What should I be doing this summer between MS1 and MS2?

[FingersCrossedPls]

Hi everyone, I am looking for a bit of guidance here. I don't have any medical family or upper-year friends to ask this question to so I thought I would pose it here: what exactly should I be doing over the summer between first and second year? Pre-covid, I likely would have been working my part-time job and continued to do my hospital volunteering and other volunteer projects but they have been cancelled for the last year now. I don't particularly have any interest in doing online-research either as I have no experience and to be honest I cannot spend any more of this year putting in 8-16 hour days in front of a computer. My part-time job is not related to medicine or health care at all (its essentially customer service-- but it makes me a lot of money in a short amount of time which is really important since I have not been able to work for over a year with the shut downs). Any advice would be super helpful. I feel like everyone and their grandma is working on grandiose research projects or somehow has in-person clinical work (even though we have been restricted from this, there seems to be ways around it if you know the right people). Should I/ must I pursue some sort of summer contract health care position/research position? Will it negatively impact my residency applications in the future if I just work my old job and make some time for some hobbies and virtual community involvement? Thanks for the input!  

[Bambi]

Hi there. To me, the answer is simple. BTW, I recently completed residency as a surgeon in December and have entered practice then. In my case, and I assume in yours, working during summers would have been a zero sum gain - because whatever I would have earned during the summer, would have reduced my bursary. Accordingly, there was absolutely no incentive to work. Moreover, these summers are the only time in your youth that you will have available to relax and enjoy family and friends - therefore, do exactly that each summer, which is what I did.  Your next such opportunity will be during retirement.

[indefatigable]

If you want to apply to some competitive English-speaking residency program, then research could help.  But, for most residency programs, research or other involvement won't matter that much and isn't worth pursuing if you don't enjoy.

Like Bambi said, sometimes whatever you make may be deducted from your provincial grant or loan amount, so there may not be much incentive to actually work.  I'd suggest doing the calculations yourself if you really do enjoy working your old job.  

Otherwise - just try to pursue your own interests and rest & relax.  I think hobbies are great and can help develop an identity outside of medicine.  

[Bambi]

I was accepted to a competitive surgical residency. In my situation anyways, I was the least qualified applicant, I had no research, not one gunner was accepted, it was my soft skills that got me selected, I was collaborative, friendly, a hard worker and was considered a good fit for the team - which turned out to be accurate. 

[indefatigable]

I am happy for your acceptance and career @Bambi.   I have no doubt they made the right decision.  

I believe you have mentioned you did your residency in French in Quebec - this is less typical for some programs in the rest of Canada.  

These programs will sometimes highlight their matched candidates and I can assure you that many do have substantial research and other involvement and are often "gunners".

 It is one of the distinctions between some French-speaking and English-speaking programs.
 

 You have previously  mentioned matching with a single elective. 

Elective info is also available - you can easily check that very many competitive programs (surgery and otherwise) had their matched candidates with 3+ more electives.   In fact the ones without 3+ more electives were likely QC applicants given previous hard-elective cap in Quebec. 

 Your story is objectively atypical and I am happy things worked out for you.  

https://www.carms.ca/data-reports/r1-data-reports/electives (not broken down by language)

Perhaps with new universal 8 week cap, matched candidates outside of QC may have fewer electives.  

[bearded frog]

3 hours ago, FingersCrossedPls said:

Will it negatively impact my residency applications in the future if I just work my old job and make some time for some hobbies and virtual community involvement? Thanks for the input!  

If the volunteer projects are meaningful to you and are something you would still do if not in medicine, by all means continue, but at this point unless they are highly unique, specialized, and clinical in your specialty of choice, they do very little to help you in residency (but won't hurt it either). Your job won't help in terms of residency but it won't hurt either, unless, as alluded to above, it detracts from any government loans.

The negative is it's taking away from time you could be spending either a) Relaxing and living life as much as possible because it's the last time you will have more than a few weeks off for the next 5 to 8 years depending on how long your residency is, or b) doing research or other activity related to medicine or your desired specialty, to try and support your eventual residency application. Option B certainly isn't required, but would be highly recommended if you were interested in a compeditive specialty or compeditive program in any specialty.

[shikimate]

Some schools have summer electives for first/second year students in rural places. Usually low expectation, lots of free time, get to explore a different place, and a lot of times accommodation is free. Good for learning some clinical skills too.

[FingersCrossedPls]

3 hours ago, Bambi said:

Hi there. To me, the answer is simple. BTW, I recently completed residency as a surgeon in December and have entered practice then. In my case, and I assume in yours, working during summers would have been a zero sum gain - because whatever I would have earned during the summer, would have reduced my bursary. Accordingly, there was absolutely no incentive to work. Moreover, these summers are the only time in your youth that you will have available to relax and enjoy family and friends - therefore, do exactly that each summer, which is what I did.  Your next such opportunity will be during retirement.

