other people who have dementia.

35.6 million people currently suffer from dementia, the general term for all memory loss diseases, with 50-80% of these people suffering Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). In America, 5 million people have AD, which is the 6th leading cause of death. Although a lot of Americans develop AD every year, I chose to interview Filipino-Americans because of my own personal attachment and also to explore the interesting intersection between culture and medicine for this community. Being what I newly consider myself as, bicultural, I wanted to explore the differences between both in attitudes about Dementia (& AD).

At first, I wanted to compose my own music to use for the music sessions with my interviewees. I thought about how I would do such a project and capture the unique responses of my interviewees. Then I came to the conclusion that I had to record these sessions, and I had to use music that the interviewees are familiar with. I knew interviewing their families would help tell these elderly people’s stories and their music of choice as well. The songs I should use had to be the elderly person’s favorite song to dance to, sing to, and even just to listen to. The inner neurobiologist in me thought that of course that made sense. The songs that these people with AD knew quite well would be the stimulus that can trigger a neural circuit to their memories of singing the song.

The medium had to be separate from the music because I was trying to ‘expose’ music as an effective tool of communication and source of relaxation for these elderly people. I thought, why not film? Through a film, I can record the stories of these families and utilize the power of audio and video to cogently express ideas.

I was in cloud nine after I received enthusiastic comments from the second workshop session. I felt quite motivated to do this project. I was gearing up to find mentors, recruit interviewees, and find equipment among many other errands from a checklist I stayed up all night writing that same night.

Roadblock #1: Several emails, phone calls, letters, and weeks later, I had neither a mentor, nor a prospective interviewee confirmed. During this time, I was also writing the final draft of my grant proposal to submit to UAR to help fund for my project. I was at a loss and I did not know how to proceed.

Blessing #1: It was thanksgiving break when I heard back from my scientific mentor, Melen. She agreed to be my scientific mentor as she is an expert on Filipino ethnogeriatrics. She was wonderful but the best part was that she was Filipina like me. She guided me in the proper ways to integrate myself into the Filipino-American community as a filmmaker who wants to know private details of their lives.

Roadblock #1.5: Unfortunately, at this time, I also received an email from Kristine Samuelson, the first film professor I contacted to be artistic mentor, saying she’ll meet with me to direct me to the first steps of making my short film documentary but due to scheduling conflicts could not become my artistic mentor. Faced with the roadblock of not having an artistic mentor, Sue and Andrew recommended Nick. Nick got his MFA from Stanford and is a great documentary filmmaker. After emailing him, he agreed to take me on as his mentee.

Roadblock #2: At the end of fall quarter, I’ve emailed plenty of people in health facilities asking to come in for a visit with the underlying motive of interviewing their patients. No one got back to me but I understood why. So many privacy issues were working against me and the people I contacted were forced to ignore my emails because nothing could be done. I came to a conclusion that my recruitment had to be done through friends, families, and coworkers.

As winter quarter started, even without interviewees in mind, I had to prepare the questions I would ask. I had no previous experience in interviewing and with Melen’s help and Andrew’s lecture on interviewing, I realize I can only write so much for a conversation that can lead to anywhere. I was desperate to find interviewees and emailed and called places like the Filipino community centers in San Jose and San Francisco, religious Filipino communities etc.

Blessing #2: When my friend Noriko, who has a grandfather who developed dementia after a stroke, said her family told her it was okay for me to interview her grandfather, I knew this was my chance. They lived all the way up in Sacramento, a good 2-hours away from Stanford.

Rudy, Florita, and Nelia were three of the subjects I interviewed from my friend’s family. Rudy’s dementia prevented him from recognizing his family and doing the things he used to do. When I first talked to him, I asked him in English what his name was but received no reply. After asking the same question in Tagalog, he replies in English and I was amazed even more at the complexity of the disease. Later on in the conversation, I found out that he used to sing to his wife. He started singing traditional Filipino songs and even English songs such as Let Me Call You Sweetheart. He sang these songs amazingly for someone who experiences a great degree of forgetfulness. He even sang a Japanese song he used to sing to his daughter’s husband who is Japanese to connect to him. I’ve seen Grandma Dita come back from the typical state of absence most dementia patients are in through singing but seeing Rudy replicate the same behavioral changes, mood changes, and also witnessing his daughter’s emotional reaction to it was priceless.

After talking to Melen about the difficulties of finding interviewees, she helped me reach the conclusion that this reluctance to be exposed having a disease is natural amongst Filipinos. We have this sense of hiya (embarrassment) about having a disease or having a family member with the disease, which I find amusing to find out exists amongst Filipino-Americans because in the Philippines, we don’t really know much about Dementia/Alzheimer’s Disease and we believe that getting forgetful (senile) is natural amongst aging people; to expose this unique cultural implications on a medical matter became a minor goal.

Due to the difficulty of finding interviewees, it got me thinking about expanding my categories to just family members of people who had dementia. My mom and Shirley-Anne fit this category and so I interviewed them. Their story eventually became the foundation for my film. Through their stories, I was able to make my documentary in a way wherein they taught the audience what the disease was like while my interviewees showed these symptoms and their unique responses when singing is involved.

Roadblock #3: Hearing back from the UAR after already experiencing difficulties moving forward with my film drove me to my lowest of lows in TSR. My grant was denied and even worse, when I talked to one of the UAR advisors on how to improve my proposal, she made me feel as though I can never produce a quality film because I did not have vast experiences with filmmaking, therefore, UAR will not give me money because my project was not worth it.

