Taking the summer to recharge

From flickr user Laurenkeith

Many premed students often fall into the trap of working too hard.  Deciding to undergo the curriculum needed to fulfill the premed requirements while building a competitive application means that a premed student is usually more motivated than the traditional college student.  This might be okay during the 4 months of a semester, but letting that hard work spill over into times when you should be relaxing can often do more harm than good.

Take the summer for example.  While some students take the time to relax at home or in the city of their university, many others are trying to get a head start on studying for their upcoming fall semester classes in June, while working 40 hours at a summer job and getting those all important volunteering/shadowing hours.  While this isn’t impossible to do especially if you have no other obligations, by the time fall semester rolls around all of the preparation can lead to early burnout.  If working too hard during the summer is detrimental to your academic career, what should you be doing instead?

1. Strengthen your application.  Look at your current application and see what area you need to strengthen to figure out what you should focus on.  If you have absolutely no shadowing hours, summer is the ideal time to contact some local physicians in different specialties and request to shadow them.  Likewise, if you have little to no clinical volunteering hours, it’s easier to volunteer 10-20 hours/week at a hospital during the summer instead of even 5 hours/week during the school year especially if you try to balance 18 credits of organic, upper level classes for your major, and physics, while doing research in a lab, andare working 20 hours/week.Even if you have a decent amount of shadowing hours, try to shadow a physician in a specialty that you don’t know a lot about or haven’t shadowed before.  You may find a specialty that you really enjoy, and more hours can only help your application.
2. Volunteer abroad.  If you have already shadowed a ton of shadowing hours with a variety of specialties and a lot of clinical volunteering hours, consider volunteering abroad in a country that doesn’t have access to high quality medical care.  These can be unique experiences that can help motivate you to becoming a doctor even more, and can give you good material for writing application essays (most meaningful experience), or points to talk about during interviews.  Here’s some programs that came up with some quick searching:http://www.volunteercapitalcentre.org/Pages/Programs.aspx – Has an option for medical placement
   http://www.travellersworldwide.com/ – Also has quite a few medical projects and internships
   http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/work/volunteer/index.shtml – Wide variety of countries to choose from, but not necessarily medical based
   http://www.projects-abroad.org/projects/ – Also a variety of medical internships in many different countries
   http://www.volunteerhq.org/programs.html – Low program costs for those on a budget
3. Working a part time or full time job.  If you have had to take out loans for the previous years of undergrad, or are an entering freshman and know that you will have to take out loans, consider working at a traditional job to earn money for college.  While this isn’t everyone’s favorite activity during the summer (and really, who likes working a summer job?), you’ll be thankful that you did when you get out of undergrad with that much less debt.  This is doubly true if you take time off to do post-bacc work if you didn’t get accepted into any medical schools your first application cycle.
4. Read.  The summer can be an excellent time to relax after a stressful semester of classes, volunteering, and working.  However, this doesn’t mean that you have to let your brain completely off the hook for three and a half months.  This may seem like advice that has been thrown at you since third grade, but I’ve found it to be really helpful.  Whether you are reading hardcover fiction novels, interesting research papers, online newspapers, forums (http://forums.studentdoctor.net/ is one of my favorites, and has a ton of great information), or even premed blogs, reading will keep your brain working.  It’ll be that much easier to jump back into reading 70 pages of biology a night easier once classes pick back up if you read a little bit (or a lot!) every day.
5. Research in a lab.  If you can lock down a paid lab research position, this can be a good way to keep your critical thinking skills working while earning money to pay rent and living expenses.  Many summer research jobs pay just as much as a traditional retail or food service job, and are arguably much easier and less stressful.  You don’t have to work in the same lab as you did during the school year if your lab doesn’t have paid summer jobs available, but it’s harder to get into a different lab for the summer if you didn’t work with them before.
6. Take summer classes.  This isn’t for everyone and if you planned well during your freshman year (and didn’t change your major five times), you shouldn’t absolutely have to, but summer classes are a good way to get some of the classes out of the way that you need to take as prerequisites or just to boost your GPA a little bit.  Summer semester is usually accelerated however, so I wouldn’t recommend taking first semester organic*, or another class that you’ll have to rely upon the information for a later class.*Another note, some med schools don’t like you taking premed requirements at a different school, such as your hometown community college.  If you take summer classes, try to take them at a four-year university and make sure the credits will transfer.
7. Relax!  This is perhaps the most important thing that you can do during the summer.  After a busy semester of staying up late studying (among other things), constant sleep deprivation, rushing from class to class, club meetings and activities, and the stress of maintaining a 3.8+ GPA, your mind and body could use a break.  Take time to do the things you put off during the semester.  Engage in a hobby that you love, shave off those pounds you gained from the red bull and unhealthy late night study fuel, or just spend time laying in the sun and hanging out with friends that you haven’t seen in a year.  Ultimately, this is the true purpose of summer break.  If you work too hard during the summer months with little to no break between spring semester and fall semester, it’s easy to lose motivation and burn out halfway through fall semester.  Remember: it’s a marathon, not a sprint.  If you try to sprint 26.2 miles with no breaks, you’re gounna have a bad time.

Take some time to relax the rest of this summer however little time remains, and next semester!

Thanks for reading.