Rizal first studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in 

Biñan, Laguna, before he was sent to Manila.

[18]
 He took the entrance examination to Colegio de San Juan de Letran, as his father requested, but
he enrolled at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila. He graduated as one of the nine students in his class
declared sobresaliente or outstanding. He continued his education at the Ateneo Municipal de
Manila to obtain a land surveyor and assessor's degree, and at the same time at the University of
Santo Tomas, where he studied a preparatory course in law and finished with a mark of excelente or
excellent. He finished the course of Philosophy as a pre-law. [19]
Upon learning that his mother was going blind, he decided to switch to medicine at the medical
school of Santo Tomas, specializing later in ophthalmology. He received his four-year practical
training in medicine at Ospital de San Juan de Dios in Intramuros. In his last year at medical school,
he received a mark of sobresaliente in courses of Patologia Medica (Medical Pathology), Patología
Quirúrgica (Surgical Pathology) and Obstretics.
Although known as a bright student, Rizal had some difficulty in some science subjects in medical
school such as Física (Physics) and Patología General (General Pathology).[20]

Rizal as a student at the University of Santo Tomas

Without his parents' knowledge and consent, but secretly supported by his brother Paciano, he
traveled alone to Madrid in May 1882 and studied medicine at the Universidad Central de Madrid.
There he earned the degree, Licentiate in Medicine. He also attended medical lectures at
the University of Paris and the University of Heidelberg. In Berlin, he was inducted as a member of
the Berlin Ethnological Society and the Berlin Anthropological Society under the patronage of the
famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow. Following custom, he delivered an address in German in April
1887 before the Anthropological Society on the orthography and structure of the Tagalog language.
He wrote a poem to the city, "A las flores del Heidelberg", which was both an evocation and a prayer
for the welfare of his native land and the unification of common values between East and West.
At Heidelberg, the 25-year-old Rizal completed his eye specialization in 1887 under the renowned
professor, Otto Becker. There he used the newly invented ophthalmoscope (invented by Hermann
von Helmholtz) to later operate on his mother's eye. From Heidelberg, Rizal wrote his parents: "I
spend half of the day in the study of German and the other half, in the diseases of the eye. Twice a
week, I go to the bierbrauerie, or beerhall, to speak German with my student friends." He lived in a
Karlstraße boarding house then moved to Ludwigsplatz. There, he met Reverend Karl Ullmer and
stayed with them in Wilhelmsfeld. There he wrote the last few chapters of Noli Me Tángere, his first
novel, published in Spanish later that year.
Rizal was a polymath, skilled in both science and the arts. He painted, sketched, and made
sculptures and woodcarving. He was a prolific poet, essayist, and novelist whose most famous
works were his two novels, Noli Me Tángere (1887) and its sequel, El filibusterismo (1891).[note
2]
 These social commentaries during the Spanish colonial period of the country formed the nucleus of
literature that inspired peaceful reformists and armed revolutionaries alike.
Rizal was also a polyglot, conversant in twenty-two languages.[note 3][note 4][21][22]
Rizal's numerous skills and abilities was described by his German friend, Dr. Adolf Bernhard Meyer,
as "stupendous."[note 5] Documented studies show Rizal to be a polymath with the ability to master
various skills and subjects.[21][23][24] He was an ophthalmologist, sculptor, painter, educator, farmer,
historian, playwright and journalist. Besides poetry and creative writing, he dabbled, with varying
degrees of expertise, in architecture, cartography, economics, ethnology, anthropology,
sociology, dramatics, martial arts, fencing and pistol shooting. Skilled in social settings, he became
a Freemason, joining Acacia Lodge No. 9 during his time in Spain; he became a Master Mason in
1884.[25]

Personal life, relationships and ventures

Rednaxela Terrace, where Rizal lived during his self-imposed exile in Hong Kong (photo taken in 2011)

José Rizal's life is one of the most documented of 19th-century Filipinos due to the vast and
extensive records written by and about him.[26] Almost everything in his short life is recorded
somewhere. He was a regular diarist and prolific letter writer, and much of this material has survived.
His biographers have faced challenges in translating his writings because of Rizal's habit of
switching from one language to another.
Biographers drew largely from his travel diaries with his comments by a young Asian encountering
the West for the first time (other than in Spanish manifestations in the Philippines). These diaries
included Rizal's later trips, home and back again to Europe through Japan and the United States,
[27]
 and, finally, through his self-imposed exile in Hong Kong.
Shortly after he graduated from the Ateneo Municipal de Manila (now Ateneo de Manila University),
Rizal (who was then 16 years old) and a friend, Mariano Katigbak, visited Rizal's maternal
grandmother in Tondo, Manila. Mariano brought along his sister, Segunda Katigbak, a 14-year-old
Batangueña from Lipa, Batangas.
It was the first time Rizal had met her, whom he described as
"rather short, with eyes that were eloquent and ardent at times and languid at others, rosy–cheeked,
with an enchanting and provocative smile that revealed very beautiful teeth, and the air of a sylph;
her entire self diffused a mysterious charm."
His grandmother's guests were mostly college students and they knew that Rizal had skills in
painting. They suggested that Rizal should make a portrait of Segunda. He complied reluctantly and
made a pencil sketch of her. Rizal who referred to her as his first love in his memoir Memorias de un
Estudiante de Manila, but Katigbak was already engaged to Manuel Luz.[28]

Business card showing Dr. José Rizal is an ophthalmologist in Hong Kong

From December 1891 to June 1892, Rizal lived with his family in Number 2 of Rednaxela Terrace,
Mid-levels, Hong Kong Island. Rizal used 5 D'Aguilar Street, Central district, Hong Kong Island, as
his ophthalmology clinic from 2 pm to 6 pm. In this period of his life, he wrote about nine women who
have been identified: Gertrude Beckett of Chalcot Crescent, Primrose Hill, Camden, London; wealthy
and high-minded Nelly Boustead of an English-Iberian merchant family; Seiko Usui (affectionately
called O-Sei-san), last descendant of a noble Japanese family; his earlier friendship with Segunda
Katigbak; Leonor Valenzuela, and an eight-year romantic relationship with Leonor Rivera, a distant
cousin (she is thought to have inspired his character of María Clara in Noli Me Tángere).