I first met Nick in person during a workshop put on by Kimball (thanks, Andrew!). He was able to teach me a few tricks on filming subjects, angles, and all the technicalities. He also went over the footage I already had and told me what could be done better. It was a great session, I felt prepared to do my next filming.

Blessing #3: Easter weekend came along and I was still looking/calling/emailing for more families to interview. My mom and I drove down to LA for the weekend and serendipitously, my cousins whom we stayed with had a close family friend, Freddie, who had a mother with early stage dementia, Lucy. I interviewed them at their house for a few hours. As I walked away from their house, I had a heart wrenching realization that Lucy was headed down the path that Rudy has gone and will soon forget about her grandchildren, her children, her husband…

8 subjects later and I have hours and hours worth of footage. I drew the line on recruiting because it was time consuming and I already had a lot of film to go through and edit. Spring quarter was halfway done and I have yet to find my voice, the right way to narrate.

I found it difficult to integrate myself more than I already have in the film by interviewing people close to me. I wanted the individuals to tell their own story because it felt more natural to hear it from them. Also, I was already struggling with the film length that is partly due to the need to let the movie breathe.

Roadblock #4: Eventually, hours of editing in iMovie later, I cut down my film to 30 minutes. Nick strongly recommended using Adobe Premiere Pro but it was costly. iMovie was very limited in its editing powers and so I had to switch for the sake of the quality of my film. Unfortunately, I had to redo everything because the files cannot be interconverted to a form that worked for Premiere Pro.

I was trying to find a way to cut my film to 15 min maximum because I wanted it to be short but punchy. I needed it to be subtly dramatic, informational, engaging, and had comical moments to ease out the dramatic scenes. I wanted to get my message across in as few minutes as possible as well and so I consulted with Nick. He came down to Stanford 2 weeks before the exhibition to work with me to shorten my film. We were working in Meyer when…

Roadblock #5: my computer broke. We plugged my charger into a power strip with 4 other powerful computers plugged in and tried to use the monitor through the HDMI connector. Soon after, I saw sparks and I am left with a charred charger and a charred charging port for my mac. I could not even express the devastation I felt.

For a full week, I had daily visits to the bookstore. It was like visiting a sick person who you are just praying so hard for to get better as the day passes. I could not do anything because the file was in the computer that I couldn’t access and I did not have a backup for. I got my computer back 4 days before exhibition and I was in a race to produce a quality film, study for finals, finish my assignments, do my student group obligations, work, and most of all, enjoy my last few days as a Stanford undergrad.

Two all-nighters later, crying-sessions with my friend, Phil, who stepped up as my artistic mentor during those late nights as he is a filmmaker as well, lots of caffeine and frustration about guilt for cutting my interviewees emotionally touching stories out, I had a 15:36 minute movie and I just felt nerves until exhibition. The title came easily. I knew it had to be Tagalog and one-worded titles were powerful. I was choosing between alala (remember), ulyanin (senile), and alaala (memories). My TSR peers helped me choose the first one because of the musicality to it and the simple, hard-to-miss pronunciation. After adding the title page and credits with the decided title. I breathed a sigh of relief and of course did my 30 second happy dance first, but then felt the nervousness and insecurities emerge.

At the exhibition, I was just a ball of nerves throughout the presentations. I even chose to sit in the back so that no one can see me react to the film whilst I see everyone react to it. As Sue introduced us one by one, it hit me, this was the moment we’ve ALL been WAITING FOR. The appreciation, admiration, and pride were flowing from all parts of Wallenberg.

Finally, my film screened. And I was just crouching into a tight ball in the back row. I always believed that art in its best form has the power to touch people from different walks of life. I wanted my film to be that and as I sat there crouching, watching, I actually believed it myself. After watching these same clips play over and over, being critical about the frame, the sound, the technicalities, I felt desensitized and could not be empathetic with my subjects but during the film screening, for the first time, I cried while watching because I felt this empathetic and supportive ambience emanating from the crowd and I was sort of empathizing with everyone watching it for the first time and, hopefully, was touched by my film.

Blessing #4: As Sue called me to stand up, the applause overwhelmed me, I could not look up, nor around the room, I felt so moved by the audience response and teared up some more. I went out to see my friends afterwards, feeling badly about leaving because I left the theatre just when others were screening their own projects. Everyone was congratulating me and I felt so accomplished. After the whole presentation and as people started to leave, several people came up to me and told me they thought I did a good job on my film. Again, feeling speechless, all I could do was thank them profusely. I’ve never felt so humbled and yet so proud about something.

A few days after the exhibition, still on that TSR high, I’ve noticed how I’ve grown through the film, through Stanford. The I-won’t-speak-to-you-because-I-am-embarrassed-of-my-accent girl has gradually become the filmmaking-dancing-singing-stage managing-community service loving premed who is ready to conquer her dreams.

Never in my young immigrant self’s wildest dreams would I have thought that I’d be studying at Stanford, much less, a premedical biology student at Stanford, or even making a film that featured 3 things I’m passionate about: Medicine, Film, and Music at Stanford.

I know that the mission to spread awareness about music as an effective tool for communicating with people who have dementia continues for me and for as long as this film exists, I hope to inspire more people to incorporate music into the care of their loved ones with the disease. And through this film, I can leave my fingerprint on other people all over the world the same way Grandma Dita, Lola Sophie, my lolos, Rudy, Lucy and all my Stanford friends, mentors, faculty have left their fingerprint on me because throughout life, our fingerprints don’t fade from the lives we touch.

Thank you to my TSR peers, my mentors, friends, family, and to Sue and Andrew for this life-changing opportunity.
<3 always,
Jade