What to do during downtime at the lab during my gap year?

[BimBom]

---

Members do not see this ad.

I am working full-time as a research associate, but the daily workload is something like 1 or so hours of actual lab work to do and the rest of the time is just sitting at my desk filling out the clock for my prescribed 40 hours a week. I'm really grateful to have a full-time job, and the project I'm doing is actually interesting and so on, but the downtime is killing me. I have 5+ interview invites so far so I'm safely assuming I'll get in this cycle to med school. With that in mind, I am still pondering how to spend my downtime at the computer. I've spent some time reading books, but that can get tiring. Some options I thought of were:

1. Read books, humanities, to get a fuller idea of humanity and human suffering, that I might grow to be a more compassionate medical student and physician. Sounds good in theory, but I get bored and lack motivation.
2. Start studying medical stuff. Anatomy and physiology, or anything that might interest me. Do Anki flashcards for fun (if that can be done)
3. Learn another language, like Portuguese or something. Sounds good, but I don't want to be speaking out loud at my desk with others around me.

The possibility of more work in the lab does not look feasible right now, so I'm stuck having to find stuff to do. Easiest thing to do is lurk on SDN, reddit, admit and cycletrack. But that isn't very health, is it?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Can I pitch Becoming a Student Doctor at you? 🙂 You might not need the reflection exercises but having a deeper base about what you should know about social medicine would be helpful. And it gets you off the algorithms and doomscrolling. You will get a more contemporary and vivid impression to get a fuller idea of humanity (video/documentary based, so you would support unbiased (as we have it) journalism and free speech).

 

[olofmeister]

I am working full-time as a research associate, but the daily workload is something like 1 or so hours of actual lab work to do and the rest of the time is just sitting at my desk filling out the clock for my prescribed 40 hours a week. I'm really grateful to have a full-time job, and the project I'm doing is actually interesting and so on, but the downtime is killing me. I have 5+ interview invites so far so I'm safely assuming I'll get in this cycle to med school. With that in mind, I am still pondering how to spend my downtime at the computer. I've spent some time reading books, but that can get tiring. Some options I thought of were:

1. Read books, humanities, to get a fuller idea of humanity and human suffering, that I might grow to be a more compassionate medical student and physician. Sounds good in theory, but I get bored and lack motivation.
2. Start studying medical stuff. Anatomy and physiology, or anything that might interest me. Do Anki flashcards for fun (if that can be done)
3. Learn another language, like Portuguese or something. Sounds good, but I don't want to be speaking out loud at my desk with others around me.

The possibility of more work in the lab does not look feasible right now, so I'm stuck having to find stuff to do. Easiest thing to do is lurk on SDN, reddit, admit and cycletrack. But that isn't very health, is it?

Personally I have not been doing anything medicine/medical school related. I just do crosswords or read Wikipedia/fun books, I don't want to get burned out of medicine before I even start lol

I also do Spanish anki cards, but as you mentioned it's kind of annoying to be unable to speak out loud

 

[wysdoc]

I am working full-time as a research associate, but the daily workload is something like 1 or so hours of actual lab work to do and the rest of the time is just sitting at my desk filling out the clock for my prescribed 40 hours a week. I'm really grateful to have a full-time job, and the project I'm doing is actually interesting and so on, but the downtime is killing me. I have 5+ interview invites so far so I'm safely assuming I'll get in this cycle to med school. With that in mind, I am still pondering how to spend my downtime at the computer. I've spent some time reading books, but that can get tiring. Some options I thought of were:

1. Read books, humanities, to get a fuller idea of humanity and human suffering, that I might grow to be a more compassionate medical student and physician. Sounds good in theory, but I get bored and lack motivation.
2. Start studying medical stuff. Anatomy and physiology, or anything that might interest me. Do Anki flashcards for fun (if that can be done)
3. Learn another language, like Portuguese or something. Sounds good, but I don't want to be speaking out loud at my desk with others around me.

The possibility of more work in the lab does not look feasible right now, so I'm stuck having to find stuff to do. Easiest thing to do is lurk on SDN, reddit, admit and cycletrack. But that isn't very health, is it?

Can you ask if there are other things you can help with?
Your day will go by faster and you could learn more about different aspects of the research process.

 

[BimBom]

Can you ask if there are other things you can help with?
Your day will go by faster and you could learn more about different aspects of the research process.

I could ask, but on the other hand my PI knows perfectly well that I don't have much to do and that I'm here. I feel like asking about that may add some kind of pressure on him, because he has expressed in the past that he feels for me that things are a bit slow... but the good news is that things are picking up next week in the lab!