About
ABOUT MALAVIKA
Malavika Eby is a senior undergraduate student studying Medical Anthropology and Psychology on the pre-medical track at Swarthmore College. She will attend medical school at Thomas Jefferson University beginning in 2025.
In October 2020, Malavika released her first book, The Gift That Keeps on Giving, providing a personal and detailed framework for self-growth as a high-school student braving today's competitive educational climate. She has worked with the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, Vivensity, AFEC, ICC, and multiple Bay Area-based nonprofit organizations to write articles, produce podcast episodes, and host educational talks about social-emotional growth. Malavika is hopeful that with enough interventional resources at a young age, we can guide a whole new generation of people to prioritize personal growth, goodness, and well-being above status, profit, and self-achievement.
Why “self-compassion”? Why this website, and my book?
Adolescence is hard enough as it is, without the extra pressure and terror of managing piling schoolwork, avoiding burnout, meeting people’s expectations, staying involved in numerous extracurriculars, maintaining a reasonable social life, eating healthy and working out, navigating college admissions, achieving work-life balance, and of course, if there’s any time left over, getting enough sleep too.
That’s crazy, isn’t it? How are we supposed to “do it all” in a sustainable way? Sure, we can pull an all-nighter here and there, spending time on extracurriculars and with friends over the day and studying over the night, but our bodies aren’t designed for that sort of merciless, non-stop grind.
I, like most of my peers, was 100% aware of these things, yet clueless as to how I could improve my situation as I was pushing through high school, stressed, sleep-deprived and tired. Looking around myself, everyone seemed to be in the same boat as I was. So if unhealthy = the norm, I thought, I’m absolutely helpless. This is just the reality of high school, especially in competitive regions like the Bay Area.
Long story short, following a period of burnout my sophomore year, I went through a few months of intense self-reflection and trying to figure out some way upwards, toward a state of better mental health, productivity, and general contentment.
My book, The Gift That Keeps on Giving, is the culmination of the thirteen major lessons I learned during that time, relating to self-comparisons, goal-setting, self-compassion, negative self-talk, social conflicts, time management, and more. My hope is to create & provide supportive and actionable frameworks for self-growth to as many students as I can. That way, all of you can freely access the kind of guidance that I used to wished for at a younger age.
All my love,
Malavika