Leticia Márquez-Magaña is a biologist at San Francisco State University’s Health Institute for Practice, Research, and Policy. Before participating in a panel on race and cancer, she confessed her longtime love for soap operas of all kinds in the Zócalo green room.
What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
Writer.
What’s the last movie you saw in theaters?
Lincoln. That’s a good one!
What do you lose or misplace most often?
Time—I lose a lot of time.
How are you different from who you were 10 years ago?
I’m more confident. I care less about what others think. I prioritize my family more.
What’s your guilty pleasure?
General Hospital. I was so bummed when All My Children and One Life To Live went off the air, and now they’re all merging together. I used to watch telenovelas when I was a little kid; I used to say it would make me speak Spanish better. Now I watch General Hospital.
Where would you find you at 10 a.m. on a typical Saturday morning?
Washing the clothes, cleaning the dishes—doing chores. Or taking the kid to his band rehearsal. That’s pretty much it.
What keeps you up at night?
There’s a lot of things that keep me up at night sometimes, but I’ve also learned to just let it all go and sleep because I know sleep is really important. Typically it’s feeling like I haven’t met people’s expectations. Even though I care less about what other people think of me—I was trained to care about them.
How do you like your steak?
Medium-rare to rare. And if it has a lot of spice on it it’s good too.
How do you get your exercise?
Running up the stairs when I’m doing the chores.
If you could have any superpower, which would you choose?
The ability to change people’s minds.