Match Day 2019: Student spotlights
Every medical student has a compelling story. Several from the Class of 2019 shared thoughts about their future careers in medicine and their reactions upon learning where they matched.
For a full list of the students and their specialty matches, view the full match list.
Stephanie Florez-Pollack
Where she matched: Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Specialty: Dermatology
Reaction: “The University of Pennsylvania has one of the most excellent Dermatology programs. I’m really excited that I’ll be training there for the next four years, and I look forward to becoming a leader in the field. I’ve been amazed by the support that I’ve gotten today. It’s a beautiful thing that I have a community of people who really care about me and want the best for me,” she said. That support included some mighty hugs from Dr. Shawna Nesbitt, Associate Dean in the Office of Student Diversity and Inclusion: “Dr. Nesbitt has from Day 1 supported me in every endeavor, in every project, and more than anything, she has been a second mother to me here in the Medical School.”
Ms. Florez-Pollack is a native of Bogota, Colombia, where she spent her childhood years before moving to Houston at age 15. When she applied to medical school, her vision was to become a surgeon like her grandfather.
“My dad made sure to pass on my grandfather’s legacy by sharing with my sister and me the impact he made in his community as one of the few surgeons in a large rural area,” she said. “He became my hero and his memories sparked my interest in medicine from an early age.”
However, she kept an open perspective upon entering medical school, delving into shadowing and attending meetings to learn about different specialties. She met Professor of Dermatology Dr. Amit Pandya at an event hosted by the Latino Medical Student Association, where minority dermatology residents and faculty spoke about their careers and the impact they were making on the field.
“I could tell they loved making connections with their patients,” she said. Upon the advice of Dr. Pandya, she started volunteering in the Agape Dermatology Clinic, a student-run charity clinic in Dallas. By her second year of medical school, she became manager of the clinic, helping provide care for hundreds of uninsured patients in the Dallas area.
“Dr. Pandya has shown me the importance of having underrepresented minority leaders in dermatology and giving back through sustained community service and mentorship,” she said.
She will start her dermatology residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania after completing a preliminary medicine year at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. She is looking forward to receiving her Doctor of Medicine as it represents many years of hard work, and celebrating alongside her family and friends.
Gene Hu
Where he matched: University of California, San Francisco
Specialty: Internal Medicine
Reaction: “I’m very happy – we’re very happy, oh yes,” he said, gesturing to his fiancé, Stephanie Guo. “So I started the day feeling OK, and then I got more and more nervous until 11. But now I’m here and really relieved and just really excited to start the next chapter.”
A musician and a medical student, Mr. Hu has kept his mind and heart open to new experiences. For the past seven years, he has practiced bhangra, a traditional Indian folk dance – even dancing with a team that performed on “America’s Got Talent.” He also plays five instruments and loves to jam with friends.
Mr. Hu grew up in Houston and was raised by an engineer mother and attorney father who worried that pursuing medicine might be too difficult. “At the end of high school, however, I began to feel more and more pulled toward the medical profession, and my time as an undergraduate at Cornell University solidified that for me,” he said. “The only calling I could be truly passionate about was the art of healing through medicine.”
Upon starting at UT Southwestern, Mr. Hu thought he wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon; however, after his time in internal medicine, he came to realize that the specialty represented everything he loved about medicine.
“The amazing residents and superb faculty made every day on the wards an unforgettable experience even as I was working near 80-hour weeks, and that’s why I decided to apply to that specialty instead,” he said.
This year, Mr. Hu helped shape and improve the new Medical School curriculum. He also served on the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which helps with accreditation of all medical schools.
Mr. Hu matched at the University of California, San Francisco and is looking forward to taking time to celebrate with his fiancée and closest friends before his move to California.
Mikey Kutschke
Where he matched: Rhode Island Hospital/Brown University
Specialty: Orthopedics
Reaction: “This was a total surprise. The emotions leading up to today were very, very unbelievable. I don’t know how to put it all into one sentence. I think my wife’s energy is probably influencing how excited I was about it, because I’m not one to get typically worked up, but knowing that it affected her so much, I did get excited.”
Mr. Kutschke’s journey into medicine has been strongly influenced by his family and life experiences. Growing up, his family all enjoyed a highly active lifestyle, and often this would be the center of their activities together. However, starting in elementary school, he slowly watched his mom lose orthopedic function and ultimately be confined to bed rest.
“Suffering from chronic pain resulting from the deterioration of her jaw due to complications during her delivery, the activities that brought her joy and our family together were no more,” Mr. Kutschke said. “The teams of physicians, surgeons, and support staff that were eventually able to revive her health and our family’s lifestyle showed me the incredible impact of being able to restore function.”
