Contributing Writer
UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine
Harika Kottakota is a medical student at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles, California, class of 2025. In 2020, she graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelors of Science in Biology with Interdisciplinary Honors in Science, Technology, and Society. She has published her poetry both online and in print, including Pager Publications (forthcoming 2024), Los Angeles Global Health Conference (April 2024), Pegasus Physician Writers Press (2022) and American Medical Women’s Association (2021). She enjoys hiking, watching movies, reading historical fiction, comedy shows and finding the best coffee spots in town. In the future, Harika plans to pursue a career in pediatric neurology.
– a spoken word piece dedicated to the generous donors and their families of the Donor Body Program at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine The air grows heavy from bearing the weight of all our questions and our intentions to learn, to transform into the healers we’ve sworn to become. So often, I stand where the sun’s rays and fluorescent bulbs meld together. Where sounds renounce harmony – with papers rustling, and steel …
My eyes locked on the upside-down words scribbled on the paper that was torn from my preceptor’s notebook a few moments prior. Dear God, my patient wrote, I am grateful for this life.
In the middle of my second year of medical school, I began noticing early signs and symptoms of burnout. The stress, anxiety and diminishing joy terrified me because I wondered: How could I already be burned out when I had not even studied for Step 1 or started rotations at the hospital? Were there any remedies to what I was experiencing?
Contributing Writer
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Elisabeth is a third year medical student at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2016, she graduated from Hillsdale College with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry. She enjoys traveling, learning foreign languages, baking, and intramural sports in her free time. After graduating medical school, Elisabeth would like to pursue a career in emergency medicine.
