Summer Work

[RyanMaverick]

Hey everyone,

 

I have a question regarding what typical summers are like for med students. At 4-year program schools the schedule appears to have 3-4 months off in the summer. Is this time truely "off" or do you have med-specific work options that you *should* be doing in the summer?

 

The reason I ask is that I'll be a licensed pharamcist. With 3-4 months off I'd have an opportunity to make 30-40k over the summer which would pay off my med school for the year. I'm trying to budget it out, but I need to know if I can count on being able to work as a pharmacist, or if there are other things I'll need to be doing in the summer?

 

Thanks!

 

Ryan

[justletmein]

You should work as a pharmacist. Graduating with that much less debt will make it worth it in the end.

 

Sure, your classmates will try to convince you that if you don't do research or international rotations, that you won't do well in the match. B-S. No residency program director will fault you for trying to pay the bills.

 

Plus, working as a pharmacist is pertinent clinical experience.

[ploughboy]

Just remember to take a solid chunk of time off for yourself, since once you get into residency you'll really only have dribs and drabs of vacation time. The summer before clerkship is the last time for a long time when you'll be able to devote a big slice of time to something other than medicine.

[KennethToronto]

Just remember to take a solid chunk of time off for yourself, since once you get into residency you'll really only have dribs and drabs of vacation time. The summer before clerkship is the last time for a long time when you'll be able to devote a big slice of time to something other than medicine.

 

amen to that.

[rogerroger]

There is a large degree of variation in what people decide to do over the summer. You have the really hardcore crowd which tends to gravitate towards medicine related activities in the summer. Then you have the more chilled crowd of med students which are more about living it up and making that line of credit work for you over the summer.

 

Personally I attempt to walk the line between the two extremes.

 

In my first summer I went to Europe. I did some research there for 6 weeks. This allowed me to get my room and travel expenses subsidized, which was a nice bonus. It also helped to keep my brain working over the summer. I saw patients, practiced my physical exam stuff etc. It also surprisingly made me interested in some future career choices. Yet I also had a ton of fun over this time. I met great friends and traveled every weekend to places like Slovakia, Poland, Austria, Germany etc.

 

Then when I was done with the research I spent several weeks backpacking around everyday. Ended up seeing pretty much every country in Europe in the process. Great fun, and lots of good memories which have nothing to do with medicine.

 

This summer I am trying to balance things out again. I have arranged some clinical observerships for about a month and exploring some research possibilities. I am also going to the Caribbean for a week just to sit on the beach. I am also looking at going to SE Asia for two or three weeks. This trip would also be simply for fun and to enjoy life prior to clerkship. I am looking at having this summer lean slightly more towards medicine rather than pure pleasure. This is not the mainstream way of doing things in the last summer. But I feel that keeping sharp over the summer may prove useful come the first months of clerkship. But I might just be nuts, it's possible.

 

I know a substantial minority looks at writing the USMLE during the second summer. Another substantial minority also does Toronto based research through CREMS during the first summer if they are UT medical students.

[Jochi1543]

I think it depends on what you wanna match into. I think if you're gunning for ROAD, you really should be doing some research in those areas or padding your resume with a major commitment of some other sort (a job, an EC, etc). If you don't have an interest in those areas, I don't think what you do will be pivotal. I would rather die than do a minute of research, and I agree with KT and PB that it's your last 2 summers to do fun stuff. So this summer I considered one job that I really wanted (didn't get it - super-competitive), an international elective with a bunch of travelling mixed in, and a rural elective. I got the international one, so I'm postponing the rural one til next summer. It's the only thing I intend on doing next summer. So now all I'm doing this summer is chilling for the first 3 weeks, then heading up to Iceland for a 1-month elective, then spending another 2-3 weeks travelling around Iceland with a friend. Then I'm flying to Austria for a week to hang out with another friend who's doing an IFMSA exchange there. Afterwards, I will probably head home to Russia for about 2 weeks, and yet another one of my friends is thinking about coming with me for that. I might also stop over in Finland between Iceland and Austria, if my dad is up for meeting me there (we vacationed in Finland 2 summers ago and it was pretty fun).

 

So yeah, exhausting . I was concerned about $, but realistically, as I said before, it's my last chance to do what I want. Yeah, I'll probably pay an extra $7000 on my LOC for doing this compared to if I stayed in Edmonton and worked some crappy research job for $1500/month, but a decade from now, it will probably be the amount I take home from my job biweekly.