Combining this realization with his inclination for physics and engineering, love for working with his hands, comfort in closely interacting with people, and experiences shadowing an orthopedic surgeon, teaching anatomy, and working in an orthopedics research lab as an undergrad, he knew he wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon.
“I sat down on my computer and searched ‘how to become an orthopedic surgeon’ and Google told me I had to go to medical school, so off I went and never looked back!” he said. “It is incredible to reminisce and see how although my path may have diverged from time to time, it always came back to the same thing – orthopedic surgery – and to be here now decades later waiting to open a letter that will prescribe my next step in that journey is an amazing – but also kind of scary – feeling!”
This year, Mr. Kutschke joined Mr. Hu in helping shape and improve the new Medical School curriculum and served on the LCME Independent Student Analysis Committee.
Mr. Kutschke matched at Rhode Island Hospital/Brown University and is looking forward to pursuing his dream with his wife and family.
“It’s been a long road, so getting to be an orthopedic surgeon will be a dream come true,” he said.
Christian Leal
Where he matched: University of Oklahoma College of Medicine
Specialty: Ophthalmology
Reaction: “I feel amazing! I’m so excited. I’m so thrilled to be in the next part of my journey.”
Mr. Leal gets to enjoy getting matched twice – earlier this year, he matched at the University of Oklahoma in Ophthalmology from 2020-2023, but on Match Day 2019 he also learned that he will be working a preliminary year at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Mr. Leal’s parents immigrated from El Salvador and Mexico; his mom as a refugee during the Salvadoran Civil War. He grew up in Euless, Texas, and graduated from Trinity High School, where his teachers proved to be a great inspiration.
“Thanks to some of the most dedicated teachers ever, I graduated as valedictorian and got a full scholarship to Stanford. But I decided to come back to Dallas for medical school at UT Southwestern to care for people like my parents in my home community,” Mr. Leal said. Today, his passion is teaching, and he has taught extensively in first-year courses. He was a Joint Admissions Medical Program (JAMP) mentor and created a new anatomy curriculum for JAMP. He also worked as a clinic operations manager at the Monday Clinic – the student-run volunteer clinic at UT Southwestern – and helped implement a new electronic medical record system and train teams on its use.
He hopes to return to North Texas to serve those in need in his community.
“Parkland Ophthalmology Clinic has mostly low-income, Spanish-speaking patients who receive excellent, vital care for their vision, and I want to be someone from a similar background who can communicate effectively and one day provide the same kind of excellent care as an ophthalmologist,” Mr. Leal said. “The eye is so important and its loss is so tremendously debilitating socially and economically. I want to help prevent this in my community.”
Shayna Ratner
Where she matched: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center
Specialty: Psychiatry
Reaction: “I'm very excited to go to Columbia, but it's bittersweet because I love UT Southwestern,” Ms. Ratner said. “My brother lives in New York City and I have a lot of family there, so that was part of the reason I wanted to go there. I'm looking forward to not driving and using public transportation, and the food there is so good!”
Ms. Ratner started the Mental Health and Wellness Committee at UT Southwestern, which is dedicated to promoting wellness, destigmatizing mental health, and increasing the accessibility of the Student Wellness and Counseling Center. The committee often hosted “Acknowledging Our Humanity” events in which students, residents, and faculty shared stories of their own experiences with mental health challenges. She also was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society and became president of that organization.
“I started medical school thinking I was going to go into geriatric medicine, but I started developing an interest in mental health throughout my first couple of years,” Ms. Ratner said. “When I started my clerkships, I spent a very large amount of time on the psychosocial history regardless of what clerkship I was on. I realized that mental health strongly impacts every person and often majorly contributed to a patient’s physical health problems. It became clear that psychiatry was the best fit for me, but I am still interested in working with the geriatric population. One of my main interests is how patients and their caregivers cope with the aging process, its associated diseases, as well as end-of-life issues, and I intend to focus on this area in my career.”
Ms. Ratner was raised in San Antonio by a radiologist father who, along with her mother, founded a nonprofit organization to help patients navigate the health care system. All of her grandparents lived close by and were “very impressive” people: “My maternal grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, and my maternal grandfather was a Nazi hunter. My paternal grandfather was a pediatric surgeon who worked until the day he died, and my paternal grandmother got her Ph.D. in microbiology. My maternal grandma developed Lewy body dementia when I was in high school, and my paternal grandma later developed Alzheimer’s disease, so I had a lot of exposure to the impact that these illnesses can have on patients and their families.”