Should I pursue this (unique) research opportunity?

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Shark7500

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Hi all, I'll be beginning MS1 this August as an MD candidate. This summer, I'll be working as an instructor for this federally funded science camp that teaches inner-city kids science (sucks that I have to work the summer before MS1...but I can't help it. I need the money to support myself). Anyway, since the program is federally funded, they need to publish a paper about their activities every so often in an education journal detailing what they've been up to. They've offered me a chance to analyze the data they've collected / write the paper.

My question is whether or not I should accept the offer. It looks fairly straightforward to do, though I honestly have no clue how much effort it would take to actually write it up. The work will most likely spill over into the first few weeks/months of medical school though I should be able to get most of it done. I don't know for sure, but I will likely get a first authorship for the work. Would this be something that I could count as a paper / presentation / research when applying to residencies? Or would it be irrelevant since it is not directly science-related?

Thanks for your responses. I did a few searches and nothing came up, so I decided to make this thread. Forgive me if this has been discussed before and please link me to the thread.

TL;DR - Opportunity to publish a paper in an education journal. Should I pursue it? Would it be something that I could count as a publication in residency applications (not directly science-related)?

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Yes it's a publication and you can add it to your residency app, but my advice to you would be to chill and take the summer off before the grind of school starts again.

However, if you really need the money AND are interested in the work for more than just getting a potential pub out of it, then take the offer. If you're not committed to it, find a job you'll enjoy OR just relax.
 
Yes it's a publication and you can add it to your residency app, but my advice to you would be to chill and take the summer off before the grind of school starts again.

However, if you really need the money AND are interested in the work for more than just getting a potential pub out of it, then take the offer. If you're not committed to it, find a job you'll enjoy OR just relax.

Thanks for the reply!

I have about 12 weeks of summer vacation. I was planning on spending about 3 weeks at home doing nothing, 6 weeks working at this place, and 3 weeks on a coast-to-coast road trip. So I think I've got a good mix of work and play, I think.

The nature of the job is that I have to be at work from 8am-4pm, but on any given day I'll have between 2 and 4 hours of down-time when kids are working on projects or experiments or whatever. Instead of surfing reddit/ESPN/SDN, I thought I could put that time into good use.

On a related note, since the paper can count towards published research, can I count poster presentations and stuff based on this research as well? I should be able to, right?
 
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If you have to have the job, might as well do the paper if it'll get published.

On a related note, since the paper can count towards published research, can I count poster presentations and stuff based on this research as well? I should be able to, right?

Yes.
 
Will it be submitted to a peer reviewed journal, or just an education bulletin/newsletter? If it's the former, go for it. The latter is likely not worth your time.
 
The last paper that was published by this group was to a peer-reviewed journal, so I'm assuming this one will be as well. If this project rolls over into the first few weeks of med school, will I have enough time to do both this as well as stay up to date with my classes?
 
My advice is to focus solely on medical school at this point. If you have to keep writing this publication after starting MS1, you may be better off declining the offer. I personally want to focus all my attention on starting med school with all my efforts going to studying and doing well. I want to eliminate all other possible distractions. But you may do just fine handling both the start of MS1 and the writing. It depends on what you're comfortable with.
 
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