Thank you! I have heard this take on summers as well. I would have liked to travel and do a lot of things, but it feels like with the pandemic and the fact that we all must be at home anyways, there is more of an emphasis on continuing to build your CV and continue to work since the attitude seems to be that there is nothing else to do anyways. Thank you for your perspective! Also, luckily for me, the majority of the income from my old job is in the form of tips-- which doesn't particularly factor into my income in the same way so that is helpful. 

[FingersCrossedPls]

1 hour ago, indefatigable said:

If you want to apply to some competitive English-speaking residency program, then research could help.  But, for most residency programs, research or other involvement won't matter that much and isn't worth pursuing if you don't enjoy.

Like Bambi said, sometimes whatever you make may be deducted from your provincial grant or loan amount, so there may not be much incentive to actually work.  I'd suggest doing the calculations yourself if you really do enjoy working your old job.  

Otherwise - just try to pursue your own interests and rest & relax.  I think hobbies are great and can help develop an identity outside of medicine.  

Thank you for your perspective! It has been a bit hard this year finding things that I am interested in wrt to clinical research as I unfortunately did not do any research previously that I could continue, and the pandemic has made it quite hard to get exposed to new fields of interest (though I know this is not a solid excuse, as many people have thrived with online research, I just do not yet happen to be one of those people). That is great point you mentioned too; I really do enjoy working my old job-- its great socialization and really is what I have to thank for my soft skills that have served me quite well this year. Thank you for your insight

[FingersCrossedPls]

1 hour ago, bearded frog said:

If the volunteer projects are meaningful to you and are something you would still do if not in medicine, by all means continue, but at this point unless they are highly unique, specialized, and clinical in your specialty of choice, they do very little to help you in residency (but won't hurt it either). Your job won't help in terms of residency but it won't hurt either, unless, as alluded to above, it detracts from any government loans.

The negative is it's taking away from time you could be spending either a) Relaxing and living life as much as possible because it's the last time you will have more than a few weeks off for the next 5 to 8 years depending on how long your residency is, or b) doing research or other activity related to medicine or your desired specialty, to try and support your eventual residency application. Option B certainly isn't required, but would be highly recommended if you were interested in a compeditive specialty or compeditive program in any specialty.

Thank you for your input! Do you know other than research what I could do that would help for residency and residency applications? My volunteering is unlikely to continue in the same capacity given the current public health guidelines, though it was quite unique. Also, I am still unsure of what specialty I am considering. I know that I very likely do not want to be a surgeon/in any surgical specialty-- I am currently thinking other GIM, Endocrine, ICU, Family Med, or FM + 1 emerg if this helps in terms of competitiveness and potential things I should be doing.  Thanks again!

[FingersCrossedPls]

1 hour ago, shikimate said:

Some schools have summer electives for first/second year students in rural places. Usually low expectation, lots of free time, get to explore a different place, and a lot of times accommodation is free. Good for learning some clinical skills too.

Thank you for this info! Do you know if these programs still run during Covid times? And if so, where could I find more information about this?

[bearded frog]

5 hours ago, FingersCrossedPls said:

Thank you for your input! Do you know other than research what I could do that would help for residency and residency applications? My volunteering is unlikely to continue in the same capacity given the current public health guidelines, though it was quite unique. Also, I am still unsure of what specialty I am considering. I know that I very likely do not want to be a surgeon/in any surgical specialty-- I am currently thinking other GIM, Endocrine, ICU, Family Med, or FM + 1 emerg if this helps in terms of competitiveness and potential things I should be doing.  Thanks again!

Basically at this point you're looking at IM vs FM, nothing you do now is gonna help much for medicine subspecialty or FM+1. IM you probably don't have to do anything, unless you want a very specific program that's compeditive, and even then just anything unique is probably good. Research would help for IM but is not required. Non-research stuff would be involved with medicine affiliated outreach groups, free clinics etc. Not sure what is available with covid.

[shikimate]

5 hours ago, FingersCrossedPls said:

Thank you for this info! Do you know if these programs still run during Covid times? And if so, where could I find more information about this?

Depends on which province you are in, I only know a few in Ontario:

https://romponline.com/learning-opportunities/how-to-become-a-learner/

https://www.schulich.uwo.ca/distributededucation/undergraduate/preclerkship_summer_elective_opportunities.html

[LostLamb]

oh man....just sleep.  or work on your health/fitness...there is so much more to life than medicine.

you'll soon wish for the freedom of summer off and never have it again (unless you decide not to work summers as staff.....)