Anika Margarita Ramiro of Mandaue City began doing ballet when she was three. Today, she is also a licensed physical therapist, medical student, researcher and beauty queen. Just in time for the “chic” trend, this ‘medschool-ballerina’ reminds young women that pursuing one dream does not mean leaving other parts of yourself behind.
In some languages, Anika is associated with grace. In others, the name is said to mean beloved. Fittingly, Anika has spent much of her life embracing both grace and the things she loves.
By five, with her mother faithfully taking her to classes, ballet had already become part of her everyday routine.
She remembers being picked up from school, changing in the car and fixing her hair on the way to class.
“I was so ‘naning’ in ballet to the point that I hated being late to it,” she said. “I would feel like crying if I was.”
More than two decades later, ballet is still on her weekend agenda.
“Even if I’m in medical school, ballet has been engrained so much in me that attending my ballet classes weekly feels such a familiar thing to do,” she said. “It’s always part of my weekend agenda.”
Medicine came just as naturally.
Her father is a doctor, and she grew up surrounded by physicians on her mother’s side of the family. She jokes that they may have “positively brainwashed” her into wanting to become one.
But if medicine was one dream, professional ballet was always the other.
“Probably if you asked me, ‘Okay, Anika, so if not a doctor, what would you wanna be?’ I’d say professional ballerina,” she said. “Always one of the two, so now that I have the privilege to do both, I’m so grateful.”
That choice to make room for both has shaped her path.
Before medicine, Anika studied Physical Therapy and became a licensed PT, a decision she now sees as the bridge between her two worlds.
“I think PT became the bridge between my two worlds — my interest in healthcare and my life as a dancer,” she said.
Having experienced multiple ankle injuries herself, she knows what it means to have rehabilitation help bring you back to the thing you love.
“Having had PT sessions brought me dancing literally back ‘onto my toes,’” she said.
Now, she hopes to pursue Rehabilitation Medicine and Performing Arts Medicine, particularly caring for dancers, musicians and other performing artists.
“I don’t just want to become a doctor who happens to love dance,” she said. “I want to use medicine to care specifically for performing artists.”
Making room for life
Medical school has meant less time for ballet, but never no time.
“Starting medical school, I knew I didn’t want to say goodbye to ballet,” she said. “I know it’ll be lesser on my priority list but I didn’t want my medical school journey to just ‘be studying.’”
Her solution is wonderfully old-school too, a physical planner.
“I plot the events happening, things I need to do per week, allocate time and somehow it falls into place,” she said. “Easier said than done, but it does give me a backbone schedule to follow to avoid feeling overwhelmed!”
It also leaves room for her other “side quests,” including content creation.
As a medschool ballerina, she shares pieces of life between academics, dance and wellness, eventually landing brand campaign opportunities and her first billboard appearances in two locations in Cebu.
A body in motion
Anika said the connection between medicine and ballet goes deeper than discipline.
“Medicine is both a science and an art,” she said.
Ballet taught her the discipline required to master a movement, but it also taught her how to understand the body.
“Ballet taught me to have grace under pressure, to understand that talent alone isn’t enough, and that if I want something to work, I have to put in the work even when things are difficult.”
Most importantly, she said, “ballet taught me to understand the body through movement, while medicine allows me to care for that body.”
That is perhaps where her two identities stop being separate.
“Dance doesn’t merely coexist with my medical identity — it informs the kind of physician I hope to become.”
Both, actually
Ramiro has collected plenty of titles along the way: Ms. Medicine 2023, Awit Sayaw 1st Runner-Up in 2023 and 2025, Best Female Performer in 2023 and Awit Sayaw Festival Queen in 2024. In ballet, she was a full scholar at The Lisa Macuja School of Ballet’s summer workshops with Ballet Manila, won a Gold Award at the Asia Pacific Arts Festival 2023 in Bangkok and danced the lead role of Cinderella in her ballet school production.
She has also represented her research group at the CDU Research Congress and served as president of AMSA-ALSA and Mr. and Ms. Medicine Committee Head for the Student Council in 2025.
But the titles matter less to her than what they represent.
“What makes these milestones meaningful isn’t just the awards themselves, but the different parts of me they represent — ballet, medicine, academics, leadership and advocacy,” she said.
“They remind me that I don’t have to choose just one identity to be proud of.”
For anyone trying to pursue more than one dream, she believes the answer is not perfect balance.
“I believe it’s possible. If you set your intentions, you will find a way,” she said.
There will be seasons when one dream needs more attention than another, she adds. The important thing is not to lose the parts of yourself that make you feel alive.
“Always find something that still makes you ‘you,’” she said. “Take it one day at a time. You don’t have to have everything figured out all at once.”
Now 27, Anika is still dancing, still studying and still figuring out what comes next. S