Time is the Key Ingredient for Connection

“If you had but one lecture to give, what would you say?”

Last month, Dr. Jennifer Cocohoba from the School of Pharmacy set out to answer this question as UCSF’s 2026 Last Lecture awardee, which was nominated by student vote. And judging by the attendance, they chose well. 

Hundreds gathered at Cole Hall to listen to Cocohoba’s personal talk, including her family, former Last Lecture awardees Drs. Daniel Lowenstein and Igor Mitrovic, colleagues from her 22 year career at UCSF’s Women’s HIV Program, students from the School of Pharmacy and the student-run UCSF Mabuhay Clinic, which she co-directs. 

Cocohoba honored her family legacy by donning the Filipiniana Terno sleeves, saying she was inspired to focus her service to the Filipino community by a long lineage of service-oriented relatives, including many of her relatives who immigrated from the Philippines to serve in the U.S. military or serve the community as nurses. 

Cocohoba’s career at UCSF began as a pharmacy student. And the Last Lecture allowed her to reflect on all these years at UCSF as she selected the fitting overarching topic of time. 

“Strive to give and receive time wisely,” she said, “but generously, with patience, with intention, and overall, with love.” 

Cocohoba said that a journey in academia can make time move in exceptionally mysterious ways, racing by in a blur as one moves towards the next career milestone all while “morning rounds” inevitably bleed into the afternoon. 

She said that job demands, a never-ending to-do list, and especially being a parent can strain our sense of agency over the way time moves. So she peppered her lecture with clues on how to reclaim this time in small ways such as: know when a work task can be put aside for the evening, take a pause to understand a student’s question fully, keep that standing “research” meeting with a colleague just to catch up, or ask a patient about their life outside the hospital. 

To illustrate that idea, she shared a story from pharmacy school at UCSF about a particularly guarded patient. After weeks of attending to the patient, the team discovered it was her birthday and took the time to find and present her with a Beanie Baby that resembled her black cat. This disarmed the patient and made her more trusting of her caregiving team. 

This example, Cocohoba said, affirms that while time cannot guarantee connection, it is required to facilitate it. Overall, the message was simple but something most of us will likely spend a lifetime trying to master.