Class of 2026: Sravani Buddhavarapu keeps music and medicine in harmony

By Grace McOmber
School of Medicine

For the past four years, Sravani Buddhavarapu has told her story on stage. Sometimes accompanied by a band, other times with just her acoustic guitar, the singer-songwriter has shared her struggles and successes across Richmond's live music scene.

What began as a private hobby in college has culminated in two defining milestones: the release of her first album last month, and, last week, walking across another stage to graduate from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.

"These four years have been transformative, both as a musician and future doctor," Buddhavarapu said. "I'm really proud of myself for finding a way to make both of my passions work."

Finding resilience in her roots

Music has been a constant throughout Buddhavarapu's life for as long as she can remember. Growing up, she heard stories and watched home videos of her paternal grandmother and middle namesake, Kameswari, singing to her as a baby. Kameswari died when she was less than a year old, but Buddhavarapu said singing made her feel connected to her late grandmother throughout her childhood.

"Even though I really didn't get to know her, she's always had a presence in my life," Buddhavarapu said. "I feel like I've grown up with her, in a way."

That connection and childhood passion was the pillar Buddhavarapu relied on during the spring of 2020, her junior year at the University of Minnesota. As COVID-19 shut down in-person classes, Buddhavarapu, then a premedical student preparing to take the MCAT, said her path forward felt unclear. Anxious, cooped up and living more than 1,000 miles from home, she turned to the outlet that had always comforted her - music.

In her newfound free time, Buddhavarapu, who took violin lessons as a kid, taught herself piano and acoustic guitar, and began posting covers of her favorite songs on TikTok. It helped her feel less "cramped in her small college apartment," and singing other artists' songs inspired her to translate her own emotions into lyrics. While she kept many of those early songs to herself, the writing process was cathartic and helped her express her feelings of stress and isolation while applying to medical school in a time of uncertainty.

"I think, like a lot of people, I was just alone with my thoughts for long stretches of time," Buddhavarapu said. "Turning my worries and fears at the time into lyrics was a really healthy way for me to just get them all out."

Parallel passions

For Buddhavarapu, moving to Richmond for medical school in 2022 introduced her to a community where she could embrace both her academic and artistic passions. The city is known for its thriving music scene, with local restaurants, bars and venues hosting shows almost every night of the week.

After years of keeping her songs to herself, Buddhavarapu sang at her first open mic at The

Camel, a venue in Richmond's Fan District, during her first year at VCU. It was also the first time she performed under the name of a woman she never got to know but whose presence she has felt throughout her life - Sravani Kameswari.

"I was really nervous, because the song I performed was about a personal situation I was in," Buddhavarapu said. "But the audience was so supportive, and it seemed to resonate with people. It was an amazing feeling."

Since then, Buddhavarapu has performed original music at venues across the city. The network of artists that make up the Richmond music scene embraced her with open arms, she said, offering songwriting workshops and singing lessons.

Joining this community also, unexpectedly, gave her a new perspective on her future career as a doctor. When her musician peers learned that she was in medical school, many of them opened up about their own health care experiences, like navigating chronic pain as performers. For her, those conversations underscored that every patient brings a lived experience to the exam room, and that being a doctor means understanding those stories both in and out of the clinic.

"That on-the-ground insight into the community is something you don't really get in the formal medical school setting," she said.

In between lectures, exams and clinical rotations, Buddhavarapu incorporated those perspectives and lessons into the lyrics of her debut album, "Unraveled," which she released on April 24. The title, Buddhavarapu said, describes her experiences "falling apart and coming back together" over the course of her adult life, exploring her challenges and triumphs as she evolved from a pre-med undergrad to a matched fourth-year medical student.

Influences of her medical education are weaved throughout the eight-track album. One of the songs, "Contraindicated," compares her feelings of doubt and subsequent guilt in medical school to contraindication, which is when a patient's condition or circumstance would make a particular treatment unsafe. On the five-minute track, she sings, "I can't tell you what this pain is / But it splits me up inside / I fear that I sound ungrateful / For this blessed life."

"I wrote that when I was going through a time of feeling like I didn't deserve to be in medical school, and really thinking about if the process was worth it," Buddhavarapu said. "If medicine hadn't changed how I write, then something over the past four years went very wrong."

Looking ahead

In July, Buddhavarapu will head back to the Midwest to join the internal medicine residency program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. There, she will enter the Leadership in Medical Education Pathway, a track for residents interested in pursuing teaching roles in medical institutions. Inspired by her own educators and mentors throughout medical school, Buddhavarapu hopes to stay in academic medicine and be the kind of physician who has a lasting impact on both patients and future students.

"In my view, learning and care both come down to human interaction," Buddhavarapu said. "Having someone there when I needed extra support helped me a lot, and I want to give that to others."

One of Buddhavarapu's most influential mentors during her time at the School of Medicine was Alex Pandelidis, M.D., a faculty member in the Department of Internal Medicine. Pandelidis led her Project Heart group, an initiative that provides support and guidance for preclinical students as they navigate the challenges of medical school. He also worked with Buddhavarapu during her rotation in hospital medicine, where he said her dedication to patients stood out.

"I hope Sravani ends up in a gratifying career where she can use her medical skills while never losing that compassion for her patients," Pandelidis said. "I also hope she remains focused on her happiness outside of her career in medicine."

As she prepares to move to Cleveland this summer, Buddhavarapu said she has already begun scoping out the local music scene by reaching out to other artists based in the city. While she doesn't quite yet know how she'll strike the balance between the demands of residency training and performing, she is nonetheless eager to explore this new chapter in her art.

"I'm excited to see where this experience takes my songwriting," Buddhavarapu said. "Music and performing has taught me to be vulnerable and empathetic in ways nothing else had, and I think I'm going to be a better doctor for it."

This story was originally published on the School of Medicine website.